Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

by George Grote

OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

Having dwelt at some length on the life and compositions of Plato, I now proceed to place in comparison with him some other members of the Sokratic philosophical family: less eminent, indeed, than the illustrious author of the Republic, yet still men of marked character, ability, and influence.[1] Respecting one of the brethren, Xenophon, who stands next to Plato in celebrity, I shall say a few words separately in my next and concluding chapter.

[1] Dionysius of Halikarnassus contrasts Plato with τὸ Σωκράτους διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν (De Adm. Vi Dic. Demosthen. p. 956.) Compare also Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 762, where he contrasts the style and phraseology of Plato with that of the Σωκρατικοὶ διάλογοι generally.

Influence exercised by Sokrates over his companions.

The ascendancy of Sokrates over his contemporaries was powerfully exercised in more than one way. He brought into vogue new subjects both of indefinite amplitude, and familiar as well as interesting to every one. On these subjects, moreover, he introduced, or at least popularised, a new method of communication, whereby the relation of teacher and learner, implying a direct transfer of ready-made knowledge from the one to the other, was put aside. He substituted an interrogatory process, at once destructive and suggestive, in which the teacher began by unteaching and the learner by unlearning what was supposed to be already known, for the purpose of provoking in the learner’s mind a self-operative energy of thought, and an internal generation of new notions. Lastly, Sokrates worked forcibly upon the minds of several friends, who were in the habit of attending him when he talked in the market-place or the palæstra. Some tried to copy his wonderful knack of colloquial cross-examination: how far they did so with success or reputation we do not know: but Xenophon says that several of them would only discourse with those who paid them a fee, and that they thus sold for considerable sums what were only small fragments obtained gratuitously from the rich table of their master.[2] There were moreover several who copied the general style of his colloquies by composing written dialogues. And thus it happened that the great master, — he who passed his life in the oral application of his Elenchus, without writing anything, — though he left no worthy representative in his own special career, became the father of numerous written dialogues and of a rich philosophical literature.[3]

[2] Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 60. ὧν τινὲς μικρὰ μέρη παρ’ ἐκείνου προῖκα λαβόντες πολλοῦ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπώλουν, καὶ οὐκ ἦσαν ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος δημοτικοί· τοῖς γὰρ μὴ ἔχουσι χρήματα διδόναι οὐκ ἤθελον διαλέγεσθαι.

[3] We find a remarkable proof how long the name and conception of Sokrates lasted in the memory of the Athenian public, as having been the great progenitor of the philosophy and philosophers of the fourth century B.C. in Athens. It was about 306 B.C., almost a century after the death of Sokrates, that Democharês (the nephew of the orator Demosthenes) delivered an oration before the Athenian judicature for the purpose of upholding the law proposed by Sophokles, forbidding philosophers or Sophists to lecture without a license obtained from the government; which law, passed a year before, had determined the secession of all the philosophers from Athens until the law was repealed. In this oration Democharês expatiated on the demerits of many philosophers, their servility, profligate ambition, rapacity, want of patriotism, &c., from which Athenæus makes several extracts. Τοιοῦτοι εἰσιν οἱ ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας στρατηγοί· περὶ ὧν Δημοχάρης ἔλεγεν, — Ὥσπερ ἐκ θύμβρας οὐδεὶς ἂν δύναιτο κατασκευάσαι λόγχην, οὔδ’ ἐκ Σωκράτους στρατιώτην ἄμεμπτον.

Demetrius Phalereus also, in or near that same time, composed a Σωκράτους ἀπολογίαν (Diog. La. ix. 37-57). This shows how long the interest in the personal fate and character of Sokrates endured at Athens.

Names of those companions.

Besides Plato and Xenophon, whose works are known to us, we hear of Alexamenus, Antisthenes, Æschines, Aristippus, Bryson, Eukleides, Phædon, Kriton, Simmias, Kebês, &c., as having composed dialogues of this sort. All of them were companions of Sokrates; several among them either set down what they could partially recollect of his conversations, or employed his name as a dramatic speaker of their own thoughts. Seven of these dialogues were ascribed to Æschines, twenty-five to Aristippus, seventeen to Kriton, twenty-three to Simmias, three to Kebês, six to Eukleides, four to Phædon. The compositions of Antisthenes were far more numerous: ten volumes of them, under a variety of distinct titles (some of them probably not in the form of dialogues) being recorded by Diogenes.[4] Aristippus was the first of the line of philosophers called Kyrenaic or Hedonic, afterwards (with various modifications) Epikurean: Antisthenes, of the Cynics and Stoics: Eukleides, of the Megaric school. It seems that Aristippus, Antisthenes, Eukleides, and Bryson, all enjoyed considerable reputation, as contemporaries and rival authors of Plato: Æschines, Antisthenes (who was very poor), and Aristippus, are said to have received money for their lectures; Aristippus being named as the first who thus departed from the Sokratic canon.[5]

[4] Diogenes Laert. 1. 47-61-83, vi. 15; Athenæ. xi. p. 505 C.

Bryson is mentioned by Theopompus ap. Athenæum, xi. p. 508 D. Theopompus, the contemporary of Aristotle and pupil of Isokrates, had composed an express treatise or discourse against Plato’s dialogues, in which discourse he affirmed that most of them were not Plato’s own, but borrowed in large proportion from the dialogues of Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Bryson. Ephippus also, the comic writer (of the fourth century B.C., contemporary with Theopompus, perhaps even earlier), spoke of Bryson as contemporary with Plato (Athenæ. xi. 509 C). This is good proof to authenticate Bryson as a composer of “Sokratic dialogues” belonging to the Platonic age, along with Antisthenes and Aristippus: whether Theopompus is correct when he asserts that Plato borrowed much, from the three, is very doubtful.

Many dialogues were published by various writers, and ascribed falsely to one or other of the viri Sokratici: Diogenes (ii. 64) reports the judgment delivered by Panætius, which among them were genuine and which not so. Panætius considered that the dialogues ascribed to Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Æschines, were genuine; that those assigned to Phædon and Eukleides were doubtful; and that the rest were all spurious. He thus regarded as spurious those of Alexamenus, Kriton, Simmias, Kebês, Simon, Bryson, &c., or he did not know them all. It is possible that Panætius may not have known the dialogues of Bryson; if he did know them and believed them to be spurious, I should not accept his assertion, because I think that it is outweighed by the contrary testimony of Theopompus. Moreover, though Panætius was a very able man, confidence in his critical estimate is much shaken when we learn that he declared the Platonic Phædon to be spurious.

[5] Diogen. Laert. i. 62-65; Athenæus, xi. p. 507 C.

Dion Chrysostom (Orat. lv. De Homero et Socrate, vol. ii. p. 289, Reiske) must have had in his view some of these other Sokratic dialogues, not those composed by Plato or Xenophon, when he alludes to conversations of Sokrates with Lysikles, Glykon, and Anytus; what he says about Anytus can hardly refer to the Platonic Menon.

Æschines- — oration of Lysias against him.

Æschines the companion of Sokrates did not become (like Eukleides, Antisthenes, Aristippus) the founder of a succession or sect of philosophers. The few fragments remaining of his dialogues do not enable us to appreciate their merit. He seems to have employed the name of Aspasia largely as a conversing personage, and to have esteemed her highly. He also spoke with great admiration of Themistokles. But in regard to present or recent characters, he stands charged with much bitterness and ill-nature: especially we learn that he denounced the Sophists Prodikus and Anaxaras, the first on the ground of having taught Theramenes, the second as the teacher of two worthless persons — Ariphrades and Arignôtus. This accusation deserves greater notice, because it illustrates the odium raised by Melêtus against Sokrates as having instructed Kritias and Alkibiades.[6] Moreover, we have Æschines presented to us in another character, very unexpected in a vir Socraticus. An action for recovery of money alleged to be owing was brought in the Athenian Dikastery against Æschines, by a plaintiff, who set forth his case in a speech composed by the rhetor Lysias. In this speech it is alleged that Æschines, having engaged in trade as a preparer and seller of unguents, borrowed a sum of money at interest from the plaintiff; who affirms that he counted with assurance upon honest dealing from a disciple of Sokrates, continually engaged in talking about justice and virtue.[7] But so far was this expectation from being realized, that Æschines had behaved most dishonestly. He repaid neither principal nor interest; though a judgment of the Dikastery had been obtained against him, and a branded slave belonging to him had been seized under it. Moreover, Æschines had been guilty of dishonesty equally scandalous in his dealings with many other creditors also. Furthermore, he had made love to a rich woman seventy years old, and had got possession of her property; cheating and impoverishing her family. His character as a profligate and cheat was well known and could be proved by many witnesses. Such are the allegations against Æschines, contained in the fragment of a lost speech of Lysias, and made in open court by a real plaintiff. How much of them could be fairly proved, we cannot say: but it seems plain at least that Æschines must have been a trader as well as a philosopher. All these writers on philosophy must have had their root and dealings in real life, of which we know scarce anything.

[6] Plutarch, Perikles, c. 24-32; Cicero, De Invent. i. 31; Athenæus, v. 220. Some other citations will be found in Fischer’s collection of the few fragments of Æschines Sokraticus (Leipsic, 1788, p. 68 seq.), though some of the allusions which he produces seem rather to belong to the orator Æschines. The statements of Athenæus, from the dialogue of Æschines called Telaugês, are the most curious. The dialogue contained, among other things, τὴν Προδίκου καὶ Ἀναξαγόρους τῶν σοφιστῶν διαμώκησιν, where we see Anaxagoras denominated a Sophist (see also Diodor. xii. 39) as well as Prodikus. Fischer considers the three Pseudo-Platonic dialogues — Περὶ Ἀρετῆς, Περὶ Πλούτου, Περὶ Θανάτου — as the works of Æschines. But this is noway established.

[7] Athenæus, xiii. pp. 611-612. Πεισθεὶς δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοιαῦτα λέγοντος, καὶ ἅμα οἰόμενος τοῦτον Αἰσχίνην Σωκράτους γεγονέναι μαθητήν, καὶ περὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ ἀρετῆς πολλοὺς καὶ σεμνοὺς λέγοντα λόγους, οὐκ ἄν ποτε ἐπιχειρῆσαι οὐδὲ τολμῆσαι ἅπερ οἱ πονηρότατοι καὶ ἀδικώτατοι ἄνθρωποι ἐπιχειροῦσι πράττειν.

We read also about another oration of Lysias against Æschines — περὶ συκοφαντίας (Diogen. Laert. ii. 63), unless indeed it be the same oration differently described.

Written Sokratic Dialogues — their general character.

The dialogues known by the title of Sokratic dialogues,[8] were composed by all the principal companions of Sokrates, and by many who were not companions. Yet though thus composed by many different authors, they formed a recognised class of literature, noticed by the rhetorical critics as distinguished for plain, colloquial, unstudied, dramatic execution, suiting the parts to the various speakers: from which general character Plato alone departed — and he too not in all of his dialogues. By the Sokratic authors generally Sokrates appears to have been presented under the same main features: his proclaimed confession of ignorance was seldom wanting: and the humiliation which his cross-questioning inflicted even upon insolent men like Alkibiades, was as keenly set forth by Æschines as by Plato: moreover the Sokratic disciples generally were fond of extolling the Dæmon or divining prophecy of their master.[9] Some dialogues circulating under the name of some one among the companions of Sokrates, were spurious, and the authorship was a point not easy to determine. Simon, a currier at Athens, in whose shop Sokrates often conversed, is said to have kept memoranda of the conversations which he heard, and to have afterwards published them: Æschines also, and some other of the Sokratic companions, were suspected of having preserved or procured reports of the conversations of the master himself, and of having made much money after his death by delivering them before select audiences.[10] Aristotle speaks of the followers of Antisthenes as unschooled, vulgar men: but Cicero appears to have read with satisfaction the dialogues of Antisthenes, whom he designates as acute though not well-instructed.[11] Other accounts describe his dialogues as composed in a rhetorical style, which is ascribed to the fact of his having received lessons from Gorgias:[12] and Theopompus must have held in considerable estimation the dialogues of that same author, as well as those of Aristippus and Bryson, when he accused Plato of having borrowed from them largely.[13]

[8] Aristotel. ap. Athenæum, xi. p. 505 C; Rhetoric. iii. 16.

Dionys. Halikarnass. ad Cn. Pomp. de Platone, p. 762, Reiske. Τραφεὶς (Plato) ἐν τοῖς Σωκρατικοῖς διαλόγοις ἰσχνοτάτοις οὖσι καὶ ἀκριβεστάτοις, οὐ μείνας δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τῆς Γοργίου καὶ Θουκυδίδου κατασκευῆς ἐρασθείς: also, De Admir. Vi Dicend. in Demosthene, p. 968. Again in the same treatise De Adm. V. D. Demosth. p. 956. ἡ δὲ ἑτέρα λέξις, ἡ λιτὴ καὶ ἀφελὴς καὶ δοκοῦσα κατασκευήν τε καὶ ἰσχὺν τὴν πρὸς ἰδιώτην ἔχειν λόγον καὶ ὁμοιότητα, πολλοὺς μὲν ἔσχε καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας προστάτας — καὶ οἱ τῶν ἠθικῶν διαλόγων ποιηταί, ὧν ἦν τὸ Σωκρατικὸν διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν, ἔξω Πλάτωνος, &c.

Dionysius calls this style ὁ Σωκρατικὸς χαρακτὴρ p. 1025. I presume it is the same to which the satirist Timon applies the words:—

Ἀσθενική τε λόγων δυας ἢ τριὰς ἢ ἔτι πόρσω, Οἶος Ξεινοφόων, ἤτ’ Αἰσχίνου οὐκ ἐπιπειθὴς γράψαι —

Lucian, Hermogenes, Phrynichus, Longinus, and some later rhetorical critics of Greece judged more favourably than Timon about the style of Æschines as well as of Xenophon. See Zeller, Phil. d. Griech. ii. p. 171, sec. ed. And Demetrius Phalereus (or the author of the treatise which bears his name), as well as the rhetor Aristeides, considered Æschines and Plato as the best representatives of the Σωκρατικὸς χαρακτήρ, Demetr. Phaler. De Interpretat. 310; Aristeides, Orat. Platon. i. p. 35; Photius, Cods. 61 and 158; Longinus, ap. Walz. ix. p. 559, c. 2. Lucian says (De Parasito, 33) that Æschines passed some time with the elder Dionysius at Syracuse, to whom he read aloud his dialogue, entitled Miltiades, with great success.

An inedited discourse of Michæl Psellus, printed by Mr. Cox in his very careful and valuable catalogue of the MSS. in the Bodleian Library, recites the same high estimate as having been formed of Æschines by the chief ancient rhetorical critics: they reckoned him among and alongside of the foremost Hellenic classical writers, as having his own peculiar merits of style — παρὰ μὲν Πλάτωνι, τὴν διαλογικὴν φράσιν, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ Σωκρατικοῦ Αἰσχίνου, τὴν ἐμμελῆ συνθήκην τῶν λέξεων, παρὰ δὲ Θουκυδίδου, &c. See Mr. Cox’s Catalogue, pp. 743-745. Cicero speaks of the Sokratic philosophers generally, as writing with an elegant playfulness of style (De Officiis, i. 29, 104): which is in harmony with Lucian’s phrase — Αἰσχίνης ὁ τοὺς διαλόγους μακροὺς καὶ ἀστείους γράψας, &c.

[9] Cicero, Brutus, 85, s. 292; De Divinatione, i. 54-122; Aristeides, Orat. xlv. περὶ Ῥητορικῆς Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, vol. ii. pp. 295-369, ed. Dindorf. It appears by this that some of the dialogues composed by Æschines were mistaken by various persons for actual conversations held by Sokrates. It was argued, that because Æschines was inferior to Plato in ability, he was more likely to have repeated accurately what he had heard Sokrates say.

[10] Diog. L. ii. 122. He mentions a collection of thirty-three dialogues in one volume, purporting to be reports of real colloquies of Sokrates, published by Simon. But they can hardly be regarded as genuine.

The charge here mentioned is advanced by Xenophon (see a preceding [note], Memorab. i. 2, 60), against some persons (τινὲς), but without specifying names. About Æschines, see Athenæus, xiii. p. 611 C; Diogen. Laert. ii. 62.

[11] Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, xii. 38:—“viri acuti magis quam eruditi,” is the judgment of Cicero upon Antisthenes. I presume that these words indicate the same defect as that which is intended by Aristotle when he says — οἱ Ἀνθισθένειοι καὶ οἱ οὕτως ἀπαίδευτοι, Metaphysic. Η. 3, p. 1043, b. 24. It is plain, too, that Lucian considered the compositions of Antisthenes as not unworthy companions to those of Plato (Lucian, adv. Indoctum, c. 27).

[12] Diogen. Laert. vi. 1. If it be true that Antisthenes received lessons from Gorgias, this proves that Gorgias must sometimes have given lessons gratis; for the poverty of Antisthenes is well known. See the Symposion of Xenophon.

[13] Theopomp. ap. Athenæ. xi. p. 508. See K. F. Hermann, Ueber Plato’s Schriftsteller. Motive, p. 300. An extract of some length, of a dialogue composed by Æschines between Sokrates and Alkibiades, is given by Aristeides, Or. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, vol. ii. pp. 292-294, ed. Dindorf.

Relations between the companions of Sokrates — Their proceedings after the death of Sokrates.

Eukleides, Antisthenes, and Aristippus, were all companions and admirers of Sokrates, as was Plato. But none of them were his disciples, in the strict sense of the word: none of them continued or enforced his doctrines, though each used his name as a spokesman. During his lifetime the common attachment to his person formed a bond of union, which ceased at his death. There is indeed some ground for believing that Plato then put himself forward in the character of leader, with a view to keep the body united.[14] We must recollect that Plato though then no more than twenty-eight years of age, was the only one among them who combined the advantages of a noble Athenian descent, opulent circumstances, an excellent education, and great native genius. Eukleides and Aristippus were neither of them Athenians: Antisthenes was very poor: Xenophon was absent on service in the Cyreian army. Plato’s proposition, however, found no favour with the others and was even indignantly repudiated by Apollodorus: a man ardently attached to Sokrates, but violent and overboiling in all his feelings.[15] The companions of Sokrates, finding themselves unfavourably looked upon at Athens after his death, left the city for a season and followed Eukleides to Megara. How long they stayed there we do not know. Plato is said, though I think on no sufficient authority, to have remained absent from Athens for several years continuously. It seems certain (from an anecdote recounted by Aristotle)[16] that he talked with something like arrogance among the companions of Sokrates: and that Aristippus gently rebuked him by reminding him how very different had been the language of Sokrates himself. Complaints too were made by contemporaries, about Plato’s jealous, censorious, spiteful, temper. The critical and disparaging tone of his dialogues, notwithstanding the admiration which they inspire, accounts for the existence of these complaints: and anecdotes are recounted, though not verified by any sufficient evidence, of ill-natured dealing on his part towards other philosophers who were poorer than himself.[17] Dissension or controversy on philosophical topics is rarely carried on without some invidious or hostile feeling. Athens, and the viri Sokratici, Plato included, form no exception to this ordinary malady of human nature.

[14] Athenæus, xi. p. 507 A-B. from the ὑπομνήματα of the Delphian Hegesander. Who Hegesander was, I do not know: but there is nothing improbable in the anecdote which he recounts.

[15] Plato, Phædon. pp. 59 A. 117 D. Eukleides, however, though his school was probably at Megara, seems to have possessed property in Attica: for there existed, among the orations of Isæus, a pleading composed by that rhetor for some client — Πρὸς Εὐκλείδην τὸν Σωκρατικὸν ἀμφισβήτησις ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ χωρίου λύσεως (Dion. Hal., Isæ., c. 14, p. 612 Reiske) Harpokr. — Ὅτι τὰ ἐπικηρυττόμενα: also under some other words by Harpokration and by Pollux, viii. 48.

[16] Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23, p. 1398, b. 30. ἢ ὡς Ἀρίστιππος, πρὸς Πλάτωνα ἐπαγγελτικώτερόν τι εἰπόντα, ὡς ᾥετο — ἀλλὰ μὴν ὁ γ’ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν, ἔφη, οὐθὲν τοιοῦτον — λέγων τὸν Σωκράτην.

This anecdote, mentioned by Aristotle, who had good means of knowing, appears quite worthy of belief. The jealousy and love of supremacy inherent in Plato’s temper (τὸ φιλότιμον), were noticed by Dionysius Hal. (Epist. ad Cn. Pompeium, p. 756).

[17] Athenæus, xi. pp. 505-508. Diog. Laert. ii. 60-65, iii. 36.

The statement made by Plato in the Phædon — That Aristippus and Kleombrotus were not present at the death of Sokrates, but were said to be in Ægina — is cited as an example of Plato’s ill-will and censorious temper (Demetr. Phaler. s. 306). But this is unfair. The statement ought not to be so considered, if it were true: and if not true, it deserves a more severe epithet. We read in Athenæus various other criticisms, citing or alluding to passages of Plato, which are alleged to indicate ill-nature; but many of the passages cited do not deserve the remark.

No Sokratic school — each of the companions took a line of his own.

It is common for historians of philosophy to speak of a Sokratic school: but this phrase, if admissible at all, is only admissible in the largest and vaguest sense. The effect produced by Sokrates upon his companions was, not to teach doctrine, but to stimulate self-working enquiry, upon ethical and social subjects. Eukleides, Antisthenes, Aristippus, each took a line of his own, not less decidedly than Plato. But unfortunately we have no compositions remaining from either of the three. We possess only brief reports respecting some leading points of their doctrine, emanating altogether from those who disagreed with it: we have besides aphorisms, dicta, repartees, bons-mots, &c., which they are said to have uttered. Of these many are evident inventions; some proceeding from opponents and probably coloured or exaggerated, others hardly authenticated at all. But if they were ever so well authenticated, they would form very insufficient evidence on which to judge a philosopher — much less to condemn him with asperity.[18] Philosophy (as I have already observed) aspires to deliver not merely truth, but reasoned truth. We ought to know not only what doctrines a philosopher maintained, but how he maintained them:—what objections others made against him, and how he replied:—what objections he made against dissentient doctrines, and what replies were made to him. Respecting Plato and Aristotle, we possess such information to a considerable extent:—respecting Eukleides, Antisthenes, and Aristippus, we are without it. All their compositions (very numerous, in the case of Antisthenes) have perished.

[18] Respecting these ancient philosophers, whose works are lost, I transcribe a striking passage from Descartes, who complains, in his own case, of the injustice of being judged from the statements of others, and not from his own writings:—“Quod adeo in hâc materiâ verum est, ut quamvis sæpe aliquas ex meis opinionibus explicaverim viris acutissimis, et qui me loquente videbantur eas valdé distincté intelligere: attamen cum eas retulerunt, observavi ipsos fere semper illas ita mutavisse, ut pro meis agnoscere amplius non possem. Quâ occasione posteros hic oratos volo, ut nunquam credant, quidquam à me esse profectum, quod ipse in lucem non edidero. Et nullo modo miror absurda illa dogmata, quæ veteribus illis philosophis tribuuntur, quorum scripta non habemus: nec propterea judico ipsorum cogitationes valdé à ratione fuisse alienas, cum habuerint præstantissima suorum sæculorum ingenia; sed tantum nobis perperam esse relatas.” (Descartes, Diss. De Methodo, p. 43.)

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EUKLEIDES.

Eukleides of Megara — he blended Parmenides with Sokrates.

Eukleides was a Parmenidean, who blended the ethical point of view of Sokrates with the ontology of Parmenides, and followed out that negative Dialectic which was common to Sokrates with Zeno. Parmenides (I have with already said)[19] and Zeno after him, recognised no absolute reality except Ens Unum, continuous, indivisible: they denied all real plurality: they said that the plural was Non-Ens or Nothing, i.e. nothing real or absolute, but only apparent, perpetually transient and changing, relative, different as appreciated by one man and by another. Now Sokrates laid it down that wisdom or knowledge of Good, was the sum total of ethical perfection, including within it all the different virtues: he spoke also about the divine wisdom inherent in, or pervading the entire Kosmos or universe.[20] Eukleides blended together the Ens of Parmenides with the Good of Sokrates, saying that the two names designated one and the same thing: sometimes called Good, Wisdom, Intelligence, God, &c., and by other names also, but always one and the same object named and meant. He farther maintained that the opposite of Ens, and the opposite of Bonum (Non-Ens, Non-Bonum, or Malum) were things non-existent, unmeaning names, Nothing,[21] &c.: i.e. that they were nothing really, absolutely, permanently, but ever varying and dependent upon our ever varying conceptions. The One — the All — the Good — was absolute, immoveable, invariable, indivisible. But the opposite thereof was a non-entity or nothing: there was no one constant meaning corresponding to Non-Ens — but a variable meaning, different with every man who used it.

[19] See [ch. i. pp. 19-22].

[20] Xenophon. Memor. i. 4, 17. τὴν ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησιν. Compare Plato, Philêbus, pp. 29-30; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 6, 6, iii. 11.

[21] Diog. L. ii. 106. Οὖτος ἒν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀπεφῄνατο πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι καλούμενον· ὅτε μὲν γὰρ φρόνησιν, ὅτε δὲ θεόν, καὶ ἄλλοτε νοῦν καὶ τὰ λοιπά. Τὰ δὲ ἀντικείμενα τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἀνῄρει, μὴ εἶναι φάσκων. Compare also vii. 2, 161, where the Megarici are represented as recognising only μίαν ἀρετὴν πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι καλουμένην. Cicero, Academ. ii. 42.

Doctrine of Eukleides about Bonum.

It was in this manner that Eukleides solved the problem which Sokrates had brought into vogue — What is the Bonum — or (as afterwards phrased) the Summum Bonum? Eukleides pronounced the Bonum to be coincident with the Ens Unum of Parmenides. The Parmenidean thesis, originally belonging to Transcendental Physics or Ontology, became thus implicated with Transcendental Ethics.[22]

[22] However, in the verse of Xenophanes, the predecessor of Parmenides — Οὗλος ὁρᾷ, οὗλος δὲ νοεῖ, οὗλος δέ τ’ ἀκούει — the Universe is described as a thinking, seeing, hearing God — Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Sextus Empir. adv. Mathemat. ix. 144; Xenophan. Fragm. p. 36, ed. Karsten.

The doctrine compared to that of Plato — changes in Plato.

Plato departs from Sokrates on the same point. He agrees with Eukleides in recognising a Transcendental Bonum. But it appears that his doctrines on this head underwent some change. He held for some time what is called the doctrine of Ideas: transcendental Forms, Entia, Essences: he considered the Transcendental to be essentially multiple, or to be an aggregate — whereas Eukleides had regarded it as essentially One. This is the doctrine which we find in some of the Platonic dialogues. In the Republic, the Idea of Good appears as one of these, though it is declared to be the foremost in rank and the most ascendant in efficacy.[23] But in the later part of his life, and in his lectures (as we learn from Aristotle), Plato came to adopt a different view. He resolved the Ideas into numbers. He regarded them as made up by the combination of two distinct factors:—1. The One — the Essentially One. 2. The Essentially Plural: The Indeterminate Dyad: the Great and Little. — Of these two elements he considered the Ideas to be compounded. And he identified the Idea of Good with the essentially One — τὸ ἀγαθὸν with τὸ ἕν: the principle of Good with the principle of Unity: also the principle of Evil with the Indeterminate. But though Unity and Good were thus identical, he considered Unity as logically antecedent, or the subject — Good as logically consequent, or the predicate.[24]

[23] Plato, Republic, vi. p. 508 E, vii. p. 517 A.

[24] The account given by Aristotle of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, as held by Plato in his later years, appears in various passages of the Metaphysica, and in the curious account repeated by Aristoxenus (who had often heard it from Aristotle — Ἀριστοτέλης ἀεὶ διηγεῖτο) of the ἀκρόασις or lecture delivered by Plato, De Bono. See Aristoxen. Harmon. ii. p. 30, Meibom. Compare the eighth chapter in this work, — [Platonic Compositions Generally]. Metaphys. N. 1091, b. 13.τῶν δὲ τὰς ἀκινήτους οὐσίας εἶναι λεγόντων (sc. Platonici) οἱ μέν φασιν αὐτὸ τὸ ἓν τὸ ἀγαθὸν αὐτὸ εἶναι· οὐσίαν μέντοι τὸ ἓν αὐτοῦ ᾤοντο εἶναι μάλιστα, which words are very clearly explained by Bonitz in the note to his Commentary, p. 586: also Metaphys. 987, b. 20, and Scholia, p. 551, b. 20, p. 567, b. 34, where the work of Aristotle, Περὶ Τὰγαθοῦ, is referred to: probably the memoranda taken down by Aristotle from Plato’s lecture on that subject, accompanied by notes of his own.

In Schol. p. 573, a. 18, it is stated that the astronomer Eudoxus was a hearer both of Plato and of Eukleides.

The account given by Zeller (Phil. der Griech. ii. p. 453, 2nd ed.) of this latter phase of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, applies exactly to that which we hear about the main doctrine of Eukleides. Zeller describes the Platonic doctrine as being “Eine Vermischung des ethischen Begriffes vom höchsten Gut, mit dem Metaphysischen des Absoluten: Der Begriff des Guten ist zunächst aus dem menschlichen Leben abstrahirt; er bezeichnet das, was dem Menschen zuträglich ist. So noch bei Sokrates. Plato verallgemeinert ihn nun zum Begriff des Absoluten; dabei spielt aber seine ursprüngliche Bedeutung noch fortwährend herein, und so entsteht die Unklarheit, dass weder der ethische noch der metaphysische Begriff des Guten rein gefasst wird.”

This remark is not less applicable to Eukleides than to Plato, both of them agreeing in the doctrine here criticised. Zeller says truly, that the attempt to identify Unum and Bonum produces perpetual confusion. The two notions are thoroughly distinct and independent. It ought not to be called (as he phrases it) “a generalization of Bonum”. There is no common property on which to found a generalization. It is a forced conjunction between two disparates.

Last doctrine of Plato nearly the same as that of Eukleides.

This last doctrine of Plato in his later years (which does not appear in the dialogues, but seems, as far as we can make out, to have been delivered substantially in his oral lectures, and is ascribed to him by Aristotle) was nearly coincident with that of Eukleides. Both held the identity of τὸ ἕν with τὸ ἀγαθόν. This one doctrine is all that we know about Eukleides: what consequences he derived from it, or whether any, we do not know. But Plato combined, with this transcendental Unum = Bonum, a transcendental indeterminate plurality: from which combination he considered his Ideas or Ideal Numbers to be derivatives.

Megaric succession of philosophers. Eleian or Eritrean succession.

Eukleides is said to have composed six dialogues, the titles of which alone remain. The scanty information which we possess respecting him relates altogether to his negative logical procedure. Whether he deduced any consequences from his positive doctrine of the Transcendental Ens, Unum, Bonum, we do not know: but he, as Zeno had been before him,[25] was acute in exposing contradictions and difficulties in the positive doctrines of opponents. He was a citizen of Megara, where he is said to have harboured Plato and the other companions of Sokrates, when they retired for a time from Athens after the death of Sokrates. Living there as a teacher or debater on philosophy, he founded a school or succession of philosophers who were denominated Megarici. The title is as old as Aristotle, who both names them and criticises their doctrines.[26] None of their compositions are preserved. The earliest who becomes known to us is Eubulides, the contemporary and opponent of Aristotle; next Ichthyas, Apollonius, Diodôrus Kronus, Stilpon, Alexinus, between 340-260 B.C.

[25] Plato, Parmenides, p. 128 C, where Zeno represents himself as taking for his premisses the conclusions of opponents, to show that they led to absurd consequences. This seems what is meant, when Diogenes says about Eukleides — ταῖς ἀποδείξεσιν ἐνίστατο οὐ κατὰ λήμματα, ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἐπιφοράν (ii. 107); Deycks, De Megaricorum Doctrinâ, p. 34.

[26] Aristot. Metaph. iv. p. 1046, b. 29.

The sarcasm ascribed to Diogenes the Cynic implies that Eukleides was really known as the founder of a school — καὶ τὴν μὲν Εὐκλείδου σχολὴν ἔλεγε χολήν (Diog. L. vi. 24) — the earliest mention (I apprehend) of the word σχολὴ in that sense.

With the Megaric philosophers there soon become confounded another succession, called Eleian or Eretrian, who trace their origin to another Sokratic man — Phædon. The chief Eretrians made known to us are Pleistanus, Menedêmus, Asklepiades. The second of the three acquired some reputation.

Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus — Ethical, not transcendental.

The Megarics and Eretrians, as far as we know them, turned their speculative activity altogether in the logical or intellectual direction, paying little attention to the ethical and emotional field. Both Antisthenes and Aristippus, on the contrary, pursued the ethical path. To the Sokratic question, What is the Bonum? Eukleides had answered by a transcendental definition: Antisthenes and Aristippus each gave to it an ethical answer, having reference to human wants and emotions, and to the different views which they respectively took thereof. Antisthenes declared it to consist in virtue, by which he meant an independent and self-sufficing character, confining all wants within the narrowest limits: Aristippus placed it in the moderate and easy pleasures, in avoiding ambitious struggles, and in making the best of every different situation, yet always under the guidance of a wise calculation and self-command. Both of them kept clear of the transcendental: they neither accepted it as Unum et Omne (the view of Eukleides), nor as Plura (the Eternal Ideas or Forms, the Platonic view). Their speculations had reference altogether to human life and feelings, though the one took a measure of this wide subject very different from the other: and in thus confining the range of their speculations, they followed Sokrates more closely than either Eukleides or Plato followed him. They not only abstained from transcendental speculation, but put themselves in declared opposition to it. And since the intellectual or logical philosophy, as treated by Plato, became intimately blended with transcendental hypothesis — Antisthenes and Aristippus are both found on the negative side against its pretensions. Aristippus declared the mathematical sciences to be useless, as conducing in no way to happiness, and taking no account of what was better or what was worse.[27] He declared that we could know nothing except in so far as we were affected by it, and as it was or might be in correlation with ourselves: that as to causes not relative to ourselves, or to our own capacities and affections, we could know nothing about them.[28]

[27] Aristotel. Metaph. B. 906, a. 32. ὥστε διὰ ταῦτα τῶν σοφιστῶν τινες οἷον Ἀρίστιππος προεπηλάκιζον αὐτὰς (τὰς μαθηματικὰς τέχνας)· — ἐν μὲν γὰρ ταῖς ἄλλαις τέχναις, καὶ ταῖς βαναύσοις, οἷον ἐν τεκτονικῇ καὶ σκυτικῇ, διότι βέλτιον ἢ χεῖρον λέγεσθαι πάντα, τὰς δὲ μαθηματικὰς οὐθένα ποιεῖσθαι λόγον περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.

Aristotle here ranks Aristippus among the σοφισταί.

Aristippus, in discountenancing φυσιολογίαν, cited the favourite saying of Sokrates that the proper study of mankind was ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τ’ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται.

Plutarch, ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8.

[28] Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 191; Diog. L. ii. 92.

Preponderance of the negative vein in the Platonic age.

Such were the leading writers and talkers contemporary with Plato, in the dialectical age immediately following on the death of Sokrates. The negative vein greatly preponderates in them, as it does on the whole even in Plato — and as it was pretty sure to do, so long as the form of dialogue was employed. Affirmative exposition and proof is indeed found in some of the later Platonic works, carried on by colloquy between two speakers. But the colloquial form manifests itself evidently as unsuitable for the purpose: and we must remember that Plato was a lecturer as well as a writer, so that his doctrines made their way, at least in part, through continuous exposition. But it is Aristotle with whom the form of affirmative continuous exposition first becomes predominant, in matters of philosophy. Though he composed dialogues (which are now lost), and though he appreciates dialectic as a valuable exercise, yet he considers it only as a discursive preparation; antecedent, though essential, to the more close and concentrated demonstrations of philosophy.

Harsh manner in which historians of philosophy censure the negative vein.

Most historians deal hardly with this negative vein. They depreciate the Sophists, the Megarics and Eretrians, the Academics and Sceptics of the subsequent ages — under the title of Eristics, or lovers of contention for itself — as captious and perverse enemies of truth.

Negative method in philosophy essential to the controul of the affirmative.

I have already said that my view of the importance and value of the negative vein of philosophy is altogether different. It appears to me quite as essential as the affirmative. It is required as an antecedent, a test, and a corrective. Aristotle deserves all honour for his attempts to construct and defend various affirmative theories: but the value of these theories depends upon their being defensible against all objectors. Affirmative philosophy, as a body not only of truth but of reasoned truth, holds the champion’s belt, subject to the challenge not only of competing affirmants, but of all deniers and doubters. And this is the more indispensable, because of the vast problems which these affirmative philosophers undertake to solve: problems especially vast during the age of Plato and Aristotle. The question has to be determined, not only which of two proposed solutions is the best, but whether either of them is tenable, and even whether any solution at all is attainable by the human faculties: whether there exist positive evidence adequate to sustain any conclusion, accompanied with adequate replies to the objections against it. The burthen of proof lies upon the affirmant: and the proof produced must be open to the scrutiny of every dissentient.

Sokrates — the most persevering and acute Eristic of his age.

Among these dissentients or negative dialecticians, Sokrates himself, during his life, stood prominent. In his footsteps followed Eukleides and the Megarics: who, though they acquired the unenviable surname of Eristics or Controversialists, cannot possibly have surpassed Sokrates, and probably did not equal him, in the refutative Elenchus. Of no one among the Megarics, probably, did critics ever affirm, what the admiring Xenophon says about Sokrates — “that he dealt with every one in colloquial debate just as he chose,” i.e., that he baffled and puzzled his opponents whenever he chose. No one of these Megarics probably ever enunciated so sweeping a negative programme, or declared so emphatically his own inability to communicate positive instruction, as Sokrates in the Platonic Apology. A person more thoroughly Eristic than Sokrates never lived. And we see perfectly, from the Memorabilia of Xenophon (who nevertheless strives to bring out the opposite side of his character), that he was so esteemed among his contemporaries. Plato, as well as Eukleides, took up this vein in the Sokratic character, and worked it with unrivalled power in many of his dialogues. The Platonic Sokrates is compared, and compares himself, to Antæus, who compelled every new-comer, willing or unwilling, to wrestle with him.[29]

[29] Plato, Theætet. p. 169 A. Theodorus. Οὐ ῥᾴδιον, ὦ Σώκρατες, σοὶ παρακαθήμενον μὴ διδόναι λόγον, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ ἄρτι παρελήρησα φάσκων σε ἐπιτρέψειν μοι μὴ ἀποδύεσθαι, καὶ οὐχὶ ἀναγκάσειν καθάπερ Λακεδαιμόνιοι· σὺ δέ μοι δοκεῖς πρὸς τὸν Σκίῤῥωνα μᾶλλον τείνειν. Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὲν γὰρ ἀπιέναι ἣ ἀποδύεσθαι κελεύουσι, σὺ δὲ κατ’ Ἀνταῖόν τί μοι μᾶλλον δοκεῖς τὸ δρᾶμα δρᾷν· τὸν γὰρ προσελθόντα οὐκ ἀνίης πρὶν ἀναγκάσῃς ἀποδύσας ἐν τοῖς λόγοις προσπαλαῖσαι.

Sokrates. Ἆριστα γε, ὦ Θεόδωρε, τὴν νόσον μου ἀπείκασας· ἰσχυρικώτερος μέντοι ἐγὼ ἐκείνων· μυρίοι γὰρ ἤδη μοι Ἡρακλέες τε καὶ Θησέες ἐντυχόντες καρτεροὶ πρὸς τὸ λέγειν μάλ’ εὖ ξυγκεκόφασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ἀφίσταμαι. οὕτω τις ἐρὼς δεινὸς ἐνδέδυκε τῆς περὶ ταῦτα γυμνασίας· μὴ οὖν μηδὲ σὺ φθονήσῃς προσανατριψάμενος σαυτόν τε ἅμα καὶ ἐμὲ ὀνῆσαι.

How could the eristic appetite be manifested in stronger language either by Eukleides, or Eubulides, or Diodôrus Kronus, or any of those Sophists upon whom the Platonic commentators heap so many harsh epithets?

Among the compositions ascribed to Protagoras by Diogenes Laertius (ix. 55), one is entitled Τέχνη Ἐριστικῶν. But if we look at the last chapter of the Treatise De Sophisticis Elenchis, we shall find Aristotle asserting explicitly that there existed no Τέχνη Ἐριστικῶν anterior to his own work the Topica.

Platonic Parmenides — its extreme negative character.

Of the six dialogues composed by Eukleides, we cannot speak positively, because they are not preserved. But they cannot have been more refutative, and less affirmative, than most of the Platonic dialogues; and we can hardly be wrong in asserting that they were very inferior both in energy and attraction. The Theætêtus and the Parmenides, two of the most negative among the Platonic dialogues, seem to connect themselves, by the personnel of the drama, with the Megaric philosophers: the former dialogue is ushered in by Eukleides, and is, as it were, dedicated to him: the latter dialogue exhibits, as its protagonistes, the veteran Parmenides himself, who forms the one factor of the Megaric philosophy, while Sokrates forms the other. Parmenides (in the Platonic dialogue so called) is made to enforce the negative method in general terms, as a philosophical duty co-ordinate with the affirmative; and to illustrate it by a most elaborate argumentation, directed partly against the Platonic Ideas (here advocated by the youthful Sokrates), partly against his own (the Parmenidean) dogma of Ens Unum. Parmenides adduces unanswerable objections against the dogma of Transcendental Forms or Ideas; yet says at the same time that there can be no philosophy unless you admit it. He reproves the youthful Sokrates for precipitancy in affirming the dogma, and contends that you are not justified in affirming any dogma until you have gone through a bilateral scrutiny of it — that is, first assuming the doctrine to be true, next assuming it to be false, and following out the deductions arising from the one assumption as well as from the other.[30] Parmenides then gives a string of successive deductions (at great length, occupying the last half of the dialogue) — four pairs of counter-demonstrations or Antinomies — in which contradictory conclusions appear each to be alike proved. He enunciates the final result as follows:—“Whether Unum exists, or does not exist, Unum itself and Cætera, both exist and do not exist, both appear and do not appear, all things and in all ways — both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other”.[31]

[30] Plato, Parmen. p. 136.

[31] Plato, Parmen. p. 166. ἓν εἴτ’ ἔστιν, εἴτε μὴ ἔστιν, αὐτό τε καὶ τἄλλα καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα πάντα πάντως ἐστί τε καὶ οὐκ ἔστι, καὶ φαίνεταί τε καὶ οὐ φαίνεται. — Ἀληθέστατα.

See below, [vol. iii. chap. xxvii. Parmenides].

If this memorable dialogue, with its concluding string of elaborate antinomies, had come down to us under the name of Eukleides, historians would probably have denounced it as a perverse exhibition of ingenuity, worthy of “that litigious person, who first infused into the Megarians the fury of disputation”.[32] But since it is of Platonic origin, we must recognise Plato not only as having divided with the Megaric philosophers the impulse of negative speculation which they had inherited from Sokrates, but as having carried that impulse to an extreme point of invention, combination, and dramatic handling, much beyond their powers. Undoubtedly, if we pass from the Parmenidês to other dialogues, we find Plato very different. He has various other intellectual impulses, an abundant flow of ideality and of constructive fancy, in many distinct channels. But negative philosophy is at least one of the indisputable and prominent items of the Platonic aggregate.

[32] This is the phrase of the satirical sillographer Timon, who spoke with scorn of all the philosophers except Pyrrhon:—

Ἀλλ’ οὔ μοι τούτων φλεδόνων μέλει, οὐδὲ μὲν ἄλλου Οὐδενός, οὐ Φαίδωνος, ὅτις γε μὲν — οὔδ’ ἐριδάντεω Εὐκλείδου, Μεγαρεῦσιν ὃς ἔμβαλε λύσσαν ἐρισμοῦ.

The Megarics shared the negative impulse with Sokrates and Plato.

While then we admit that the Megaric succession of philosophers exhibited negative subtlety and vehement love of contentious debate, we must recollect that these qualities were inherited from Sokrates and shared with Plato. The philosophy of Sokrates, who taught nothing and cross-examined every one, was essentially more negative and controversial, both in him and his successors, than any which had preceded it. In an age when dialectic colloquy was considered as appropriate for philosophical subjects, and when long continuous exposition was left to the rhetor — Eukleides established a succession or school[33] which was more distinguished for impugning dogmas of others than for defending dogmas of its own. Schleiermacher and others suppose that Plato in his dialogue Euthydêmus intends to expose the sophistical fallacies of the Megaric school:[34] and that in the dialogue Sophistês, he refutes the same philosophers (under the vague designation of “the friends of Forms”) in their speculations about Ens and Non-Ens. The first of these two opinions is probably true to some extent, though we cannot tell how far: the second of the two is supported by some able critics — yet it appears to me untenable.[35]

[33] If we may trust a sarcastic bon-mot ascribed to Diogenes the Cynic, the contemporary of the viri Sokratici and the follower of Antisthenes, the term σχολὴ was applied to the visitors of Eukleides rather than to those of Plato — καὶ τὴν μὲν Εὐκλείδου σχολὴν ἔλεγε χολήν, τὴν δὲ Πλάτωνος διατριβήν, κατατριβήν. Diog. L. vi. 24.

[34] Schleierm. Einleitung to Plat. Euthyd. p. 403 seq.

[35] Schleierm. Introduction to the Sophistês, pp. 134-135.

See Deycks, Megaricorum Doctrina, p. 41 seq. Zeller, Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 180 seq., with his instructive note. Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, vol. i. p. 37, and others cited by Zeller. — Ritter dissents from this view, and I concur in his dissent. To affirm that Eukleides admitted a plurality of Ideas or Forms, is to contradict the only one deposition, certain and unequivocal, which we have about his philosophy. His doctrine is that of the Transcendental Unum, Ens, Bonum; while the doctrine of the Transcendental Plura (Ideas or Forms) belongs to Plato and others. Both Deycks and Zeller (p. 185) recognise this as a difficulty. But to me it seems fatal to their hypothesis; which, after all, is only an hypothesis — first originated by Schleiermacher. If it be true that the Megarici are intended by Plato under the appellation οἱ τῶν εἰδῶν φίλοι, we must suppose that the school had been completely transformed before the time of Stilpon, who is presented as the great opponent of τὰ εἴδη.

Of Eukleides himself, though he is characterised as strongly controversial, no distinct points of controversy have been preserved: but his successor Eubulides is celebrated for various sophisms. He was the contemporary and rival of Aristotle: who, without however expressly naming him, probably intends to speak of him when alluding to the Megaric philosophers generally.[36] Another of the same school, Alexinus (rather later than Eubulides) is also said to have written against Aristotle.

[36] Aristokles, ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xv. 2. Eubulides is said not merely to have controverted the philosophical theories of Aristotle, but also to have attacked his personal character with bitterness and slander: a practice not less common in ancient controversy than in modern. About Alexinus, Diog. L. ii. 109.

Among those who took lessons in rhetoric and pronunciation from Eubulides, we read the name of the orator Demosthenes, who is said to have improved his pronunciation thereby. Diog. Laert. ii. p. 108. Plutarch, x. Orat. 21, p. 845 C.

Eubulides — his logical problems or puzzles — difficulty of solving them — many solutions attempted.

Six sophisms are ascribed to Eubulides. 1. — Ὁ ψευδόμενος — Mentiens. 2. — Ὁ διαλανθάνων, or ἐγκεκαλυμμένος — the person hidden under a veil. 3. — Ἠλέκτρα. 4. — Σωρείτης — Sorites. 5. — Κερατίνης — Cornutus. 6. — Φάλακρος — Calvus. Of these the second is substantially the same with the third; and the fourth the same with the sixth, only inverted.[37]

[37] Diog. L. ii. pp. 108-109; vii. 82. Lucian vit. Auct. 22.

1. Cicero, Academ. ii. pp. 30-96. “Si dicis te mentiri verumque dicis, mentiris. Dicis autem te mentiri, verumque dicis: mentiris igitur.” 2, 3. Ὁ ἐγκεκαλυμμένος. You know your father: you are placed before a person covered and concealed by a thick veil: you do not know him. But this person is your father. Therefore you both know your father and do not know him. 5. Κερατίνης. That which you have not lost, you have: but you have not lost horns; therefore you have horns. 4, 6. Σωρείτης — Φάλακρος. What number of grains make a heap — or are many? what number are few? Are three grains few, and four many? — or, where will you draw the line between Few and Many? The like question about the hairs on a man’s head — How many must he lose before he can be said to have only a few, or to be bald?

These sophisms are ascribed to Eubulides, and belonged probably to the Megaric school both before and after him. But it is plain both from the Euthydêmus of Plato, and from the Topica of Aristotle, that there were many others of similar character; frequently employed in the abundant dialectic colloquies which prevailed at Athens during the fourth and third centuries B.C. Plato and Aristotle handle such questions and their authors contemptuously, under the name of Eristic: but it was more easy to put a bad name upon them, as well as upon the Eleate Zeno, than to elucidate the logical difficulties which they brought to view. Neither Aristotle nor Plato provided a sufficient answer to them: as is proved by the fact, that several subsequent philosophers wrote treatises expressly in reference to them — even philosophers of reputation, like Theophrastus and Chrysippus.[38] How these two latter philosophers performed their task, we cannot say. But the fact that they attempted the task, exhibits a commendable anxiety to make their logical theory complete, and to fortify it against objections.

[38] Diog. L. v. p. 49; vii. pp. 192-198. Seneca, Epistol. p. 45. Plutarch (De Stoicor. Repugnantiis, p. 1087) has some curious extracts and remarks from Chrysippus; who (he says) spoke in the harshest terms against the Μεγαρικὰ ἐρωτήματα, as having puzzled and unsettled men’s convictions without ground — while he (Chrysippus) had himself proposed puzzles and difficulties still more formidable, in his treatise κατὰ Συνηθείας.

Real character of the Megaric sophisms, not calculated to deceive but to guard against deception.

It is in this point of view — in reference to logical theory — that the Megaric philosophers have not been fairly appreciated. They, or persons reasoning in their manner, formed one essential encouragement and condition to the formation of any tolerable logical theory. They administered, to minds capable and constructive, that painful sense of contradiction, and shock of perplexity, which Sokrates relied upon as the stimulus to mental parturition — and which Plato extols as a lever for raising the student to general conceptions.[39] Their sophisms were not intended to impose upon any one, but on the contrary, to guard against imposition.[40] Whoever states a fallacy clearly and nakedly, applying it to a particular case in which it conducts to a conclusion known upon other evidence not to be true — contributes to divest it of its misleading effect. The persons most liable to be deceived by the fallacy are those who are not forewarned:—in cases where the premisses are stated not nakedly, but in an artful form of words — and where the conclusion, though false, is not known beforehand to be false by the hearer. To use Mr. John Stuart Mill’s phrase,[41] the fallacy is a case of apparent evidence mistaken for real evidence: you expose it to be evidence only apparent and not real, by giving a type of the fallacy, in which the conclusion obtained is obviously false: and the more obviously false it is, the better suited for its tutelary purpose. Aristotle recognises, as indispensable in philosophical enquiry, the preliminary wrestling into which he conducts his reader, by means of a long string of unsolved difficulties or puzzles — (ἀπόριαι). He declares distinctly and forcibly, that whoever attempts to lay out a positive theory, without having before his mind a full list of the difficulties with which he is to grapple, is like one who searches without knowing what he is looking for; without being competent to decide whether what he hits upon as a solution be really a solution or not.[42] Now that enumeration of puzzles which Aristotle here postulates (and in part undertakes, in reference to Philosophia Prima) is exactly what the Megarics, and various other dialecticians (called by Plato and Aristotle Sophists) contributed to furnish for the use of those who theorised on Logic.

[39] Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 523 A, 524. τὰ μὲν ἐν ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν οὐ παρακαλοῦντα τὴν νόησιν εἰς ἐπίσκεψιν, ὡς ἱκανῶς ὑπὸ τῆς αἰσθήσεως κρινόμενα — τὰ δὲ παντάπασι διακελευόμενα ἐκείνην ἐπισκέψασθαι, ὡς τῆς αἰσθήσεως οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς ποιούσης … Τὰ μὲν οὐ παρακαλοῦντα, ὅσα μὴ ἐκβαίνει εἰς ἐναντίαν αἴσθησιν ἅμα· τὰ δ’ ἐκβαίνοντα, ὡς παρακαλοῦντα τίθημι, ἐπειδὰν ἡ αἴσθησις μηδὲν μᾶλλον τοῦτο ἢ τὸ ἐναντίον δηλοῖ. Compare p. 524 E: the whole passage is very interesting.

[40] The remarks of Ritter (Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 189. 2nd ed.) upon these Megaric philosophers are more just and discerning than those made by most of the historians of philosophy “Doch darf man wohl annehmen, dass sie solche Trugschlüsse nicht zur Täuschung, sondern zur Belehrung für unvorsichtige, oder zur Warnung vor der Seichtigkeit gewöhnlicher Vorstellungsweisen, gebrauchen wollten. So viel ist gewiss, dass die Megariker sich viel mit den Formen des Denken beschäftigten, vielleicht mehr zu Aufsuchung einzelner Regeln, als zur Begründung eines wissenschaftlichen Zusammenhangs unter ihnen; obwohl auch besondere Theile der Logik unter ihren Schriften erwähnt werden.”

This is much more reasonable than the language of Prantl, who denounces “the shamelessness of doctrinarism” (die Unverschämtheit des Doctrinarismus) belonging to these Megarici “the petulance and vanity which prompted them to seek celebrity by intentional offences against sound common sense,” &c. (Gesch. der Logik, pp. 39-40. — Sir Wm. Hamilton has some good remarks on these sophisms, in his Lectures on Logic, Lect. xxiii. p. 452 seq.)

[41] See the first chapter of his book v. on Fallacies, System of Logic, vol. ii.

[42] Aristotel. Metaphys. B. 1, p. 995, a. 33.

διὸ δεῖ τὰς δυσχερείας τεθεωρηκέναι πάσας πρότερον, τούτων δὲ χάριν καὶ διὰ τὸ τοὺς ζητοῦντας ἄνευ τοῦ διαπορῆσαι πρῶτον ὁμοίους εἶναι τοῖς ποῖ δεῖ βαδίζειν ἀγνοοῦσι, καὶ πρὸς τούτοις οὐδ’ εἰ ποτε τὸ ζητούμενον εὕρηκεν ἢ μὴ γιγνώσκειν· τὸ γὰρ τέλος τούτῳ μὲν οὐ δῆλον, τῷ δὲ προηπορηκότι δῆλον.

Aristotle devotes the whole of this Book to an enumeration of ἀπόριαι.

If the process of theorising be admissible, it must include negative as well as affirmative.

You may dislike philosophy: you may undervalue, or altogether proscribe, the process of theorising. This is the standing-point usual with the bulk of mankind, ancient as well as modern: who generally dislike all accurate reasoning, or analysis and discrimination of familiar abstract words, as mean and tiresome hair-splitting.[43] But if you admit the business of theorising to be legitimate, useful, and even honourable, you must reckon on free working of independent, individual, minds as the operative force — and on the necessity of dissentient, conflicting, manifestations of this common force, as essential conditions to any successful result. Upon no other conditions can you obtain any tolerable body of reasoned truth — or even reasoned quasi-truth.

[43] See my account of the Platonic dialogue Hippias Major, [vol. ii. chap. xiii]. Aristot. Metaphys. A. minor, p. 995, a. 9. τοὺς δὲ λυπεῖ τὸ ἀκριβὲς, ἢ διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι συνείρειν, ἢ διὰ τὴν μικρολογίαν· ἔχει γάρ τι τὸ ἀκριβὲς τοιοῦτον, ὥστε καθάπερ ἐπὶ τῶν συμβολαίων, καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων ἀνελεύθερον εἶναι τισι δοκεῖ. Cicero (Paradoxa, c. 2) talks of the “minutæ interrogatiunculæ” of the Stoics as tedious and tiresome.

Logical position of the Megaric philosophers erroneously described by historians of philosophy. Necessity of a complete collection of difficulties.

Now the historians of philosophy seldom take this view of philosophy as a whole — as a field to which the free antithesis of affirmative and negative is indispensable. They consider true philosophy as represented by Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, one or other of them: while the contemporaries of these eminent men are discredited under the name of Sophists, Eristics, or sham-philosophers, sowing tares among the legitimate crop of wheat — or as devils whom the miraculous virtue of Sokrates and Plato is employed in expelling from the Athenian mind. Even the companions of Sokrates, and the Megarics among them, whom we know only upon the imperfect testimony of opponents, have fallen under this unmerited sentence:[44] as if they were destructive agents breaking down an edifice of well-constituted philosophy — no such edifice in fact having ever existed in Greece, though there were several dissenting lecture rooms and conflicting veins of speculation promoted by eminent individuals.

[44] The same charge is put by Cicero into the mouth of Lucullus against the Academics: “Similiter vos (Academici) quum perturbare, ut illi” (the Gracchi and others) “rempublicam, sic vos philosophiam, benè jam constitutam velitis.… Tum exortus est, ut in optimâ republicâ Tib. Gracchus, qui otium perturbaret, sic Arcesilas, qui constitutam philosophiam everteret” (Acad. Prior, ii. 5, 14-15).

Even in the liberal and comprehensive history of the Greek philosophy by Zeller (vol. ii. p. 187, ed. 2nd), respecting Eukleides’ and the Megarians; — “Dagegen bot der Streit gegen die geltenden Meinungen dem Scharfsinn, der Rechthaberei, und dem wissenschaftlichen Ehrgeiz, ein unerschöpfliches Feld dar, welches denn auch die Megarischen Philosophen rüstig ausbeuteten.”

If by “die geltenden Meinungen” Zeller means the common sense of the day that is, the opinions and beliefs current among the ἰδιῶται, the working, enjoying, non-theorising public — it is very true that the Megaric philosophers contended against them: but Sokrates and Plato contended against them quite as much: we see this in the Platonic Apology, Gorgias, Republic, Timæus, Parmenidês, &c.

If, on the other hand, by “die geltenden Meinungen” Zeller means any philosophical or logical theories generally or universally admitted by thinking men as valid, the answer is that there were none such in the fourth and third centuries B.C. Various eminent speculative individuals were labouring to construct such theories, each in his own way, and each with a certain congregation of partisans; but established theory there was none. Nor can any theory (whether accepted or not) be firm or trustworthy, unless it be exposed to the continued thrusts of the negative weapon, searching out its vulnerable points. We know of the Megarics only what they furnished towards that negative testing; without which, however, — as we may learn from Plato and Aristotle themselves, — the true value of the affirmative defences can never be measured.

Whoever undertakes, bonâ fide, to frame a complete and defensible logical theory, will desire to have before him a copious collection of such difficulties, and will consider those who propound them as useful auxiliaries.[45] If he finds no one to propound them, he will have to imagine them for himself. “The philosophy of reasoning” (observes Mr. John Stuart Mill) “must comprise the philosophy of bad as well as of good reasoning.”[46] The one cannot be complete without the other. To enumerate the different varieties of apparent evidence which is not real evidence (called Fallacies), and of apparent contradictions which are not real contradictions — referred as far as may be to classes, each illustrated by a suitable type — is among the duties of a logician. He will find this duty much facilitated, if there happen to exist around him an active habit of dialectic debate: ingenious men who really study the modes of puzzling and confuting a well-armed adversary, as well as of defending themselves against the like. Such a habit did exist at Athens: and unless it had existed, the Aristotelian theories on logic would probably never have been framed. Contemporary and antecedent dialecticians, the Megarici among them, supplied the stock of particular examples enumerated and criticised by Aristotle in the Topica:[47] which treatise (especially the last book, De Sophisticis Elenchis) is intended both to explain the theory, and to give suggestions on the practice, of logical controversy. A man who takes lessons in fencing must learn not only how to thrust and parry, but also how to impose on his opponent by feints, and to meet the feints employed against himself: a general who learns the art of war must know how to take advantage of the enemy by effective cheating and treachery (to use the language of Xenophon), and how to avoid being cheated himself. The Aristotelian Topica, in like manner, teach the arts both of dialectic attack and of dialectic defence.[48]

[45] Marbach (Gesch. der Philos. s. 91), though he treats the Megarics as jesters (which I do not think they were), yet adds very justly: “Nevertheless these puzzles (propounded by the Megarics) have their serious and scientific side. We are forced to inquire, how it happens that the contradictions shown up in them are not merely possible but even necessary.”

Both Tiedemann and Winckelmann also remark that the debaters called Eristics contributed greatly to the formation of the theory and precepts of Logic, afterwards laid out by Aristotle. Winckelmann, Prolegg. ad Platon. Euthydem. pp. xxiv.-xxxi. Even Stallbaum, though full of harshness towards those Sophists whom he describes as belonging to the school of Protagoras, treats the Megaric philosophers with much greater respect. Prolegom. ad Platon. Euthydem. p. 9.

[46] System of Logic, Book v. 1, 1.

[47] Prantl (Gesch. der Logik, vol. i. pp. 43-50) ascribes to the Megarics all or nearly all the sophisms which Aristotle notices in the Treatise De Sophisticis Elenchis. This is more than can be proved, and more than I think probable. Several of them are taken from the Platonic Euthydêmus.

[48] See the remarkable passages in the discourses of Sokrates (Memorab. iii. 1, 6; iv. 2, 15), and in that of Kambyses to Cyrus, which repeats the same opinion — Cyropæd. i. 6, 27 — respecting the amount of deceit, treachery, the thievish and rapacious qualities required for conducting war against an enemy — (τὰ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους νόμιμα, i. 6, 34).

Aristotle treats of Dialectic, as he does of Rhetoric, as an art having its theory, and precepts founded upon that theory. I shall have occasion to observe in a future chapter ([xxi].), that logical Fallacies are not generated or invented by persons called Sophists, but are inherent liabilities to error in the human intellect; and that the habit of debate affords the only means of bringing them into clear daylight, and guarding against being deceived by them. Aristotle gives precepts both how to thrust, and how to parry with the best effect: if he had taught only how to parry, he would have left out one-half of the art.

One of the most learned and candid of the Aristotelian commentators — M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire — observes as follows (Logique d’Aristote, p. 435, Paris, 1838) respecting De Sophist. Elenchis:—

“Aristote va donc s’occuper de la marche qu’il faut donner aux discussions sophistiques: et ici il serait difficile quelquefois de décider, à la manière dont les choses sont présentées par lui, si ce sont des conseils qu’il donne aux Sophistes, ou à ceux qui veulent éviter leurs ruses. Tout ce qui précède, prouve, au reste, que c’est en ce dernier sens qu’il faut entendre la pensée du philosophe. Ceci est d’ailleurs la seconde portion du traîté.”

It appears to me that Aristotle intended to teach or to suggest both the two things which are here placed in Antithesis — though I do not agree with M. St. Hilaire’s way of putting the alternative — as if there were one class of persons, professional Sophists, who fenced with poisoned weapons, while every one except them refrained from such weapons. Aristotle intends to teach the art of Dialectic as a whole; he neither intends nor wishes that any learners shall make a bad use of his teaching; but if they do use it badly, the fault does not lie with him. See the observations in the beginning of the Rhetorica, i. p. 1355, a. 26, and the observations put by Plato into the mouth of Gorgias (Gorg. p. 456 E).

Even in the Analytica Priora (ii. 19, a. 34) (independent of the Topica) Aristotle says:—χρὴ δ’ ὅπερ φυλάττεσθαι παραγγέλλομεν ἀποκρινομένους, αὐτοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας πειρᾶσθται λανθάνειν. Investigations of the double or triple senses of words (he says) are useful — καὶ πρὸς τὸ μὴ παραλογισθῆναι, καὶ πρὸς τὸ παραλογίσασθαι, Topica, i. 18, p. 108, a. 26. See also other passages of the Topica where artifices are indicated for the purpose of concealing your own plan of proceeding and inducing your opponent to make answer in the sense which you wish, Topica, i. 2, p. 101, a. 25; vi. 10, p. 148, a. 37; viii. 1, p. 151, b. 23; viii. 1, p. 153, a. 6; viii. 2, p. 154, a. 5; viii. 11, p. 161, a. 24 seq. You must be provided with the means of meeting every sort and variety of objection — πρὸς γὰρ τὸν πάντως ἐνιστάμενον πάντως ἀντιτακτέον ἐστίν. Topic. v. 4, p. 134, a. 4.

I shall again have to touch on the Topica, in this point of view, as founded upon and illustrating the Megaric logical puzzles ([ch. viii.] of the present volume).

Sophisms propounded by Eubulides. 1. Mentiens. 2. The Veiled Man. 3. Sorites. 4. Cornutus.

The Sophisms ascribed to Eubulidês, looked at from the point of view of logical theory, deserve that attention which they seem to have received. The logician lays down as a rule that no affirmative proposition can be at the same time true and false. Now the first sophism (called Mentiens) exhibits the case of a proposition which is, or appears to be, at the same time true and false.[49] It is for the logician to explain how this proposition can be brought under his rule — or else to admit it as an exception. Again, the second sophism in the list (the Veiled or Hidden Man) is so contrived as to involve the respondent in a contradiction: he is made to say both that he knows his father, and that he does not know his father. Both the one answer and the other follow naturally from the questions and circumstances supposed. The contradiction points to the loose and equivocal way in which the word to know is used in common speech. Such equivocal meaning of words is not only one of the frequent sources of error and fallacy in reasoning, but also one of the least heeded by persons untrained in dialectics; who are apt to presume that the same word bears always the same meaning. To guard against this cause of error, and to determine (or impel others to determine) the accurate meaning or various distinct meanings of each word, is among the duties of the logician: and I will add that the verb to know stands high in the list of words requiring such determination — as the Platonic Theætêtus[50] alone would be sufficient to teach us. Farthermore, when we examine what is called the Soritês of Eubulides, we perceive that it brings to view an inherent indeterminateness of various terms: indeterminateness which cannot be avoided, but which must be pointed out in order that it may not mislead. You cannot say how many grains are much — or how many grains make a heap. When this want of precision, pervading many words in the language, was first brought to notice in a suitable special case, it would naturally appear a striking novelty. Lastly, the sophism called Κερατίνης or Cornutus, is one of great plausibility, which would probably impose upon most persons, if the question were asked for the first time without any forewarning. It serves to administer a lesson, nowise unprofitable or superfluous, that before you answer a question, you should fully weigh its import and its collateral bearings.

[49] Theophrastus wrote a treatise in three books on the solution of the puzzle called Ὁ ψευδόμενος (see the list of his lost works in Diogenes L. v. 49). We find also other treatises entitled Μεγαρικὸς ά (which Diogenes cites, vi. 22), — Ἀγωνιστικὸν τῆς περὶ τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς λόγους θεωρίας — Σοφισμάτων ά, β — besides several more titles relating to dialectics, and bearing upon the solution of syllogistic problems. Chrysippus also, in the ensuing century, wrote a treatise in three books, Περὶ τῆς τοῦ ψευδομένον λύσεως (Diog. vii. 107). Such facts show the importance of these problems in their bearing upon logical theory, as conceived by the ancient world. Epikurus also wrote against the Μεγαρικοί (Diog. x. 27).

The discussion of sophisms, or logical difficulties (λύσεις ἀπορίων), was a favourite occupation at the banquets of philosophers at Athens, on or about 100 B.C. Ἀντίπατρος δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος, συμπόσιόν ποτε συνάγων, συνέταξε τοῖς ἐρχομένοις ὡς περὶ σοφισμάτων ἑροῦσιν (Athenæus, v. 186 C). Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, p. 1096 C; De Sanitate Præcepta, c. 20, p. 133 B.

[50] Various portions of the Theætêtus illustrate this Megaric sophism (pp. 165-188). The situation assumed in the question of Eubulidês — having before your eyes a person veiled — might form a suitable addition to the various contingencies specified in Theætêt. pp. 192-193.

The manner in which the Platonic Sokrates proves (Theæt. 165) that you at the same time see, and do not see, an object before you, is quite as sophistical as the way in which Eubulidês proves that you both know, and do not know, your father.

Causes of error constant — the Megarics were sentinals against them.

The causes of error and fallacy are inherent in the complication of nature, the imperfection of language, the small range of facts which we know, the indefinite varieties of comparison possible among those facts, and the diverse or opposite predispositions, intellectual as well as emotional, of individual minds. They are not fabricated by those who first draw attention to them.[51] The Megarics, far from being themselves deceivers, served as sentinels against deceit. They planted conspicuous beacons upon some of the sunken rocks whereon unwary reasoners were likely to be wrecked. When the general type of a fallacy is illustrated by a particular case in which the conclusion is manifestly untrue, the like fallacy is rendered less operative for the future.

[51] Cicero, in his Academ. Prior, ii. 92-94, has very just remarks on the obscurities and difficulties in the reasoning process, which the Megarics and others brought to view — and were blamed for so doing, as unfair and captious reasoners — as if they had themselves created the difficulties — “(Dialectica) primo progressu festivé tradit elementa loquendi et ambiguorum intelligentiam concludendique rationem; tum paucis additis venit ad soritas, lubricum sané et periculosum locum, quod tu modo dicebas esse vitiosum interrogandi genus. Quid ergo? istius vitii num nostra culpa est? Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium, ut ullâ in re statuere possimus quatenus. Nec hoc in acervo tritici solum, unde nomen est, sed nullâ omnino in re minutatim interroganti — dives, pauper — clarus, obscurus, sit — multa, pauca, magna, parva, longa, brevia, lata, angusta, quanto aut addito aut dempto certum respondeamus, non habemus. At vitiosi sunt soritæ. Frangite igitur eos, si potestis, ne molesti sint.… Sic me (inquit) sustineo, neque diutius captiosé interroganti respondes. Si habes quod liqueat neque respondes, superbis: si non habes, ne tu quidem percipis.”

The principle of the Sorites (ἡ σωριτικὴ ἀπορία — Sextus adv. Gramm. s. 68), though differently applied, is involved in the argument of Zeno the Eleate, addressed to Protagoras — see Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. 250, p. 423, b. 42. Sch. Brand. Compare [chap. ii.] of this volume.

Controversy of the Megarics with Aristotle about Power. Arguments of Aristotle.

Of the positive doctrines of the Megarics we know little: but there is one upon which Aristotle enters into controversy with them, and upon which (as far as can be made out) I think they were in the right. In the question about Power, they held that the power to do a thing did not exist, except when the thing was actually done: that an architect, for example, had no power to build a house, except when he actually did build one. Aristotle controverts this opinion at some length; contending that there exists a sort of power or cause which is in itself irregular and indeterminate, sometimes turning to the affirmative, sometimes to the negative, to do or not to do;[52] that the architect has the power to build constantly, though he exerts it only on occasion: and that many absurdities would follow if we did not admit, That a given power or energy — and the exercise of that power — are things distinct and separable.[53]

[52] Aristot. De Interpret. p. 19, a. 6-20. ὅλως ἔστιν ἐν τοῖς μὴ ἀεὶ ἐνεργοῦσι τὸ δυνατὸν εἶναι καὶ μὴ ὁμοίως· ἐν οἷς ἀμφω ἐνδέχεται, καὶ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ εἶναι, ὥστε καὶ τὸ γενέσθαι καὶ τὸ μὴ γενέσθαι.

[53] Aristot. Metaph. Θ. 3, p. 1046, b. 29. Εἰσὶ δέ τινες, οἴ φασιν, οἷον οἱ Μεγαρικοί, ὅταν ἐνεργῇ, μόνον δύνασθαι, ὅταν δὲ μὴ ἐνεργῇ, μὴ δύνασθαι — οἷον τὸν μὴ οἰκοδομοῦντα οὐ δύνασθαι οἰκοδομεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸν οἰκοδομοῦντα ὅταν οἰκοδομῇ· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων.

Deycks (De Megaricorum Doctrinâ, pp. 70-71) considers this opinion of the Megarics to be derived from their general Eleatic theory of the Ens Unum et Immotum. But I see no logical connection between the two.

These arguments not valid against the Megarici.

Now these arguments of Aristotle are by no means valid against the Megarics, whose doctrine, though apparently paradoxical, will appear when explained to be no paradox at all, but perfectly true. When we say that the architect has power to build, we do not mean that he has power to do so under all supposable circumstances, but only under certain conditions: we wish to distinguish him from non-professional men, who under those same conditions have no power to build. The architect must be awake and sober: he must have the will or disposition to build:[54] he must be provided with tools and materials, and be secure against destroying enemies. These and other conditions being generally understood, it is unnecessary to enunciate them in common speech. But when we engage in dialectic analysis, the accurate discussion (ἀκριβολογία) indispensable to philosophy requires us to bring under distinct notice, that which the elliptical character of common speech implies without enunciating. Unless these favourable conditions be supposed, the architect is no more able to build than an ordinary non-professional man. Now the Megarics did not deny the distinctive character of the architect, as compared with the non-architect: but they defined more accurately in what it consisted, by restoring the omitted conditions. They went a step farther: they pointed out that whenever the architect finds himself in concert with these accompanying conditions (his own volition being one of the conditions) he goes to work — and the building is produced. As the house is not built, unless he wills to build, and has tools and materials, &c. — so conversely, whenever he has the will to build and has tools and materials, &c., the house is actually built. The effect is not produced, except when the full assemblage of antecedent conditions come together: but as soon as they do come together, the effect is assuredly produced. The accomplishments of the architect, though an essential item, are yet only one item among several, of the conditions necessary to building the house. He has no power to build, except when those other conditions are assumed along with him: in other words, he has no such power except when he actually does build.

[54] About this condition implied in the predicate δυνατός, see Plato, Hippias Minor, p. 366 D.

His arguments cited and criticised.

Aristotle urges against the Megarics various arguments, as follows:—1. Their doctrine implies that the architect is not an architect, and does not possess his professional skill,[55] except at the moment when he is actually building. — But the Megarics would have denied that their doctrine did imply this. The architect possesses his art at all times: but his art does not constitute a power of building except under certain accompanying conditions.

[55] Aristot. Metaph. Θ. 3, 1047, a. 3. ὅταν παύσηται (οἰκοδομῶν) οὐχ ἕξει τὴν τέχνην.

2. The Megaric doctrine is the same as that of Protagoras, implying that there exists no perceivable Object, and no Subject capable of perceiving, except at the moment when perception actually takes place.[56] On this we may observe, that the Megarics coincide with Protagoras thus far, that they bring into open daylight the relative and conditional, which the received phraseology tends to hide. But neither they nor he affirm what is here put upon them. When we speak of a perceivable Object, we mean that which may and will be perceived, if there be a proper Subject to perceive it: when we affirm a Subject capable of perception, we mean, one which will perceive, under those circumstances which we call the presence of an Object suitably placed. The Subject and Object are correlates: but it is convenient to have a language in which one of them alone is introduced unconditionally, while the conditional sign is applied to the correlate: though the matter affirmed involves a condition common to both.

[56] Aristot. Metaph. Θ. 3, 1047, a. 8-13.

3. According to the Megaric doctrine (Aristotle argues) every man when not actually seeing, is blind; every man when not actually speaking, is dumb. — Here the Megarics would have said that this is a misinterpretation of the terms dumb and blind; which denote a person who cannot speak or see, even though he wishes it. One who is now silent, though not dumb, may speak if he wills it: but his own volition is an essential condition.[57]

[57] The question between Aristotle and the Megarics has not passed out of debate with modern philosophers.

Dr. Thomas Brown observes, in his inquiry into Cause and Effect — “From the mere silence of any one, we cannot infer that he is dumb in consequence of organic imperfection. He may be silent only because he has no desire of speaking, not because speech would not have followed his desire: and it is not with the mere existence of any one, but with his desire of speaking, that we suppose utterance to be connected. A man who has no desire of speaking, has in truth, and in strictness of language, no power of speaking, when in that state of mind: since he has not a circumstance which, as immediately prior, is essential to speech. But since he has that power, as soon as the new circumstance of desire arises — and as the presence or absence of the desire cannot be perceived but in its effects — there is no inconvenience in the common language, which ascribes the power, as if it were possessed at all times, and in all circumstances of mind, though unquestionably, nothing more is meant than that the desire existing will be followed by utterance.” (Brown, Essay on the Relation of Cause and Effect, p. 200.)

This is the real sense of what Aristotle calls τὸ δὲ (λέγεται) δυνατόν, οἷον δυνατὸν εἶναι βαδίζειν ὅτι βαδισειεν ἂν, i.e. he will walk if he desires to do so (De Interpret. p. 23, a. 9-15).

4. According to the Megaric doctrine (says Aristotle) when you are now lying down, you have no power to rise: when you are standing up, you have no power to lie down: so that the present condition of affairs must continue for ever unchanged: nothing can come into existence which is not now in being. — Here again, the Megarics would have denied his inference. The man who is now standing up, has power to lie down, if he wills to do so — or he may be thrown down by a superior force: that is, he will lie down, if some new fact of a certain character shall supervene. The Megarics do not deny that he has power, if — so and so: they deny that he has power, without the if — that is, without the farther accompaniments essential to energy.

Potential as distinguished from the Actual — What it is.

On the whole, it seems to me that Aristotle’s refutation of the Megarics is unsuccessful. A given assemblage of conditions is requisite for the production of any act: while there are other circumstances, which, if present at the same time, would defeat its production. We often find it convenient to describe a state of things in which some of the antecedent conditions are present without the rest: in which therefore the act is not produced, yet would be produced, if the remaining circumstances were present, and if the opposing circumstances were absent.[58] The state of things thus described is the potential as distinguished from the actual: power, distinguished from act or energy: it represents an incomplete assemblage of the antecedent positive conditions — or perhaps a complete assemblage, but counteracted by some opposing circumstances. As soon as the assemblage becomes complete, and the opposing circumstances removed, the potential passes into the actual. The architect, when he is not building, possesses, not indeed the full or plenary power to build, but an important fraction of that power, which will become plenary when the other fractions supervene, but will then at the same time become operative, so as to produce the actual building.[59]

[58] Hobbes, in his Computation or Logic (chaps. ix. and x. Of Cause and Effect. Of Power and Act) expounds this subject with his usual perspicuity.

“A Cause simply, or an Entire Cause, is the aggregate of all the accidents, both of the agents, how many soever they be, and of the patient, put together; which, when they are all supposed to be present, it cannot be understood but that the effect is produced at the same instant: and if any one of them be wanting, it cannot be understood but that the effect is not produced” (ix. 3).

“Correspondent to Cause and Effect are Power and Act: nay, those and these are the same things, though for divers considerations they have divers names. For whensoever any agent has all those accidents which are necessarily requisite for the production of some effect in the patient, then we say that agent has power to produce that effect if it be applied to a patient. In like manner, whensoever any patient has all those accidents which it is requisite it should have for the production of some effect in it, we say it is in the power of that patient to produce that effect if it be applied to a fitting agent. Power, active and passive, are parts only of plenary and entire power: nor, except they be joined, can any effect proceed from them. And therefore these powers are but conditional: namely, the agent has power if it be applied to a patient, and the patient has power if it be applied to an agent. Otherwise neither of them have power, nor can the accidents which are in them severally be properly called powers: nor any action be said to be possible for the power of the agent alone or the patient alone.”

[59] Aristotle does in fact grant all that is here said, in the same book and in the page next subsequent to that which contains his arguments against the Megaric doctrine, Metaphys. Θ. 5, 1048, a. 1-24.

In this chapter Aristotle distinguishes powers belonging to things, from powers belonging to persons — powers irrational from powers rational — powers in which the agent acts without any will or choice, from those in which the will or choice of the agent is one item of the aggregate of conditions. He here expressly recognises that the power of the agent, separately considered, is only conditional; that is, conditional on the presence and suitable state of the patient, as well as upon the absence of counteracting circumstances. But he contends that such absence of counteracting circumstances is plainly implied, and need not be expressly mentioned in the definition.

ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ δυνατὸν τὶ δυνατὸν καὶ ποτὲ καὶ πῶς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα ἀνάγκη προσεῖναι ἐν τῷ διορισμῷ —

τὸ δυνατὸν κατὰ λόγον ἅπαν ἀνάγκη, ὅταν ὀρέγηται, οὖ τ’ ἔχει τὴν δύναμιν καὶ ὡς ἔχει, τοῦτο ποιεῖν· ἔχει δὲ παρόντος τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ὡδὶ ἔχοντος ποιεῖν· εἰ δὲ μή, ποιεῖν οὐ δυνήσεται. τὸ γὰρ μηθενὸς τῶν ἕξω κωλύοντος προσδιορίζεσθαι, οὐθὲν ἔτι δεῖ· τὴν γὰρ δύναμιν ἔχει ὥς ἔστι δύναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν, ἔστι δ’ οὐ πάντως, ἀλλ’ ἐχόντων πῶς, ἐν οἷς ἀφορισθήσεται καὶ τὰ ἕξω κωλύοντα· ἀφαιρεῖται γὰρ ταῦτα τῶν ἐν τῷ διορισμῷ προσόντων ἔνια. The commentary of Alexander Aphr. upon this chapter is well worth consulting (pp. 546-548 of the edition of his commentary by Bonitz, 1847). Moreover Aristotle affirms in this chapter, that when τὸ ποιητικὸν and τὸ παθητικὸν come together under suitable circumstances, the power will certainly pass into act.

Here then, it seems to me, Aristotle concedes the doctrine which the Megarics affirmed; or, if there be any difference between them, it is rather verbal than real. In fact, Aristotle’s reasoning in the third chapter (wherein he impugns the doctrine of the Megarics), and the definition of δυνατὸν which he gives in that chapter (1047, a. 25), are hardly to be reconciled with his reasoning in the fifth chapter. Bonitz (Notes on the Metaphys. pp. 393-395) complains of the mira levitas of Aristotle in his reasoning against the Megarics, and of his omitting to distinguish between Vermögen and Möglichkeit. I will not use so uncourteous a phrase; but I think his refutation of the Megarics is both unsatisfactory and contradicted by himself. I agree with the following remark of Bonitz:—“Nec mirum, quod Megarici, aliis illi quidem in rebus arguti, in hâc autem satis acuti, existentiam τῷ δυνάμει ὄντι tribuere recusarint,” &c.

Diodôrus Kronus — his doctrine about τὸ δυνατόν.

The doctrine which I have just been canvassing is expressly cited by Aristotle as a Megaric doctrine, and was therefore probably held by his contemporary Eubulidês. From the pains which Aristotle takes (in the ‘De Interpretatione’ and elsewhere) to explain and vindicate his own doctrine about the Potential and the Actual, we may see that it was a theme much debated among the dialecticians of the day. And we read of another Megaric, Diodorus[60] Kronus, perhaps contemporary (yet probably a little later than Aristotle), as advancing a position substantially the same as that of Eubulidês. That alone is possible (Diodorus affirmed) which either is happening now, or will happen at some future time. As in speaking about facts of an unrecorded past, we know well that a given fact either occurred or did not occur, yet without knowing which of the two is true — and therefore we affirm only that the fact may have occurred: so also about the future, either the assertion that a given fact will at some time occur, is positively true, or the assertion that it will never occur, is positively true: the assertion that it may or may not occur some time or other, represents only our ignorance, which of the two is true. That which will never at any time occur, is impossible.

[60] The dialectic ingenuity of Diodorus is powerfully attested by the verse of Ariston, applied to describe Arkesilaus (Sextus Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. p. 234):

Πρόσθε Πλάτων, ὄπιθεν Πύῤῥων, μέσσος Διόδωρος.

Sophism of Diodorus — Ὁ Κυριεύων.

The argument here recited must have been older than Diodorus, since Aristotle states and controverts it: but it seems to have been handled by him in a peculiar dialectic arrangement, which obtained the title of Ὁ Κυριεύων.[61] The Stoics (especially Chrysippus), in times somewhat later, impugned the opinion of Diodorus, though seemingly upon grounds not quite the same as Aristotle. This problem was one upon which speculative minds occupied themselves for several centuries. Aristotle and Chrysippus maintained that affirmations respecting the past were necessary (one necessarily true and the other necessarily false) — affirmations respecting the future, contingent (one must be true and the other false, but either might be true). Diodorus held that both varieties of affirmations were equally necessary — Kleanthes the Stoic thought that both were equally contingent.[62]

[61] Aristot. De Interpret. p. 18, a. pp. 27-38. Alexander ad Aristot. Analyt. Prior. 34, p. 163, b. 34, Schol. Brandis. See also Sir William Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, Lect. xxiii. p. 464.

[62] Arrian ad Epiktet. ii. p. 19. Upton, in his notes on this passage of Arrian (p. 151) has embodied a very valuable and elaborate commentary by Mr. James Harris (the great English Aristotelian scholar of the 18th century), explaining the nature of this controversy, and the argument called ὁ Κυριεύων.

Compare Cicero, De Fato, c. 7-9. Epistol. Fam. ix. 4.

It was thus that the Megaric dialecticians, with that fertility of mind which belonged to the Platonic and Aristotelian century, stirred up many real problems and difficulties connected with logical evidence, and supplied matters for discussion which not only occupied the speculative minds of the next four or five centuries, but have continued in debate down to the present day.

Question between Aristotle and Diodôrus depends upon whether universal regularity of sequence be admitted or denied.

The question about the Possible and Impossible, raised between Aristotle and Diodorus, depends upon the larger question, Whether there are universal laws of Nature or not? whether the sequences are, universally and throughout, composed of assemblages of conditions regularly antecedent, and assemblages of events regularly consequent; though from the number and complication of causes, partly co-operating and partly conflicting with each other, we with our limited intelligence are often unable to predict the course of events in each particular situation. Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all maintained that regular sequence of antecedent and consequent was not universal, but partial only:[63] that there were some agencies essentially regular, in which observation of the past afforded ground for predicting the future — other agencies (or the same agencies on different occasions) essentially irregular, in which the observation of the past afforded no such ground. Aristotle admitted a graduation of causes from perfect regularity to perfect irregularity:—1. The Celestial Spheres, with their included bodies or divine persons, which revolved and exercised a great and preponderant influence throughout the Kosmos, with perfect uniformity; having no power of contraries, i.e., having no power of doing anything else but what they actually did (having ἐνεργεία without δύναμις). 2. The four Elements, in which the natural agencies were to a great degree necessary and uniform, but also in a certain degree otherwise — either always or for the most part uniform (τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) — tending by inherent appetency towards uniformity, but not always attaining it. 3. Besides these there were two other varieties of Causes accidental, or perfectly irregular — Chance and Spontaneity: powers of contraries, or with equal chance of contrary manifestations — essentially capricious, undeterminable, unpredictable.[64] This Chance of Aristotle — with one of two contraries sure to turn up, though you could never tell beforehand which of the two — was a conception analogous to what logicians sometimes call an Indefinite Proposition, or to what some grammarians have reckoned as a special variety of genders called the doubtful gender. There were thus positive causes of regularity, and positive causes of irregularity, the co-operation or conflict of which gave the total manifestations of the actual universe. The principle of irregularity, or the Indeterminate, is sometimes described under the name of Matter,[65] as distinguishable from, yet co-operating with, the three determinate Causes — Formal, Efficient, Final. The Potential — the Indeterminate — the May or May not be — is characterised by Aristotle as one of the inherent principles operative in the Kosmos.

[63] Xenophon, Memor. i. 1; Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A. ἡ πλανωμένη αἰτία, &c.

[64] Ἡ τύχη — τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε — τὸ αὐτόματον are in the conception of Aristotle independent Ἀρχαί, attached to and blending with ἀνάγκη and τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ. See Physic. ii. 196, b. 11; Metaphys. E. 1026-1027.

Sometimes τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε is spoken of as an Ἀρχή, but not as an αἴτιον, or belonging to ὕλη as the Ἀρχή. 1027, b. 11. δῆλον ἄρα ὅτι μέχρι τινὸς βαδίζει ἀρχῆς, αὔτη δ’ οὔκετι εἰς ἄλλο· ἔσται οὖν ἡ τοῦ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχεν αὔτη, καὶ αἴτιοι τῆς γενέσεως αὐτῆς οὐθέν.

See, respecting the different notions of Cause held by ancient philosophers, my remarks on the Platonic Phædon infrà, vol. ii. [ch. xxv].

[65] Aristot. Metaph. E. 1027, a. 13; A. 1071, a. 10.

ὥστε ἡ ὕλη ἔσται αἰτία, ἡ ἐνδεχομέν ἠ παρὰ τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ το πολὺ ἄλλως τοῦ συμβεβηκότος.

Matter is represented as the principle of irregularity, of τὸ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχε — as the δύναμις τῶν ἐναντίων.

In the explanation given by Alexander of Aphrodisias of the Peripatetic doctrine respecting chance — free-will, the principle of irregularity — τύχη is no longer assigned to the material cause, but is treated as an αἰτία κατὰ συμβεβηκός, distinguished from αἰτία προηγούμενα or καθ’ αὑτά. The exposition given of the doctrine by Alexander is valuable and interesting. See his treatise De Fato, addressed to the Emperor Severus, in the edition of Orelli, Zurich. 1824 (a very useful volume, containing treatises of Ammonius, Plotinus, Bardesanes, &c., on the same subject); also several sections of his Quæstiones Naturales et Morales, ed. Spengel, Munich, 1842, pp. 22-61-65-123, &c. He gives, however, a different explanation of τὸ δυνατὸν and τὸ ἀδύνατον in pp. 62-63, which would not be at variance with the doctrine of Diodorus. We may remark that Alexander puts the antithesis of the two doctrines differently from Aristotle, — in this way. 1. Either all events happen καθ’ εἱμαρμένην. 2. Or all events do not happen καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, but some events are ἐφ’ ἡμῖν. See De Fato, p. 14 seq. This way of putting the question is directed more against the Stoics, who were the great advocates of εἱμαρμένη, than against the Megaric Diodorus. The treatises of Chrysippus and the other Stoics alter both the wording and the putting of the thesis. We know that Chrysippus impugned the doctrine of Diodorus, but I do not see how.

The Stoic antithesis of τα καθ’ εἱμαρμένην — τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν is different from the antithesis conceived by Aristotle and does not touch the question about the universality of regular sequence. Τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν describes those sequences in which human volition forms one among the appreciable conditions determining or modifying the result; τὰ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην includes all the other sequences wherein human volition has no appreciable influence. But the sequence τῶν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν is just as regular as the sequence τῶν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην: both the one and the other are often imperfectly predictable, because our knowledge of facts and power of comparison is so imperfect.

Theophrastus discussed τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, and explained it to mean the same as τὸ κατὰ φύσιν. φανερώτατα δὲ Θεόφραστος δείκνυσι ταὐτὸν ὃν τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τῷ κατὰ φύσιν (Alexander Aphrodisias ad Aristot. De Animâ, ii.).

Conclusion of Diodôrus — defended by Hobbes — Explanation given by Hobbes.

In what manner Diodorus stated and defended his opinion upon this point, we have no information. We know only that he placed affirmations respecting the future on the same footing as affirmations respecting the past: maintaining that our potential affirmation — May or May not be — respecting some future event, meant no more than it means respecting some past event, viz.: no inherent indeterminateness in the future sequence, but our ignorance of the determining conditions, and our inability to calculate their combined working.[66] In regard to scientific method generally, this problem is of the highest importance: for it is only so far as uniformity of sequence prevails, that facts become fit matter for scientific study.[67] Consistently with the doctrine of all-pervading uniformity of sequence, the definition of Hobbes gives the only complete account of the Impossible and Possible: i.e. an account such as would appear to an omniscient calculator, where May or May not merge in Will or Will not. According as each person falls short of or approaches this ideal standard — according to his knowledge and mental resource, inductive and deductive — will be his appreciation of what may be or may not be — as of what may have been or may not have been during the past. But such appreciation, being relative to each individual mind, is liable to vary indefinitely, and does not admit of being embodied in one general definition.

[66] The same doctrine as that of the Megaric Diodorus is declared by Hobbes in clear and explicit language (First Grounds of Philosophy, ii. 10, 4-5):—“That is an impossible act, for the production of which there is no power plenary. For seeing plenary power is that in which all things concur which are requisite for the production of an act, if the power shall never be plenary, there will always be wanting some of those things, without which the act cannot be produced. Wherefore that act shall never be produced: that is, that act is impossible. And every act, which is not impossible, is possible. Every act therefore which is possible, shall at some time or other be produced. For if it shall never be produced, then those things shall never concur which are requisite for the production of it; wherefore the act is impossible, by the definition; which is contrary to what was supposed.

“A necessary act is that, the production of which it is impossible to hinder: and therefore every act that shall be produced, shall necessarily be produced; for that it shall not be produced is impossible, because, as has already been demonstrated, every possible act shall at some time be produced. Nay, this proposition — What shall be shall be — is as necessary a proposition as this — A man is a man.

“But here, perhaps, some man will ask whether those future things which are commonly called contingents, are necessary. I say, then, that generally all contingents have their necessary causes, but are called contingents, in respect of other events on which they do not depend — as the rain which shall be to-morrow shall be necessary, that is, from necessary causes; but we think and say, it happens by chance, because we do not yet perceive the causes thereof, though they exist now. For men commonly call that casual or contingent, whereof they do not perceive the necessary cause: and in the same manner they use to speak of things past, when not knowing whether a thing be done or not, they say, It is possible it never was done.

“Wherefore all propositions concerning future things, contingent or not contingent, as this — It will rain to-morrow, or To-morrow the sun will rise — are either necessarily true or necessarily false: but we call them contingent, because we do not yet know whether they be true or false; whereas their verity depends not upon our knowledge, but upon the foregoing of their causes. But there are some, who, though they will confess this whole proposition — To-morrow it will either rain or not rain — to be true, yet they will not acknowledge the parts of it, as, To-morrow it will rain, or To-morrow it will not rain, to be either of them true by itself; because (they say) neither this nor that is true determinately. But what is this true determinately, but true upon our knowledge or evidently true? And therefore they say no more but that it is not yet known whether it be true or not; but they say it more obscurely, and darken the evidence of the truth with the same words by which they endeavour to hide their own ignorance.”

[67] The reader will find this problem admirably handled in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic, Book iii. ch. 21, and Book vi. chs. 2 and 8; also in the volume of Professor Bain on the Emotions and the Will, Chapter on Belief.

Besides the above doctrine respecting Possible and Impossible, there is also ascribed to Diodorus a doctrine respecting Hypothetical Propositions, which, as far as I comprehend it, appears to have been a correct one.[68] He is also said to have reasoned against the reality of motion, renewing the arguments of Zeno the Eleate.

[68] Sextus Emp. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. ii. pp. 110-115. ἀληθὲς συνημμένον. Adv. Mathemat. viii. 112. Philo maintained that an hypothetical proposition was true, if both the antecedent and consequent were true — “If it be day, I am conversing”. Diodorus denied that this proposition, as an Hypothetical proposition, was true: since the consequent might be false, though the antecedent were true. An Hypothetical proposition was true only when, assuming the antecedent to be true, the consequent must be true also.

Reasonings of Diodôrus — respecting Hypothetical Propositions — respecting Motion. His difficulties about the Now of time.

But if he reproduced the arguments of Zeno, he also employed another, peculiar to himself. He admitted the reality of past motion: but he denied the reality of present motion. You may affirm truly (he said) that a thing has been moved: but you cannot truly affirm that any thing is being moved. Since it was here before, and is there now, you may be sure that it has been moved: but actual present motion you cannot perceive or prove. Affirmation in the perfect tense may be true, when affirmation in the present tense neither is nor ever was true: thus it is true to say — Helen had three husbands (Menelaus, Paris, Deiphobus): but it was never true to say — Helen has three husbands, since they became her husbands in succession.[69] Diodorus supported this paradox by some ingenious arguments, and the opinion which he denied seems to have presented itself to him as involving the position of indivisible minima — atoms of body, points of space, instants of time. He admitted such minima of atoms, but not of space or time: and without such admission he could not make intelligible to himself the fact of present or actual motion. He could find no present Now or Minimum of Time; without which neither could any present motion be found. Plato in the Parmenidês[70] professes to have found this inexplicable moment of transition, but he describes it in terms not likely to satisfy a dialectical mind: and Aristotle denying that the Now is any portion or constituent part of time, considers it only as a boundary of the past and future.[71]

[69] Sextus Empir. adv. Mathemat. x. pp. 85-101.

[70] Plato, Parmenidês, p. 156 D-E. Πότ’ οὖν, μεταβάλλει; οὔτε γὰρ ἑστὸς ἂν οὔτε κενούμενον μετάβαλλοι, οὔτε ἐν χρόνῳ ὄν. (Here Plato adverts to the difficulties attending the supposition of actual μεταβολή, as Diodorus to those of actual κίνησις. Next we have Plato’s hypothesis for getting over the difficulties.) Ἆρ’ οὖν ἐστί τὸ ἄτοπον τοῦτο, ἐν ᾦ τότ’ ἂν εἴη ὅτε μεταβάλλει; Τὸ ποῖον δή; Τὸ ἐξαίφνης· ἡ ἐξαίφνης αὔτη φύσις ἄτοπος τις ἐγκάθηται μεταξὺ τῆς κινήσεως τε καὶ στάσεως, ἐν χρόνῳ οὐδενὶ οὖσα, καὶ εἰς ταύτην δὴ καὶ ἐκ ταύτης τό τε κινούμενον μεταβάλλει ἐπὶ τὸ ἐστάναι καὶ τὸ ἐστὸς ἐπὶ τὸ κινεῖσθαι.

Diodorus could not make out this φύσις ἄτοπος which Plato calls τὸ ἐξαίφνης.

[71] To illustrate this apparent paradox of Diodorus, affirming past motion, but denying present motion, we may compare what is said by Aristotle about the Now or Point of Present Time — that it is not a part, but a boundary between Past and Future.

Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 218, a. 4-10. τοῦ δὲ χρόνον τὰ μὲν γέγονε, τὰ δὲ μέλλει, ἐστι δ’ οὐδὲν, ὄντος μεριστοῦ· τὸ δὲ νῦν οὐ μέρος — τὸ δὲ νῦν πέρας ἔστι (a. 24) — p. 222, a. 10-20-223, a. 20. ὁ δὲ χρόνος καὶ ἡ κίνησις ἅμα κατά τε δύναμιν καὶ κατ’ ἐνεργείαν.

Which doctrine is thus rendered by Harris in his Hermes, ch. vii. pp. 101-103-105:—“Both Points and Nows being taken as Bounds, and not as Parts, it will follow that in the same manner as the same point may be the end of one line and the beginning of another — so the same Now may be the End of one time, and the beginning of another.… I say of these two times, that with respect to the Now, or Instant which they include, the first of them is necessarily Past time, as being previous to it: the other is necessarily Future, as being subsequent.… From the above speculations, there follow some conclusions, which may be called paradoxes, till they have been attentively considered. In the first place, there cannot (strictly speaking) be any such thing as Time Present. For if all Time be transient, as well as continuous, it cannot like a line be present altogether, but part will necessarily be gone and part be coming. If therefore any portion of its continuity were to be present at once, it would so far quit its transient nature, and be Time no longer. But if no portion of its continuity can be thus present, how can Time possibly be present, to which such continuity is essential?” — Compare Sir William Hamilton’s Discussions on Philosophy, p. 581.

Motion is always present, past, and future.

This opinion of Aristotle is in the main consonant with that of Diodorus; who, when he denied the reality of present motion, meant probably only to deny the reality of present motion apart from past and future motion. Herein also we find him agreeing with Hobbes, who denies the same in clearer language.[72] Sextus Empiricus declares Diodorus to have been inconsistent in admitting past motion while he denied present motion.[73] But this seems not more inconsistent than the doctrine of Aristotle respecting the Now of time. I know, when I compare a child or a young tree with what they respectively were a year ago, that they have grown: but whether they actually are growing, at every moment of the intervening time, is not ascertainable by sense, and is a matter of probable inference only.[74] Diodorus could not understand present motion, except in conjunction with past and future motion, as being the common limit of the two: but he could understand past motion, without reference to present or future. He could not state to himself a satisfactory theory respecting the beginning of motion: as we may see by his reasonings distinguishing the motion of a body all at once in its integrity, from the motion of a body considered as proceeding from the separate motion of its constituent atoms — the moving atoms preponderating over the atoms at rest, and determining them to motion,[75] until gradually the whole body came to move. The same argument re-appears in another example, when he argues — The wall does not fall while its component stones hold together, for then it is still standing: nor yet when they have come apart, for then it has fallen.[76]

[72] Hobbes, First Grounds of Philosophy, ii. 8, 11. “That is said to be at rest which, during any time, is in one place; and that to be moved, or to have been moved, which whether it be now at rest or moved, was formerly in another place from that which it is now in. From which definition it may be inferred, first, that whatsoever is moved has been moved: for if it still be in the same place in which it was formerly, it is at rest: but if it be in another place, it has been moved, by the definition of moved. Secondly, that what is moved, will yet be moved: for that which is moved, leaveth the place where it is, and consequently will be moved still. Thirdly, that whatsoever is moved, is not in one place during any time, how little soever that may be: for by the definition of rest, that which is in one place during any time, is at rest. … From what is above demonstrated — namely, that whatsoever is moved, has also been moved, and will be moved: this also may be collected, That there can be no conception of motion without conceiving past and future time.”

[73] Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. x. pp. 91-97-112-116.

[74] See this point touched by Plato in Philêbus, p. 43 B.

[75] Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. x. 113. κίνησις κατ’ εἰλικρίνειαν … κίνησις κατ’ ἐπικράτειαν. Compare Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griech. ii. p. 191, ed. 2nd.

[76] Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. x. pp. 346-348.

Stilpon of Megara — His great celebrity.

That Diodorus was a person seriously anxious to solve logical difficulties, as well as to propose them, would be incontestably proved if we could believe the story recounted of him — that he hanged himself because he could not solve a problem proposed by Stilpon in the presence of Ptolemy Soter.[77] But this story probably grew out of the fact, that Stilpon succeeded Diodorus at Megara, and eclipsed him in reputation. The celebrity of Stilpon, both at Megara and at Athens (between 320-300 B.C., but his exact date can hardly be settled), was equal, if not superior, to that of any contemporary philosopher. He was visited by listeners from all parts of Greece, and he drew away pupils from the most renowned teachers of the day; from Theophrastus as well as the others.[78] He was no less remarkable for fertility of invention than for neatness of expression. Two persons, who came for the purpose of refuting him, are said to have remained with him as admirers and scholars. All Greece seemed as it were looking towards him, and inclining towards the Megaric doctrines.[79] He was much esteemed both by Ptolemy Soter and by Demetrius Poliorkêtes, though he refused the presents and invitations of both: and there is reason to believe that his reputation in his own day must have equalled that of either Plato or Aristotle in theirs. He was formidable in disputation; but the nine dialogues which he composed and published are characterised by Diogenes as cold.[80]

[77] Diog. L. ii. 112.

[78] This is asserted by Diogenes upon the authority of Φίλιππος ὁ Μεγρικός, whom he cites κατὰ λέξιν. We do not know anything about Philippus.

Menedêmus, who spoke with contempt of the other philosophers, even of Plato and Xenokrates, admired Stilpon (Diog. L. ii. 134).

[79] The phrase of Diogenes is here singular, and must probably have been borrowed from a partisan — ὥστε μικροῦ δεῆσαι πᾶσαν τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἀφορῶσαν εἰς αὐτὸν μεγαρίσαι. Στιλπον εὑρεσιλογίᾳ καὶ σοφιστείᾳ προῆγε τοὺς ἄλλους — κομψότατος (Diog. L. ii. 113-115).

[80] Diog. L. ii. 119-120. ψυχροί.

Menedêmus and the Eretriacs.

Contemporary with Stilpon (or perhaps somewhat later) was Menedêmus of Eretria, whose philosophic parentage is traced to Phædon. The name of Phædon has been immortalised, not by his own works, but by the splendid dialogue of which Plato has made him the reciter. He is said (though I doubt the fact) to have been a native of Elis. He was of good parentage, a youthful companion of Sokrates in the last years of his life.[81] After the death of Sokrates, Phædon went to Elis, composed some dialogues, and established a succession or sect of philosophers — Pleistanus, Anchipylus, Moschus. Of this sect Menedêmus,[82] contemporary and hearer of Stilpon, became the most eminent representative, and from him it was denominated Eretriac instead of Eleian. The Eretriacs, as well as the Megarics, took up the negative arm of philosophy, and were eminent as puzzlers and controversialists.

[81] The story given by Diogenes L. (ii. 31 and 106; compare Aulus Gellius, ii. 18) about Phædon’s adventures antecedent to his friendship with Sokrates, is unintelligible to me. “Phædon was made captive along with his country (Elis), sold at Athens, and employed in a degrading capacity; until Sokrates induced Alkibiades or Kriton to pay his ransom.” Now, no such event as the capture of Elis, and the sale of its Eupatrids as slaves, happened at that time: the war between Sparta and Elis (described by Xenophon, Hell. iii. 2, 21 seq.) led to no such result, and was finished, moreover, after the death of Sokrates. Alkibiades had been long in exile. If, in the text of Diogenes, where we now read Φαίδων, Ἥλειος, τῶν εὐπατριδῶν — we were allowed to substitute Φαίδων, Μήλιος, τῶν εὐπατριδῶν — the narrative would be rendered consistent with known historical facts. The Athenians captured the island of Melos in 415 B.C., put to death the Melians of military age, and sold into slavery the younger males as well as the females (Thucyd. v. 116). If Phædon had been a Melian youth of good family, he would have been sold at Athens, and might have undergone the adventures narrated by Diogenes. We know that Alkibiades purchased a female Melian as slave (Pseudo-Andokides cont. Alkibiad.).

[82] Diog. L. ii. 105, 126 seq. There was a statue of Menedêmus in the ancient stadium of Eretria: Diogenes speaks as if it existed in his time, and as if he himself had seen it (ii. 132).

Open speech and licence of censure assumed by Menedêmus.

But though this was the common character of the two, in a logical point of view, yet in Stilpon, as well as Menedêmus, other elements became blended with the logical. These persons combined, in part at least, the free censorial speech of Antisthenes with the subtlety of Eukleides. What we hear of Menedêmus is chiefly his bitter, stinging sarcasms, and clever repartees. He did not, like the Cynic Diogenes, live in contented poverty, but occupied a prominent place (seemingly under the patronage of Antigonus and Demetrius) in the government of his native city Eretria. Nevertheless he is hardly less celebrated than Diogenes for open speaking of his mind, and carelessness of giving offence to others.[83]

[83] Diog. L. ii. 129-142.

---

ANTISTHENES.

Antisthenes took up Ethics principally, but with negative Logic intermingled.

Antisthenes, the originator of the Cynic succession of philosophers, was one of those who took up principally the ethical element of the Sokratic discoursing, which the Megarics left out or passed lightly over. He did not indeed altogether leave out the logical element: all his doctrines respecting it, as far as we hear of them, appear to have been on the negative side. But respecting ethics, he laid down affirmative propositions,[84] and delivered peremptory precepts. His aversion to pleasure, by which he chiefly meant sexual pleasure, was declared in the most emphatic language. He had therefore, in the negative logic, a point of community with Eukleides and the Megarics: so that the coalescence of the two successions, in Stilpon and Menedêmus, is a fact not difficult to explain.

[84] Clemens Alexandr. Stromat. ii. 20, p. 485, Potter. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀποδέχομαι τὸν Ἀφροδίτην λέγοντα κᾂν κατατοξεύσαιμι, εἰ λάβοιμι, &c.

Μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἠσθείην, Diog. L. vi. 3.

The life of Sokrates being passed in conversing with a great variety of persons and characters, his discourses were of course multifarious, and his ethical influence operated in different ways. His mode of life, too, exercised a certain influence of its own.

He copied the manner of life of Sokrates, in plainness and rigour.

Antisthenes, and his disciple Diogenes, were in many respects closer approximations to Sokrates than either Plato or any other of the Sokratic companions. The extraordinary colloquial and cross-examining force was indeed a peculiar gift, which Sokrates bequeathed to none of them: but Antisthenes took up the Sokratic purpose of inculcating practical ethics not merely by word of mouth, but also by manner of life. He was not inferior to his master in contentment under poverty, in strength of will and endurance,[85] in acquired insensibility both to pain and pleasure, in disregard of opinion around him, and in fearless exercise of a self-imposed censorial mission. He learnt from Sokrates indifference to conventional restraints and social superiority, together with the duty of reducing wants to a minimum, and stifling all such as were above the lowest term of necessity. To this last point, Sokrates gave a religious colour, proclaiming that the Gods had no wants, and that those who had least came nearest to the Gods.[86] By Antisthenes, these qualities were exhibited in eminent measure; and by his disciple Diogenes they were still farther exaggerated. Epiktetus, a warm admirer of both, considers them as following up the mission from Zeus which Sokrates (in the Platonic Apology) sets forth as his authority, to make men independent of the evils of life by purifying and disciplining the appreciation of good and evil in the mind of each individual.[87]

[85] Cicero, de Orator. iii. 17, 62; Diog. L. vi. 2. παρ’ οὖ (Sokrates) καὶ τὸ καρτερικὸν λαβὼν καὶ τὸ ἀπαθὲς ζηλώσας κατῆρξε πρῶτος τοῦ κυνισμοῦ: also vi. 15. The appellation of Cynics is said to have arisen from the practice of Antisthenes to frequent the gymnasium called Κυνόσαργες (D. L. vi. 13), though other causes are also assigned for the denomination (Winckelmann, Antisth. Frag. pp. 8-10).

[86] Sokrates had said, τὸ μηδενὸς δέεσθαι, θεῖον εἶναι· τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐλαχίστων, ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ θείου (Xenophon, Memor. i. 6, 10. Compare Apuleius, Apol. p. 25). Plato, Gorgias, p. 492 E. The same dictum is ascribed to Diogenes (Diog. L. vi. 105).

[87] Epiktetus, Dissert. iii. 1, 19-22, iii. 21-19, iii. 24-40-60-69. The whole of the twenty-second Dissertation, Περὶ Κυνισμοῦ, is remarkable. He couples Sokrates with Diogenes more closely than with any one else.

Doctrines of Antisthenes exclusively ethical and ascetic. He despised music, literature, and physics.

Antisthenes declared virtue to be the End for men to aim at — and to be sufficient per se for conferring happiness; but he also declared that virtue must be manifested in acts and character, not by words. Neither much discourse nor much learning was required for virtue; nothing else need be postulated except bodily strength like that of Sokrates.[88] He undervalued theory even in regard to Ethics: much more in regard to Nature (Physics) and to Logic: he also despised literary, geometrical, musical teaching, as distracting men’s attention from the regulation of their own appreciative sentiment, and the adaptation of their own conduct to it. He maintained strenuously (what several Platonic dialogues call in question) that virtue both could be taught and must be taught: when once learnt, it was permanent, and could not be eradicated. He prescribed the simplest mode of life, the reduction of wants to a minimum, with perfect indifference to enjoyment, wealth, or power. The reward was, exemption from fear, anxiety, disappointments, and wants: together with the pride of approximation to the Gods.[89] Though Antisthenes thus despised both literature and theory, yet he had obtained a rhetorical education, and had even heard the rhetor Gorgias. He composed a large number of dialogues and other treatises, of which only the titles (very multifarious) are preserved to us.[90] One dialogue, entitled Sathon, was a coarse attack on Plato: several treated of Homer and of other poets, whose verses he seems to have allegorised. Some of his dialogues are also declared by Athenæus to contain slanderous abuse of Alkibiades and other leading Athenians. On the other hand, the dialogues are much commended by competent judges; and Theopompus even affirmed that much in the Platonic dialogues had been borrowed from those of Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Bryson.[91]

[88] Diog. L. vi. 11.

[89] Diog. L. vi. 102-104.

[90] Diog. L. vi. 1, 15-18. The two remaining fragments — Αἴας, Ὄδυσσεὺς (Winckelmann, Antisth. Fragm. pp. 38-42) — cannot well be genuine, though Winckelmann seems to think them so.

[91] Athenæus, v. 220, xi. 508; Diog. L. iii. 24-35; Phrynichus ap. Photium, cod. 158; Epiktêtus, ii. 16-35. Antisthenes is placed in the same line with Kritias and Xenophon, as a Sokratic writer, by Dionysius of Halikarnassus, De Thucyd. Jud. p. 941. That there was standing reciprocal hostility between Antisthenes and Plato we can easily believe. Plato never names Antisthenes: and if the latter attacked Plato, it was under the name of Sathon. How far Plato in his dialogues intends to attack Antisthenes without naming him — is difficult to determine. Probably he does intend to designate Antisthenes as γέρων ὀψιμαθής, in Sophist. 251. Schleiermacher and other commentators think that he intends to attack Antisthenes in Philêbus, Theætêtus, Euthydêmus, &c. But this seems to me not certain. In Philêbus, p. 44, he can hardly include Antisthenes among the μάλα δεινοὶ περὶ φύσιν. Antisthenes neglected the study of φύσις.

Constant friendship of Antisthenes with Sokrates — Xenophontic Symposion.

Antisthenes was among the most constant friends and followers of Sokrates, both in his serious and in his playful colloquies.[92] The Symposion of Xenophon describes both of them, in their hours of joviality. The picture drawn by an author, himself a friend and companion, exhibits Antisthenes (so far as we can interpret caricature and jocular inversion) as poor, self-denying, austere, repulsive, and disputatious — yet bold and free-spoken, careless of giving offence, and forcible in colloquial repartee.[93]

[92] Xenophon, Memor. iii. 11, 17.

[93] Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11, 17; Symposion, ii. 10, iv. 2-3-44. Plutarch (Quæst. Symp. ii. 1, 6, p. 632) and Diogenes Laertius (vi. 1, 15) appear to understand the description of Xenophon as ascribing to Antisthenes a winning and conciliatory manner. To me it conveys the opposite impression. We must recollect that the pleasantry of the Xenophontic Symposion (not very successful as pleasantry) is founded on the assumption, by each person, of qualities and pretensions the direct reverse of that which he has in reality — and on his professing to be proud of that which is a notorious disadvantage. Thus Sokrates pretends to possess great personal beauty, and even puts himself in competition with the handsome youth Kritobulus; he also prides himself on the accomplishments of a good μαστροπός. Antisthenes, quite indigent, boasts of his wealth; the neglected Hermogenes boasts of being powerfully friended. The passage, iv. 57, 61, which talks of the winning manners of Antisthenes, and his power of imparting popular accomplishments, is to be understood in this ironical and inverted sense.

Diogenes, successor of Antisthenes — His Cynical perfection — striking effect which he produced.

In all these qualities, however, Antisthenes was surpassed by his pupil and successor Diogenes of Sinôpê; whose ostentatious austerity of life, eccentric and fearless character, indifference to what was considered as decency, great acuteness and still greater power of expression, freedom of speech towards all and against all — constituted him the perfect type of the Cynical sect. Being the son of a money-agent at Sinôpê, he was banished with his father for fraudulently counterfeiting the coin of the city. On coming to Athens as an exile, he was captivated with the character of Antisthenes, who was at first unwilling to admit him, and was only induced to do so by his invincible importunity. Diogenes welcomed his banishment, with all its poverty and destitution, as having been the means of bringing him to Antisthenes,[94] and to a life of philosophy. It was Antisthenes (he said) who emancipated him from slavery, and made him a freeman. He was clothed in one coarse garment with double fold: he adopted the wallet (afterwards the symbol of cynicism) for his provisions, and is said to have been without any roof or lodging — dwelling sometimes in a tub near the Metroon, sometimes in one of the public porticoes or temples: he is also said to have satisfied all his wants in the open day. He here indulged unreservedly in that unbounded freedom of speech, which he looked upon as the greatest blessing of life. No man ever turned that blessing to greater account: the string of repartees, sarcasms, and stinging reproofs, which are attributed to him by Diogenes Laertius, is very long, but forms only a small proportion of those which that author had found recounted.[95] Plato described Diogenes as Sokrates running mad:[96] and when Diogenes, meeting some Sicilian guests at his house and treading upon his best carpet, exclaimed “I am treading on Plato’s empty vanity and conceit,” Plato rejoined “Yes, with a different vanity of your own”. The impression produced by Diogenes in conversation with others, was very powerfully felt both by young and old. Phokion, as well as Stilpon, were among his hearers.[97] In crossing the sea to Ægina, Diogenes was captured by pirates, taken to Krete, and there put up to auction as a slave: the herald asked him what sort of work he was fit for: whereupon Diogenes replied — To command men. At his own instance, a rich Corinthian named Xeniades bought him and transported him to Corinth. Diogenes is said to have assumed towards Xeniades the air of a master: Xeniades placed him at the head of his household, and made him preceptor of his sons. In both capacities Diogenes discharged his duty well.[98] As a slave well treated by his master, and allowed to enjoy great freedom of speech, he lived in greater comfort than he had ever enjoyed as a freeman: and we are not surprised that he declined the offers of friends to purchase his liberation. He died at Corinth in very old age: it is said, at ninety years old, and on the very same day on which Alexander the Great died at Babylon (B.C. 323). He was buried at the gate of Corinth leading to the Isthmus: a monument being erected to his honour, with a column of Parian marble crowned by the statue of a dog.[99]

[94] Diog. L. vi. 2, 21-49; Plutarch Quæst. Sympos. ii. 1, 7; Epiktetus, iii. 22, 67, iv. 1, 114; Dion Chrysostom. Orat. viii.-ix.-x.

Plutarch quotes two lines from Diogenes respecting Antisthenes:—

Ὅς με ῥάκη τ’ ἤμπισχε κὰξηνάγκασε Πτωχὸν γενέσθαι καὶ δόμων ἀνάστατον —

The interpretation given of the passage by Plutarch is curious, but quite in the probable meaning of the author. However, it is not easy to reconcile with the fact of this extreme poverty another fact mentioned about Diogenes, that he asked fees from listeners, in one case as much as a mina (Diog. L. vi. 2, 67).

[95] Diog. L. v. 18, vi. 2, 69. ἐρωτηθεὶς τί κάλλιστον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἔφη — παῤῥησία. Among the numerous lost works of Theophrastus (enumerated by Diogen. Laert. v. 43) one is Τῶν Διογένους Συναγωγὴ, ά, a remarkable evidence of the impression made by the sayings and proceedings of Diogenes upon his contemporaries. Compare Dion Chrysostom. Or. ix. (vol. i. 288 seq. Reiske) for the description of the conduct of Diogenes at the Isthmian festival, and the effect produced by it on spectators.

These smart sayings, of which so many are ascribed to Diogenes, and which he is said to have practised beforehand, and to have made occasions for — ὅτι χρείαν εἴη μεμελετηκώς (Diog. L. v. 18, vi. 91, vii. 26) — were called by the later rhetors Χρεῖαι. See Hermogenes and Theon, apud Walz, Rhetor. Græc. i. pp. 19-201; Quintilian, i. 9, 4.

Such collections of Ana were ascribed to all the philosophers in greater or less number. Photius, in giving the list of books from which the Sophist Sopater collected extracts, indicates one as Τὰ Διογένους τοῦ Κυνικοῦ Ἀποφθέγματα (Codex 161).

[96] Diog. L. vi. 54: Σωκράτης μαινό μενος. vi. 26: Οἱ δὲ φασι τὸν Διογένην εἰπεῖν, Πατῶ τὸν Πλάτωνος τῦφον· τὸν δὲ φάναι, Ἑτέρῳ γε τύφῳ, Διόγενες. The term τῦφος (“vanity, self-conceit, assumption of knowing better than others, being puffed up by the praise of vulgar minds”) seems to have been mach interchanged among the ancient philosophers, each of them charging it upon his opponents; while the opponents of philosophy generally imputed it to all philosophers alike. Pyrrho the Sceptic took credit for being the only ἄτυφος: and he is complimented as such by his panegyrist Timon in the Silli. Aristokles affirmed that Pyrrho had just as much τῦφον as the rest. Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiv. 18.

[97] Diog. L. vi. 2, 75-76.

[98] Diog. L. vi. 2, 74. Xeniades was mentioned by Democritus: he is said to have been a sceptic (Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii. 48-53), at least he did not recognise any κριτήριον.

[99] Diog. L. vi. 2, 77-78.

Diogenes seems to have been known by his contemporaries under the title of ὁ Κύων. Aristotle cites from him a witty comparison under that designation, Rhetoric. iii. 10, 1410, a. 24. καὶ ὁ Κύων (ἐκάλει) τὰ καπηλεῖα, τὰ Ἀττικὰ φιδίτια.

Doctrines and smart sayings of Diogenes — Contempt of pleasure — training and labour required — indifference to literature and geometry.

In politics, ethics, and rules for human conduct, Diogenes adopted views of his own, and spoke them out freely. He was a freethinker (like Antisthenes) as to the popular religion: and he disapproved of marriage laws, considering that the intercourse of the sexes ought to be left to individual taste and preference.[100] Though he respected the city and conformed to its laws, yet he had no reverence for existing superstitions, or for the received usages as to person, sex, or family. He declared himself to be a citizen of the Kosmos and of Nature.[101] His sole exigency was, independence of life, and freedom of speech: having these, he was satisfied, fully sufficient to himself for happiness, and proud of his own superiority to human weakness. The main benefit which he derived from philosophy (he said) was, that he was prepared for any fortune that might befall him. To be ready to accept death easily, was the sure guarantee of a free and independent life.[102] He insisted emphatically upon the necessity of exercise or training (ἄσκησις) both as to the body and as to the mind. Without this, nothing could be done: by means of it everything might be achieved. But he required that the labours imposed should be directed to the acquisition of habits really useful; instead of being wasted, as they commonly were, upon objects frivolous and showy. The truly wise man ought to set before him as a model the laborious life of Hêraklês: and he would find, after proper practice and training, that the contempt of pleasures would afford him more enjoyment than the pleasures themselves.[103]

[100] Diog. L. vi. 2, 72. Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 13.

[101] Diog. L. vi. 2, 63-71. The like declaration is ascribed to Sokrates. Epiktêtus, i. 9, 1.

[102] Diog. L. vi. 2, 63, 72. μηδὲν ἐλευθερίας προκρίνων. Epiktêtus, iv. 1, 30. Οὕτω καὶ Διογένης λέγει, μίαν εἶναι μηχανὴν πρὸς ἐλευθερίαν — τὸ εὐκόλως ἀποθνήσκειν. Compare iv. 7-28, i. 24, 6.

[103] Diog. L. vi. 2, 70-71. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἡ καταφρόνησις ἡδυτάτη προμελετηθεῖσα, καὶ ὥσπερ οἱ συνεθισθέντες ἡδέως ζῇν, ἀηδῶς ἐπὶ τοὐναντίον μετίασιν, οὕτω οἱ τοὐναντίον ἀσκηθέντες ἥδιον αὐτῶν τῶν ἡδονῶν καταφρονοῦσι. See Lucian, Vitar. Auct. c. 9, about the hard life and the happiness of Diogenes. Compare s. 26 about the τῦφος of Diogenes treading down the different τῦφος of Plato, and Epiktêtus iii. 22, 57. Antisthenes, in his dialogue or discourse called Ἡρακλῆς, appears to have enforced the like appeal to that hero as an example to others. See Winckelmann, Fragm. Antisthen. pp. 15-18.

Admiration of Epiktêtus for Diogenes, especially for his consistency in acting out his own ethical creed.

Diogenes declared that education was sobriety to the young, consolation to the old, wealth to the poor, ornament to the rich. But he despised much of what was commonly imparted as education — music, geometry, astronomy, &c.: and he treated with equal scorn Plato and Eukleides.[104] He is said however to have conducted the education of the sons of his master Xeniades[105] without material departure from the received usage. He caused them to undergo moderate exercise (not with a view to athletic success) in the palæstra, and afterwards to practise riding, shooting with the bow, hurling the javelin, slinging and hunting: he cultivated their memories assiduously, by recitations from poets and prose authors, and even from his own compositions: he kept them on bread and water, without tunic or shoes, with clothing only such as was strictly necessary, with hair closely cut, habitually silent, and fixing their eyes on the ground when they walked abroad. These latter features approximate to the training at Sparta (as described by Xenophon) which Diogenes declared to contrast with Athens as the apartments of the men with those of the women. Diogenes is said to have composed several dialogues and even some tragedies.[106] But his most impressive display (like that of Sokrates) was by way of colloquy — prompt and incisive interchange of remarks. He was one of the few philosophers who copied Sokrates in living constantly before the public — in talking with every one indiscriminately and fearlessly, in putting home questions like a physician to his patient.[107] Epiktêtus, — speaking of Diogenes as equal, if not superior, to Sokrates — draws a distinction pertinent and accurate. “To Sokrates” (says he) “Zeus assigned the elenchtic or cross-examining function: to Diogenes, the magisterial and chastising function: to Zeno (the Stoic) the didactic and dogmatical.” While thus describing Diogenes justly enough, Epiktetus nevertheless insists upon his agreeable person and his extreme gentleness and good-nature:[108] qualities for which probably Diogenes neither took credit himself, nor received credit from his contemporaries. Diogenes seems to have really possessed — that which his teacher Antisthenes postulated as indispensable — the Sokratic physical strength and vigour. His ethical creed, obtained from Antisthenes, was adopted by many successors, and (in the main) by Zeno and the Stoics in the ensuing century. But the remarkable feature in Diogenes which attracts to him the admiration of Epiktêtus, is — that he set the example of acting out his creed, consistently and resolutely, in his manner of life:[109] an example followed by some of his immediate successors, but not by the Stoics, who confined themselves to writing and preaching. Contemporary both with Plato and Aristotle, Diogenes stands to both of them in much the same relation as Phokion to Demosthenes in politics and oratory: he exhibits strength of will, insensibility to applause as well as to reproach, and self-acting independence — in antithesis to their higher gifts and cultivation of intellect. He was undoubtedly, next to Sokrates, the most original and unparalleled manifestation of Hellenic philosophy.

[104] Diog. L. vi. 2, 68-73-24-27.

[105] Diog. L. vi. 2, 30-31.

[106] Diog. L. vi. 2, 80. Diogenes Laertius himself cites a fact from one of the dialogues — Pordalus (vi. 2, 20): and Epiktêtus alludes to the treatise on Ethics by Diogenes — ἐν τῇ Ἠθικῇ — ii. 20, 14. It appears however that the works ascribed to Diogenes were not admitted by all authors as genuine (Diog. L. c.).

[107] Dion Chrysost. Or. x.; De Servis, p. 295 E. Or. ix.; Isthmicus, p. 289 R. ὥσπερ ἰατροὶ ἀνακρίνουσι τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας, οὕτως Διογένης ἀνέκρινε τὸν ἄνθρωπον, &c.

[108] Epiktêtus, iii. 21, 19. ὡς Σωκράτει συνεβούλευε τὴν ἐλεγκτικὴν χώραν ἔχειν, ὡς Διογένει τὴν βασιλικὴν καὶ ἐπιπληκτικήν, ὡς Ζήνωνι τὴν διδασκαλικὴν καὶ δογματικήν.

About τὸ ἥμερον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον of Diogenes, see Epiktêtus, iii. 24, 64; who also tells us (iv. 11, 19), professing to follow the statements of contemporaries, that the bodies both of Sokrates and Diogenes were by nature so sweet and agreeable (ἐπίχαρι καὶ ἡδύ) as to dispense with the necessity of washing.

“Ego certé” (says Seneca, Epist. 108, 13-14, about the lectures of the eloquent Stoic Attalus) “cum Attalum audirem, in vitia, in errores, in mala vitæ perorantem, sæpé misertus sum generis humani, et illum sublimem altioremque humano fastigio credidi. Ipse regem se esse dicebat: sed plus quam regnare mihi videbatur, cui liceret censuram agere regnantium.” See also his treatises De Beneficiis, v. 4-6, and De Tranquillitate Animi (c. 8), where, after lofty encomium on Diogenes, he exclaims — “Si quis de felicitate Diogenis dubitat, potest idem dubitare et de Deorum immortalium statu, an parum beaté degant,” &c.

[109] Cicero, in his Oration in defence of Murena (30-61-62) compliments Cato (the accuser) as one of the few persons who adopted the Stoic tenets with a view of acting them out, and who did really act them out — “Hæc homo ingeniosissimus M. Cato, autoribus eruditissimis inductus, arripuit: neque disputandi causa, ut magna pars, sed ita vivendi”. Tacitus (Histor. iv. 5) pays the like compliment to Helvidius Priscus.

M. Gaston Boissier (Étude sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Varron, pp. 113-114, Paris, 1861) expresses an amount of surprise which I should not have expected, on the fact that persons adopted a philosophical creed for the purpose only of debating it and defending it, and not of acting it out. But he recognises the fact, in regard to Varro and his contemporaries, in terms not less applicable to the Athenian world: amidst such general practice, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Krates, &c., stood out as memorable exceptions. “Il ne faut pas non plus oublier de quelle manière, et dans quel esprit, les Romains lettrés étudiaient la philosophie Grecque. Ils venaient écouter les plus habiles maîtres, connaître les sectes les plus célèbres: mais ils les étudiaient plutôt en curieux, qu’ils ne s’y attachaient en adeptes. On ne les voit guères approfondir un système et s’y tenir, adopter un ensemble de croyances, et y conformer leur conduite. On étudiait le plus souvent la philosophie pour discuter. C’était seulement une matière à des conversations savantes, un exercice et un aliment pour les esprits curieux. Voilà pourquoi la secte Académique étoit alors mieux accueillie que les autres,” &c.

Admiration excited by the asceticism of the Cynics — Asceticism extreme in the East — Comparison of the Indian Gymnosophists with Diogenes.

Respecting Diogenes and the Cynic philosophers generally, we have to regard not merely their doctrines, but the effect produced by their severity of life. In this point Diogenes surpassed his master Antisthenes, whose life he criticised as not fully realising the lofty spirit of his doctrine. The spectacle of man not merely abstaining from enjoyment, but enduring with indifference hunger, thirst, heat, cold, poverty, privation, bodily torture, death, &c., exercises a powerful influence on the imagination of mankind. It calls forth strong feelings of reverence and admiration in the beholders: while in the sufferer himself also, self-reverence and self-admiration, the sense of power and exaltation above the measure of humanity, is largely developed. The extent to which self-inflicted hardships and pains have prevailed in various regions of the earth, the long-protracted and invincible resolution with which they have been endured, and the veneration which such practices have procured for the ascetics who submitted to them are among the most remarkable chapters in history.[110] The East, especially India, has always been, and still is, the country in which these voluntary endurances have reached their extreme pitch of severity; even surpassing those of the Christian monks in Egypt and Syria, during the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era.[111] When Alexander the Great first opened India to the observation of Greeks, one of the novelties which most surprised him and his followers was, the sight of the Gymnosophists or naked philosophers. These men were found lying on the ground, either totally uncovered or with nothing but a cloth round the loins; abstaining from all enjoyment, nourishing themselves upon a minimum of coarse vegetables or fruits, careless of the extreme heat of the plain, and the extreme cold of the mountain; and often superadding pain, fatigue, or prolonged and distressing uniformity of posture. They passed their time either in silent meditation or in discourse on religion and philosophy: they were venerated as well as consulted by every one, censuring even the most powerful persons in the land. Their fixed idea was to stand as examples to all, of endurance, insensibility, submission only to the indispensable necessities of nature, and freedom from all other fear or authority. They acted out the doctrine, which Plato so eloquently preaches under the name of Sokrates in the Phædon — That the whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death: that life is worthless, and death an escape from it into a better state.[112] It is an interesting fact to learn that when Onesikritus (one of Alexander’s officers, who had known and frequented the society of Diogenes in Greece), being despatched during the Macedonian march through India for the purpose of communicating with these Gymnosophists, saw their manner of life and conversed with them he immediately compared them with Diogenes, whom he had himself visited — as well as with Sokrates and Pythagoras, whom he knew by reputation. Onesikritus described to the Gymnosophists the manner of life of Diogenes: but Diogenes wore a threadbare mantle, and this appeared to them a mark of infirmity and imperfection. They remarked that Diogenes was right to a considerable extent; but wrong for obeying convention in preference to nature, and for being ashamed of going naked, as they did.[113]

[110] Dion Chrysostom, viii. p. 275, Reiske.

[111] See the striking description in Gibbon, Decl. and Fall, ch. xxxvii. pp. 253-265.

[112] Strabo, xv. 713 A (probably from Onesikritus, see Geier, Fragment. Alexandr. Magn. Histor. p. 379). Πλείστους δ’ αὐτοῖς εἶναι λόγους περὶ τοῦ θανάτου· νομίζειν γὰρ δὴ τὸν μὲν ἐνθάδε βίον ὡς ἂν ἀκμὴν κυομένων εἶναι, τὸν δὲ θάνατον γένεσιν εἰς τὸν ὄντως βίον καὶ τὸν εὐδαίμονα τοῖς φιλοσοφήσασι· διὸ τῇ ἀσκήσει πλείστῃ χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὸ ἐτοιμοθάνατον· ἀγαθὸν δὲ ἢ κακὸν μηδὲν εἶναι τῶν συμβαινόντων ἀνθρώποις, &c.

This is an application of the doctrines laid down by the Platonic Sokrates in the Phædon, p. 64 A: Κινδυνεύουσι γὰρ ὅσοι τυγχάνουσιν ὀρθῶς ἀπτόμενοι φιλοσοφίας λεληθέναι τοὺς ἄλλους, ὅτι οὐδὲν ἄλλο αὐτοὶ ἐπιτηδεύουσιν ἢ ἀποθνήσκειν τε καὶ τεθνάναι. Compare p. 67 D.; Cicero. Tusc. D. i. 30. Compare Epiktêtus, iv. i. 30 (cited in a former [note]) about Diogenes the Cynic. Also Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27; Valerius Maximus, iii. 3, 6; Diogen. L. Proœm. s. 6; Pliny, H. N. vii. 2.

Bohlen observes (Das Alte Indien, ch. ii. pp. 279-289), “It is a remarkable fact that Indian writings of the highest antiquity depict as already existing the same ascetic exercises as we see existing at present: they were even then known to the ancients, who were especially astonished at such fanaticism”.

[113] Strabo gives a condensed summary of this report, made by Onesikritus respecting his conversation with the Indian Gymnosophist Mandanis, or Dandamis (Strabo, xv. p. 716 B):— Ταῦτ’ εἰπόντα ἐξερέσθαι (Dandamis asked Onesikritus), εἰ καὶ ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι λόγοι τοιοῦτοι λέγοιντο. Εἰπόντος δ’ (Ὀνησικρίτου), ὅτι καὶ Πυθαγόρας τοιαῦτα λέγοι, κελεύοι τε ἐμψύχων ἀπέχεσθαι, καὶ Σωκράτης, καὶ Διογένης, οὗ καὶ αὐτὸς (Onesikritus) ἀκροάσαιτο, ἀποκρίνασθαι (Dandamis), ὅτι τἄλλα μὲν νομίζοι φρονίμως αὐτοῖς δοκεῖν, ἓν δ’ ἁμαρτάνειν — νόμον πρὸ τῆς φύσεως τιθεμένους· οὐ γὰρ ἂν αἰσχύνεσθαι γυμνούς, ὥσπερ αὐτόν, διάγειν, ἀπὸ λιτῶν ζῶντας· καὶ γὰρ οἰκίαν ἀρίστην εἶναι, ἤτις ἂν ἐπισκευῆς ἐλαχίστης δέηται.

About Onesikritus, Diog. Laert. vi. 75-84; Plutarch, Alexand. c. 65; Plutarch, De Fortuna Alexandri, p. 331.

The work of August Gladitsch (Einleitung in das Verständniss der Weltgeschichte, Posen, 1841) contains an instructive comparison between the Gymnosophists and the Cynics, as well as between the Pythagoreans and the Chinese philosophers — between the Eleatic sect and the Hindoo philosophers. The points of analogy, both in doctrine and practice, are very numerous and strikingly brought out, pp. 356-377. I cannot, however, agree in his conclusion, that the doctrines and practice of Antisthenes were borrowed, not from Sokrates with exaggeration, but from the Parmenidean theory, and the Vedanta theory of the Ens Unum, leading to negation and contempt of the phenomenal world.

The precepts and principles laid down by Sokrates were carried into fullest execution by the Cynics.

These observations of the Indian Gymnosophist are a reproduction and an application in practice[114] of the memorable declaration of principle enunciated by Sokrates — “That the Gods had no wants: and that the man who had fewest wants, approximated most nearly to the Gods”. This principle is first introduced into Grecian ethics by Sokrates: ascribed to him both by Xenophon and Plato, and seemingly approved by both. In his life, too, Sokrates carried the principle into effect, up to a certain point. Both admirers and opponents attest his poverty, hard fare, coarse clothing, endurance of cold and privation:[115] but he was a family man, with a wife and children to maintain, and he partook occasionally, of indulgences which made him fall short of his own ascetic principle. Plato and Xenophon — both of them well-born Athenians, in circumstances affluent, or at least easy, the latter being a knight, and even highly skilled in horses and horsemanship — contented themselves with preaching on the text, whenever they had to deal with an opponent more self-indulgent than themselves; but made no attempt to carry it into practice.[116] Zeno the Stoic laid down broad principles of self-denial and apathy: but in practice he was unable to conquer the sense of shame, as the Cynics did, and still more the Gymnosophists. Antisthenes, on the other hand, took to heart, both in word and act, the principle of Sokrates: yet even he, as we know from the Xenophontic Symposion, was not altogether constant in rigorous austerity. His successors Diogenes and Krates attained the maximum of perfection ever displayed by the Cynics of free Greece. They stood forth as examples of endurance, abnegation — insensibility to shame and fear — free-spoken censure of others. Even they however were not so recognised by the Indian Gymnosophists; who, having reduced their wants, their fears, and their sensibilities, yet lower, had thus come nearer to that which they called the perfection of Nature, and which Sokrates called the close approach to divinity.[117] When Alexander the Great (in the first year of his reign and prior to any of his Asiatic conquests) visited Diogenes at Corinth, found him lying in the sun, and asked if there was anything which he wanted — Diogenes made the memorable reply — “Only that you and your guards should stand out of my sunshine”. This reply doubtless manifests the self-satisfied independence of the philosopher. Yet it is far less impressive than the fearless reproof which the Indian Gymnosophists administered to Alexander, when they saw him in the Punjab at the head of his victorious army, after exploits, dangers, and fatigues almost superhuman, as conqueror of Persia and acknowledged son of Zeus.[118]

[114] Onesikritus observes, respecting the Indian Gymnosophists, that “they were more striking in act than in discourse” (ἐν ἔργοις γὰρ αὐτοὺς κρείττους ἢ λόγοις εἶναι, Strabo, xv. 713 B); and this is true about the Cynic succession of philosophers, in Greece as well as in Rome. Diogenes Laertius (compare his prooem, s. 19, 20, and vi. 103) ranks the Cynic philosophy as a distinct αἵρεσις: but he tells us that other writers (especially Hippobotus) would not reckon it as an αἵρεσις, but only as an ἔνστασις βίου — practice without theory.

[115] Xenophon, Memor. i. 6, 2-5; Plato, Sympos. 219, 220.

The language of contemporary comic writers, Ameipsias, Eupolis, Aristophanes, &c., about Sokrates — is very much the same as that of Menander a century afterwards about Kratês. Sokrates is depicted as a Cynic in mode of life (Diogen. L. ii. 28; Aristophan. Nubes, 104-362-415).

[116] Zeno, though he received instructions from Kratês, was ἄλλως μὲν εὔτονος πρὸς τὴν φιλοσοφίαν, αἰδήμων δὲ ὡς πρὸς τὴν κυνικὴν ἀναισχυντίαν (Diog. L. vii. 3).

“Disputare cum Socrate licet, dubitare cum Carneade, cum Epicure quiescere, hominis naturam cum Stoicis vincere, cum Cynicis excedere,” &c. This is the distinction which Seneca draws between Stoic and Cynic (De Brevitat. Vitæ, 14, 5). His admiration for the “seminudus” Cynic Demetrius, his contemporary and companion, was extreme (Epist. 62, 2, and Epist. 20, 18).

[117] Xenoph. Memor. i. 6, 10 (the passage is cited in a previous note). The Emperor Julian (Orat. vi. p. 192 Spanh.) says about the Cynics — ἀπάθειαν γὰρ ποιοῦνται τὸ τέλος, τοῦτο δὲ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ θεὸν γενέσθαι. Dion Chrysostom (Or. vi. p. 208) says also about Diogenes the Cynic — καὶ μάλιστα ἐμιμεῖτο τῶν θεῶν τὸν βίον.

[118] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 32, 92, and the Anabasis of Arrian, vii. 1-2-3, where both the reply of Diogenes and that of the Indian Gymnosophists are reported. Dion Chrysostom (Orat. iv. p. 145 seq. Reiske) gives a prolix dialogue between Alexander and Diogenes. His picture of the effect produced by Diogenes upon the different spectators at the Isthmian festival, is striking and probable.

Kalanus, one of the Indian Gymnosophists, was persuaded, by the instances of Alexander, to abandon his Indian mode of life and to come away with the Macedonian army — very much to the disgust of his brethren, who scornfully denounced him as infirm and even as the slave of appetite (ἀκόλαστον, Strabo, xv. 718). He was treated with the greatest consideration and respect by Alexander and his officers; yet when the army came into Persis, he became sick of body and tired of life. He obtained the reluctant consent of Alexander to allow him to die. A funeral pile was erected, upon which he voluntarily burnt himself in presence of the whole army; who witnessed the scene with every demonstration of military honour. See the remarkable description in Arrian, Anab. vii. 3. Cicero calls him “Indus indoctus ac barbarus” (Tusc. Disp. ii. 22, 52); but the impression which he made on Alexander himself, Onesikritus, Lysimachus, and generally upon all who saw him, was that of respectful admiration (Strabo, xv. 715; Arrian, l. c.). One of these Indian sages, who had come into Syria along with the Indian envoys sent by an Indian king to the Roman Emperor Augustus, burnt himself publicly at Athens, with an exulting laugh when he leaped upon the funeral pile (Strabo, xv. 720 A) — κατὰ τὰ πάτρια τῶν Ἰνδῶν ἔθη.

The like act of self-immolation was performed by the Grecian Cynic Peregrinus Proteus, at the Olympic festival in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, 165 A.D. (See Clinton, Fasti Romani.) Lucian, who was present and saw the proceeding, has left an animated description of it, but ridicules it as a piece of silly vanity. Theagenes, the admiring disciple of Peregrinus, and other Cynics, who were present in considerable numbers — and also Lucian himself compare this act to that of the Indian Gymnosophists — οὗτος δὲ τίνος αἰτίας ἕνεκεν ἐμβάλλει φέρων ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸ πῦρ; νὴ Δί’, ὅπως τὴν καρτερίαν ἐπιδείξηται, καθάπερ οἱ Βραχμᾶνες (Lucian, De Morte Peregrini, 25-39, &c.).

Antithesis between Nature — and Law or Convention — insisted on by the Indian Gymnosophists.

Another point, in the reply made by the Indian Gymnosophist to Onesikritus, deserves notice: I mean the antithesis between law (or convention) and nature (νόμος — φύσις) — the supremacy which he asserts for Nature over law — and the way in which he understands Nature and her supposed ordinances. This antithesis was often put forward and argued in the ancient Ethics: and it is commonly said, without any sufficient proof, that the Sophists (speaking of them collectively) recognised only the authority of law — while Sokrates and Plato had the merit of vindicating against them the superior authority of Nature. The Indian Gymnosophist agrees with the Athenian speaker in the Platonic treatise De Legibus, and with the Platonic Kallikles in the Gorgias, thus far — that he upholds the paramount authority of Nature. But of these three interpreters, each hears and reports the oracles of Nature differently from the other two: and there are many other dissenting interpreters besides.[119] Which of them are we to follow? And if, adopting any one of them, we reject the others, upon what grounds are we to justify our preference? When the Gymnosophist points out, that nakedness is the natural condition of man; when he farther infers, that because natural it is therefore right and that the wearing of clothes, being a departure from nature, is also a departure from right — how are we to prove to him that his interpretation of nature is the wrong one? These questions have received no answer in any of the Platonic dialogues: though we have seen that Plato is very bitter against those who dwell upon the antithesis between Law and Nature, and who undertake to decide between the two.

[119] Though Seneca (De Brevitate Vit. 14) talks of the Stoics as “conquering Nature, and the Cynics as exceeding Nature,” yet the Stoic Epiktêtus considers his morality as the only scheme conformable to Nature (Epiktêt. Diss. iv. 1, 121-128); while the Epikurean Lucretius claims the same conformity for the precepts of Epikurus.

The Greek Cynics — an order of ascetic or mendicant friars.

Reverting to the Cynics, we must declare them to be in one respect the most peculiar outgrowth of Grecian philosophy: because they are not merely a doctrinal sect, with phrases, theories, reasonings, and teachings, of their own — but still more prominently a body of practical ascetics, a mendicant order[120] in philosophy, working up the bystanders by exhibiting themselves as models of endurance and apathy. These peculiarities seem to have originated partly with Pythagoras, partly with Sokrates — for there is no known prior example of it in Grecian history, except that of the anomalous priests of Zeus at Dodona, called Selli, who lay on the ground with unwashed feet. The discipline of Lykurgus at Sparta included severe endurance; but then it was intended to form, and actually did form, good soldiers. The Cynics had no view to military action. They exaggerated the peculiarities of Sokrates, and we should call their mode of life the Sokratic life, if we followed the example of those who gave names to the Pythagorean or Orphic life, as a set of observances derived from the type of Pythagoras or Orpheus.[121]

[120] Respecting the historical connexion between the Grecian Cynics and the ascetic Christian monks, see Zeller, Philos. der Griech. ii. p. 241, ed. 2nd.

Homer, Iliad xvi. 233-5:—

Ζεῦ ἄνα, Δωδωναῖε, Πελασγικέ, τηλόθι ναίων, Δωδώνης μεδέων δυσχειμέρου, ἀμφὶ δὲ Σέλλοι Σοὶ ναίουσ’ ὑποφῆται ἀνιπτόποδες, χαμαιεῦναι.

There is no analogy in Grecian history to illustrate this very curious passage: the Excursus of Heyne furnishes no information (see his edition of the Iliad, vol. vii. p. 289) except the general remark:—“Selli — vitæ genus et institutum affectarunt abhorrens à communi usu, vitæ monachorum mendicantium haud absimile, cum sine vitæ cultu viverent, nec corpus abluerent, et humi cubarent. Ita inter barbaros non modo, sed inter ipsas feras gentes intellectum est, eos qui auctoritatem apud multitudinem consequi vellent, externâ specie, vitæ cultu austeriore, abstinentiâ et continentiâ, oculos hominum in se convertere et mirationem facere debere.”

[121] Plato, Republic, x. 600 B; Legib. vi. 782 C; Eurip. Hippol. 955; Fragm. Κρῆτες.

See also the citations in Athenæus (iv. pp. 161-163) from the writers of the Attic middle comedy, respecting the asceticism of the Pythagoreans, analogous to that of the Cynics.

Logical views of Antisthenes and Diogenes — they opposed the Platonic Ideas.

Though Antisthenes and Diogenes laid chief stress upon ethical topics, yet they also delivered opinions on logic and evidence.[122] Antisthenes especially was engaged in controversy, and seemingly in acrimonious controversy, with Plato; whose opinions he impugned in an express dialogue entitled Sathon. Plato on his side attacked the opinions of Antisthenes, and spoke contemptuously of his intelligence, yet without formally naming him. At least there are some criticisms in the Platonic dialogues (especially in the Sophistês, p. 251) which the commentators pronounce, on strong grounds, to be aimed at Antisthenes: who is also unfavourably criticised by Aristotle. We know but little of the points which Antisthenes took up against Plato and still less of the reasons which he urged in support of them. Both he and Diogenes, however, are said to have declared express war against the Platonic theory of self-existent Ideas. The functions of general Concepts and general propositions, together with the importance of defining general terms, had been forcibly insisted on in the colloquies of Sokrates; and his disciple Plato built upon this foundation the memorable hypothesis of an aggregate of eternal, substantive realities, called Ideas or Forms, existing separate from the objects of sense, yet affording a certain participation in themselves to those objects: not discernible by sense, but only by the Reason or understanding. These bold creations of the Platonic fancy were repudiated by Antisthenes and Diogenes: who are both said to have declared “We see Man, and we see Horse; but Manness and Horseness we do not see”. Whereunto Plato replied “You possess that eye by which Horse is seen: but you have not yet acquired that eye by which Horseness is seen”.[123]

[122] Among the titles of the works of Antisthenes, preserved by Diogenes Laertius (vi. 15), several relate to dialectic or logic. Ἀλήθεια. Περὶ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι, ἀντιλογικός. Σάθων, περὶ τοῦ ἀντιλέγειν, α, β, γ. Περὶ Διαλέκτον. Περὶ Παιδείας ἢ ὀνομάτων, α, β, γ, δ, ε. Περὶ ὀνομάτων χρησεως, ἢ ἐριστικός. Περὶ ἐρωτήσεως καὶ ἀποκρίσεως, &c., &c.

Diogenes Laertius refers to ten τόμοι of these treatises.

[123] Simplikius, ad Aristot. Categ. p. 66, b. 47, 67, b. 18, 68, b. 25, Schol. Brand.; Tzetzes, Chiliad. vii. 606.

τῶν δὲ παλαιῶν οἱ μὲν ἀνῄρουν τὰς ποιότητας τελέως, τὸ ποιὸν συγχωροῦντος εἶναι· ὥσπερ Ἀντισθένης, ὅς ποτε Πλάτωνι διαμφισβητῶν — ὧ Πλάτων, ἔφη, ἵππον μὲν ὁρῶ, ἱππότητα δ’ οὐχ ὁρῶ· καὶ ὃς εἶπεν, ἔχεις μὲν ᾧ ἵππος ὁρᾶται τόδε τὸ ὄμμα, ᾧ δὲ ἱππότης θεωρεῖται, οὐδέπω κέκτησαι. καὶ ἄλλοι δέ τινες ἦσαν ταύτης τῆς δόξης. οἱ δὲ τινὰς μεν ἀνῄρουν ποιότητας, τινὰς δὲ κατελίμπανον.

Ἀνθρωπότης occurs p. 58, a. 31. Compare p. 20, a. 2.

The same conversation is reported as having taken place between Diogenes and Plato, except that instead of ἱππότης and ἀνθρωπότης, we have τραπεζότης and κυαθότης (Diog. L. vi. 53).

We have ζωότης — Ἀθηναιότης — in Galen’s argument against the Stoics (vol. xix. p. 481, Kühn).

First protest of Nominalism against Realism.

This debate between Antisthenes and Plato marks an interesting point in the history of philosophy. It is the first protest of Nominalism against the doctrine of an extreme Realism. The Ideas or Forms of Plato (according to many of his phrases, for he is not always consistent with himself) are not only real existences distinct from particulars, but absorb to themselves all the reality of particulars. The real universe in the Platonic theory was composed of Ideas or Forms such as Manness or Horseness[124] (called by Plato the Αὐτὸ-Ἄνθρωπος and Αὐτὸ-Ἵππος), of which particular men and horses were only disfigured, transitory, and ever-varying photographs. Antisthenes denied what Plato affirmed, and as Plato affirmed it. Aristotle denied it also; maintaining that genera, species, and attributes, though distinguishable as separate predicates of, or inherencies in, individuals — yet had no existence apart from individuals. Aristotle was no less wanting than Antisthenes, in the intellectual eye required for discerning the Platonic Ideas. Antisthenes is said to have declared these Ideas to be mere thoughts or conceptions (ψιλὰς ἐννοίας): i.e., merely subjective or within the mind, without any object corresponding to them. This is one of the various modes of presenting the theory of Ideas, resorted to even in the Platonic Parmenidês, not by one who opposes that theory, but by one seeking to defend it — viz., by Sokrates, when he is hard pressed by the objections of the Eleate against the more extreme and literal version of the theory.[125] It is remarkable, that the objections ascribed to Parmenides against that version which exhibits the Ideas as mere Concepts of and in the mind, are decidedly less forcible than those which he urges against the other versions.

[124] We know from Plato himself (Theætêtus, p. 182 A) that even the word ποιότης, if not actually first introduced by himself, was at any rate so recent as to be still repulsive, and to require an Apology. If ποιότης was strange, ἀνθρωπότης and ἱππότης would be still more strange. Antisthenes probably invented them, to present the doctrine which he impugned in a dress of greater seeming absurdity.

[125] Plato, Parmenidês, p. 132 B. See, afterwards, [chapter xxvii.], Parmenides.

Doctrines of Antisthenes about predication — he admits no other predication but identical.

There is another singular doctrine, which Aristotle ascribes to Antisthenes, and which Plato notices and confutes; alluding to its author contemptuously, but not mentioning his name. Every name (Antisthenes argued) has its own special reason or meaning (οἰκεῖος[126] λόγος), declaring the essence of the thing named, and differing from every other word: you cannot therefore truly predicate any one word of any other, because the reason or meaning of the two is different: there can be no true propositions except identical propositions, in which the predicate is the same with the subject — “man is man, good is good”. “Man is good” was an inadmissible proposition: affirming different things to be the same, or one thing to be many.[127] Accordingly, it was impossible for two speakers really to contradict each other. There can be no contradiction between them if both declare the essence of the same thing — nor if neither of them declare the essence of it — nor if one speaker declares the essence of one thing, and another speaker that of another. But one of these three cases must happen: therefore there can be no contradiction.[128]

[126] Diogen. L. vi. 3. Πρωτός τε ὡρίσατο (Antisthenes) λόγον, εἰπών, λόγος ἐστὶν ὁ τὸ τί ἦν ἤ ἐστι δηλῶν.

[127] Aristotle, Metaphy. Δ. 1024, b. 32, attributes this doctrine to Antisthenes by name; which tends to prove that Plato meant Antisthenes, though not naming him, in Sophist, p. 251 B, where he notices the same doctrine. Compare Philêbus, p. 14 D.

It is to be observed that a doctrine exactly the same as that which Plato here censures in Antisthenes, will be found maintained by the Platonic Sokrates himself, in Plato, Hippias Major, p. 304 A. See [chap xiii. vol. ii]. of the present work.

[128] Aristot. Topic. i. p. 104, b. 20. θέσις δέ ἐστιν ὑπόληψις παράδοξος τῶν γνωρίμων τινὸς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν· οἷον ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀντιλέγειν, καθάπερ ἔφη Ἀντισθένης.

Plato puts this θέσις into the mouth of Dionysodorus, in the Euthydêmus — p. 286 B; but he says (or makes Sokrates say) that it was maintained by many persons, and that it had been maintained by Protagoras, and even by others yet more ancient.

Antisthenes had discussed it specially in a treatise of three sections polemical against Plato — Σάθων, ἢ περὶ τοῦ ἀντιλέγειν, α, β, γ (Diog. L. vi. 16).

The same doctrine asserted by Stilpon, after the time of Aristotle.

The works of Antisthenes being lost, we do not know how he himself stated his own doctrine, nor what he said on behalf of it, declaring contradiction to be impossible. Plato sets aside the doctrine as absurd and silly; Aristotle — since he cites it as a paradox, apt for dialectical debate, where the opinion of a philosopher stood opposed to what was generally received — seems to imply that there were plausible arguments to be urged in its favour.[129] And that the doctrine actually continued to be held and advocated, in the generation not only after Antisthenes but after Aristotle — we may see by the case of Stilpon: who maintained (as Antisthenes had done) that none but identical propositions, wherein the predicate was a repetition of the subject, were admissible: from whence it followed (as Aristotle observed) that there could be no propositions either false or contradictory. Plutarch,[130] in reciting this doctrine of Stilpon (which had been vehemently impugned by the Epikurean Kolôtês), declares it to have been intended only in jest. There is no ground for believing that it was so intended: the analogy of Antisthenes goes to prove the contrary.

[129] Aristotle (Met. Δ. 1024) represents the doctrine of Antisthenes, That contradictory and false propositions are impossible — as a consequence deduced from the position laid down — That no propositions except identical propositions were admissible. If you grant this last proposition, the consequences will be undeniable. Possibly Antisthenes may have reasoned in this way: “There are many contradictory and false propositions now afloat; but this arises from the way in which predication is conducted. So long as the predicate is different from the subject, there is nothing in the form of a proposition to distinguish falsehood from truth (to distinguish Theætêtus sedet, from Theætêtus volat — to take the instance in the Platonic Sophistês — p. 263). There ought to be no propositions except identical propositions: the form itself will then guarantee you against both falsehood and contradiction: you will be sure always to give τὸν οἰκεῖον λόγον τοῦ πράγματος.” There would be nothing inconsistent in such a precept: but Aristotle might call it silly εὐηθῶς), because, while shutting out falsehood and contradiction, it would also shut out the great body of useful truth, and would divest language of its usefulness as a means of communication.

Brandis (Gesch. der Gr. Römisch. Phil. vol. ii. xciii. 1) gives something like this as the probable purpose of Antisthenes — “Nur Eins bezeichne die Wesenheit eines Dinges — die Wesenheit als einfachen Träger des mannichfaltigen der Eigenschaften” (this is rather too Aristotelian) — “zur Abwehr von Streitigkeiten auf dem Gebiete der Erscheinungen”. Compare also Ritter, Gesch. Phil. vol. ii. p. 130. We read in the Kratylus, that there were persons who maintained the rectitude of all names: to say that a name was not right, was (in their view) tantamount to saying that it was no name at all, but only an unmeaning sound (Plato, Krat. pp. 429-430).

[130] Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, p. 1119 C-D.

Nominalism of Stilpon. His reasons against accidental predication.

Stilpon, however, while rejecting (as Antisthenes had done) the universal Ideas[131] or Forms, took a larger ground of objection. He pronounced them to be inadmissible both as subject and as predicate. If you speak of Man in general (he said), what, or whom, do you mean? You do not mean A or B, or C or D, &c.: that is, you do not mean any one of these more than any other. You have no determinate meaning at all: and beyond this indefinite multitude of individuals, there is nothing that the term can mean. Again, as to predicates — when you say, The man runs, or The man is good, what do you mean by the predicate runs, or is good? You do not mean any thing specially belonging to man: for you apply the same predicates to many other subjects: you say runs, about a horse, a dog, or a cat — you say good in reference to food, medicine, and other things besides. Your predicate, therefore, being applied to many and diverse subjects, belongs not to one of them more than to another: in other words, it belongs to neither: the predication is not admissible.[132]

[131] Hegel (Geschichte der Griech. Philos. i. p. 123) and Marbach (Geschichte der Philos. s. 91) disallow the assertion of Diogenes, that Stilpon ἀνήρει τὰ εἴδη. They maintain that Stilpon rejected the particular affirmations, and allowed only general or universal affirmations. This construction appears to me erroneous.

[132] Diog. L. ii. 113; Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, 1119-1120. εἰ περὶ ἵππου τὸ τρέχειν κατηγοροῦμεν, οὔ φησι (Stilpon) ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ περὶ οὖ κατηγορεῖται τὸ κατηγορούμενον — ἐκατέρου γὰρ ἀπαιτούμενοι τὸν λόγον, οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀποδίδομεν ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν. Ὅθεν ἁμαρτάνειν τοὺς ἕτερον ἑτέρου κατηγοροῦντας. Εἰ μὲν γὰρ ταὐτον ἐστι τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ ἀγαθόν, καὶ τῷ ἵππῳ τὸ τρέχειν, πῶς καὶ σιτίου καὶ φαρμάκου τὸ ἀγαθόν; καὶ νὴ Δία πάλιν λέοντος καὶ κυνὸς τὸ τρέχειν, κατηγοροῦμεν; εἰ δ’ ἕτερον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἄνθρωπον ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἵππον τρέχειν λέγομεν.

Sextus Empiricus (adv. Mathem. vii. p. 269-282) gives a different vein of reasoning respecting predication, — yet a view which illustrates this doctrine of Antisthenes. Sextus does not require that all predication shall be restricted to identical predication: but he maintains that you cannot define any general word. To define, he says, is to enunciate the essence of that which is defined. But when you define Man — “a mortal, rational animal, capable of reason and knowledge” — you give only certain attributes of Man, which go along with the essence — you do not give the essence itself. If you enumerate even all the accompaniments (συμβεβηκότα), you will still fail to tell me what the essence of Man is: which is what I desire to know, and what you profess to do by your definition. It is useless to enumerate accompaniments, until you explain to me what the essence is which they accompany.

These are ingenious objections, which seem to me quite valid, if you assume the logical subject to be a real, absolute essence, apart from all or any of its predicates. And this is a frequent illusion, favoured even by many logicians. We enunciate the subject first, then the predicate; and because the subject can be conceived after abstraction of this, that, or the other predicates — we are apt to imagine that it may be conceived without all or any of the predicates. But this is an illusion. If you suppress all predicates, the subject or supposed substratum vanishes along with them: just as the Genus vanishes, if you suppress all the different species of it.

“Scais-tu au moins ce que c’est que la matière? Très-bien.… Par exemple, cette pierre est grise, est d’une telle forme, a ses trois dimensions; elle est pésante et divisible. Eh bien (dit le Sirien), cette chose qui te paroît être divisible, pésante, et grise, me dirois tu bien ce que c’est? Tu vois quelques attributs: mais le fond de la chose, le connois tu? Non, dit l’autre. Tu ne scais donc point ce que c’est que la matière.” (Voltaire, Micromégas, c. 7.)

“Le fond de la chose” — the Ding an sich — is nothing but the name itself, divested of every fraction of meaning: it is titulus sine re. But the name being familiar, and having been always used with a meaning, still appears invested with much of the old emotional associations, even though it has been stripped of all its meaning by successive acts of abstraction. If you subtract from four, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, there will remain zero. But by abstracting, from the subject man, all its predicates, real and possible, you cannot reduce it to zero. The name man always remains, and appears by old association to carry with it some meaning — though the meaning can no longer be defined.

This illusion is well pointed out in a valuable passage of Cabanis (Du Degré de Certitude de la Médecine, p. 61):—

“Je pourrois d’ailleurs demander ce qu’on entend par la nature et les causes premières des maladies. Nous connoissons de leur nature, ce que les faits en manifestent. Nous savons, par exemple, que la fièvre produit tels et tels changements: ou plutôt, c’est par ces changements qu’elle se montre à nos yeux: c’est par eux seuls qu’elle existe pour nous. Quand un homme tousse, crache du sang, respire avec peine, ressent une douleur de côté, a le pouls plus vite et plus dur, la peau plus chaude que dans l’état naturel — l’on dit qu’il est attaqué d’une pleurésie. Mais qu’est ce donc qu’une pleurésie? On vous répliquera que c’est une maladie, dans laquelle tous, ou presque tous, ces accidents se trouvent combinés. S’il en manque un ou plusieurs, ce n’est point la pleurésie, du moins la vraie pleurésie essentielle des écoles. C’est donc le concours de ces accidents qui la constitue. Le mot pleurésie ne fait que les retracer d’une manière plus courte. Ce mot n’est pas un être par lui-même: il exprime une abstraction de l’esprit, et réveille par un seul trait toutes les images d’un assez grand tableau.

“Ainsi lorsque, non content de connoître une maladie par ce qu’elle offre à nos sens, par ce qui seul la constitue, et sans quoi elle n’existeroit pas, vous demandez encore quelle est sa nature en elle-même, quelle est son essence — c’est comme si vous demandiez quelle est la nature ou l’essence d’un mot, d’une pure abstraction. Il n’y a donc pas beaucoup de justesse à dire, d’un air de triomphe, que les médecins ignorent même la nature de la fièvre, et que sans cesse ils agissent dans des circonstances, ou manient des instruments, dont l’essence leur est inconnue.”

Difficulty of understanding how the same predicate could belong to more than one subject.

Stilpon (like Antisthenes, as I have remarked above) seems to have had in his mind a type of predication, similar to the type of reasoning which Aristotle laid down the syllogism: such that the form of the proposition should be itself a guarantee for the truth of what was affirmed. Throughout the ancient philosophy, especially in the more methodised debates between the Academics and Sceptics on one side, and the Stoics on the other — what the one party affirmed and the other party denied, was, the existence of a Criterion of Truth: some distinguishable mark, such as falsehood could not possibly carry. To find this infallible mark in propositions, Stilpon admitted none except identical. While agreeing with Antisthenes, that no predicate could belong to a subject different from itself, he added a new argument, by pointing out that predicates applied to one subject were also applied to many other subjects. Now if the predicates belonged to one, they could not (in his view) belong to the others: and therefore they did not really belong to any. He considered that predication involved either identity or special and exclusive implication of the predicate with the subject.

Analogous difficulties in the Platonic Parmenidês.

Stilpon was not the first who had difficulty in explaining to himself how one and the same predicate could be applied to many different subjects. The difficulty had already been set forth in the Platonic Parmenidês.[133] How can the Form (Man, White, Good, &c.) be present at one and the same time in many distinct individuals? It cannot be present as a whole in each: nor can it be divided, and thus present partly in one, partly in another. How therefore can it be present at all in any of them? In other words, how can the One be Many, and how can the Many be One? Of this difficulty (as of many others) Plato presents no solution, either in the Parmenidês or anywhere else.[134] Aristotle alludes to several contemporaries or predecessors who felt it. Stilpon reproduces it in his own way. It is a very real difficulty, requiring to be dealt with by those who lay down a theory of predication; and calling upon them to explain the functions of general propositions, and the meaning of general terms.

[133] Plato, Parmenidês, p. 131. Compare also Philêbus, p. 15, and Stallbaum’s Proleg. to the Parmenidês, pp. 46-47. The long commentary of Proklus (v. 100-110. pp. 670-682 of the edition of Stallbaum) amply attests the δυσκολίαν of the problem.

The argument of Parmenidês (in the dialogue called Parmenidês) is applied to the Platonic εἴδη and to τὰ μετέχοντα. But the argument is just as much applicable to attributes, genera, species: to all general predicates.

[134] Aristot. Physic. i. 2, 185, b. 26-36.

Lykophron and some others anterior to Aristotle proposed to elude the difficulty, by ceasing to use the substantive verb as copula in predication: instead of saying Σωκράτης ἐστὶ λευκός, they said either Σωκράτης λευκός, simply, or Σωκράτης λελεύκωται.

This is a remarkable evidence of the difficulty arising, even in these early days of logic, about the logical function of the copula.

Menedêmus disallowed all negative predication.

Menedêmus the Eretrian, one among the hearers and admirers of Stilpon, combined even more than Stilpon the attributes of the Cynic with those of the Megaric. He was fearless in character, and uncontrouled in speech, delivering harsh criticisms without regard to offence given: he was also a great master of ingenious dialectic and puzzling controversy.[135] His robust frame, grave deportment, and simplicity of life, inspired great respect; especially as he occupied a conspicuous position, and enjoyed political influence at Eretria. He is said to have thought meanly both of Plato and Xenokrates. We are told that Menedêmus, like Antisthenes and Stilpon, had doctrines of his own on the subject of predication. He disallowed all negative propositions, admitting none but affirmative: moreover even of the affirmative propositions, he disallowed all the hypothetical, approving only the simple and categorical.[136]

[135] Diog. L. ii. 127-134. ἦν γὰρ καὶ ἐπικόπτης καὶ παῤῥησιαστής.

[136] Diog. L. ii. 134.

It is impossible to pronounce confidently respecting these doctrines, without knowing the reasons upon which they were grounded. Unfortunately these last have not been transmitted to us. But we may be very sure that there were reasons, sufficient or insufficient: and the knowledge of those reasons would have enabled us to appreciate more fully the state of the Greek mind, in respect to logical theory, in and before the year 300 B.C.

Distinction ascribed to Antisthenes between simple and complex objects. Simple objects undefinable.

Another doctrine, respecting knowledge and definition, is ascribed by Aristotle to “the disciples of Antisthenes and other such uninstructed persons”: it is also canvassed by Plato in the Theætêtus,[137] without specifying its author, yet probably having Antisthenes in view. As far as we can make out a doctrine which both these authors recite as opponents, briefly and their own way, it is as follows:—“Objects must be distinguished into — 1. Simple or primary; and 2. Compound or secondary combinations of these simple elements. This last class, the compounds, may be explained or defined, because you can enumerate the component elements. By such analysis, and by the definition founded thereupon, you really come to know them — describe them — predicate about them. But the first class, the simple or primary objects, can only be perceived by sense and named: they cannot be analysed, defined, or known. You can only predicate about them that they are like such and such other things: e.g., silver, you cannot say what it is in itself, but only that it is like tin, or like something else. There may thus be a ratio and a definition of any compound object, whether it be an object of perception or of conception: because one of the component elements will serve as Matter or Subject of the proposition, and the other as Form or Predicate. But there can be no definition of any one of the component elements separately taken: because there is neither Matter nor Form to become the Subject and Predicate of a defining proposition.”

[137] Plato, Theætêt, pp. 201-202. Aristotel. Metaph. Η. 1043, b. 22.

This opinion, ascribed to the followers of Antisthenes, is not in harmony with the opinion ascribed by Aristotle to Antisthenes himself (viz., That no propositions, except identical propositions, were admissible): and we are led to suspect that the first opinion must have been understood or qualified by its author in some manner not now determinable. But the second opinion, drawing a marked logical distinction between simple and complex Objects, has some interest from the criticisms of Plato and Aristotle: both of whom select, for the example illustrating the opinion, the syllable as the compound made up of two or more letters which are its simple constituent elements.

Remarks of Plato on this doctrine.

Plato refutes the doctrine,[138] but in a manner not so much to prove its untruth, as to present it for a verbal incongruity. How can you properly say (he argues) that you know the compound AB, when you know neither A nor B separately? Now it may be incongruous to restrict in this manner the use of the words know — knowledge: but the distinction between the two cases is not denied by Plato. Antisthenes said — “I feel a simple sensation (A or B) and can name it, but I do not know it: I can affirm nothing about it in itself, or about its real essence. But the compound AB I do know, for I know its essence: I can affirm about it that it is compounded of A and B, and this is its essence.” Here is a real distinction: and Plato’s argument amounts only to affirming that it is an incorrect use of words to call the compound known, when the component elements are not known. Unfortunately the refutation of Plato is not connected with any declaration of his own counter-doctrine, for Theætêtus ends in a result purely negative.

[138] Plato, Theætêt. ut suprâ.

Remarks of Aristotle upon the same.

Aristotle, in his comment on the opinion of Antisthenes, makes us understand better what it really is:—“Respecting simple essences (A or B), I cannot tell what they really are: but I can tell what they are like or unlike, i.e., I can compare them with other essences, simple or compound. But respecting the compound AB, I can tell what it really is: its essence is, to be compounded of A and B. And this I call knowing or knowledge.”[139] The distinction here taken by Antisthenes (or by his followers) is both real and useful: Plato does not contest it: while Aristotle distinctly acknowledges it, only that among the simple items he ranks both Percepta and Concepta.

[139] Aristot. Metaphys. Η. 1043, b. 24-32, with the Scholia, p. 774, b. Br.

Mr. J. S. Mill observes, Syst. of Logic, i. 5, 6, p. 116, ed. 9:—“There is still another exceptional case, in which, though the predicate is the name of a class, yet in predicating it we affirm nothing but resemblance: the class being founded not on resemblance in any given particular, but on general unanalysable resemblance. The classes in question are those into which our simple sensations, or other simple feelings, are divided. Sensations of white, for instance, are classed together, not because we can take them to pieces, and say, they are alike in this, not alike in that but because we feel them to be alike altogether, though in different degrees. When therefore I say — The colour I saw yesterday was a white colour, or, The sensation I feel is one of tightness — in both cases the attribute I affirm of the colour or of the other sensation is mere resemblance: simple likeness to sensations which I have had before, and which have had that name bestowed upon them. The names of feelings, like other concrete general names, are connotative: but they connote a mere resemblance. When predicated of any individual feelings, the information they convey is that of its likeness to the other feelings which we have been accustomed to call by the same name.”

Later Grecian Cynics — Monimus — Krates — Hipparchia.

Monimus a Syracusan, and Krates a Theban, with his wife Hipparchia,[140] were successors of Diogenes in the Cynic vein of philosophy: together with several others of less note. Both Monimus and Krates are said to have been persons of wealthy condition,[141] yet their minds were so powerfully affected by what they saw of Diogenes, that they followed his example, renounced their wealth, and threw themselves upon a life of poverty; with nothing beyond the wallet and the threadbare cloak, but with fearless independence of character, free censure of every one, and indifference to opinion. “I choose as my country” (said Krates) “poverty and low esteem, which fortune cannot assail: I am the fellow-citizen of Diogenes, whom the snares of envy cannot reach.”[142] Krates is said to have admonished every one, whether they invited it or not: and to have gone unbidden from house to house for the purpose of exhortation. His persistence in this practice became so obtrusive that he obtained the title of “the Door-Opener”.[143] This feature, common to several other Cynics, exhibits an approximation to the missionary character of Sokrates, as described by himself in the Platonic Apology: a feature not found in any of the other eminent heads of philosophy — neither in Plato nor in Aristotle, Zeno, or Epikurus.

[140] Hipparchia was a native of Maroneia in Thrace; born in a considerable station, and belonging to an opulent family. She came to Athens with her brother Mêtroklês, and heard both Theophrastus and Kratês. Both she and her brother became impressed with the strongest admiration for Kratês: for his mode of life, as well as for his discourses and doctrine. Rejecting various wealthy suitors, she insisted upon becoming his wife, both against his will and against the will of her parents. Her resolute enthusiasm overcame the reluctance of both. She adopted fully his hard life, poor fare, and threadbare cloak. She passed her days in the same discourses and controversies, indifferent to the taunts which were addressed to her for having relinquished the feminine occupations of spinning and weaving. Diogenes Laertius found many striking dicta or replies ascribed to her (ἄλλα μυρία τῆς φιλοσόφου vi. 96-98). He gives an allusion made to her by the contemporary comic poet Menander, who (as I before observed) handled the Cynics of his time as Aristophanes, Eupolis, &c., had handled Sokrates —

Συμπεριπατήσεις γὰρ τρίβων’ ἔχους ἐμοὶ, ὥσπερ Κράτητι τῷ Κυνικῷ ποθ’ ἡ γυνὴ. Καὶ θυγατέρ’ ἐξέδωκ’ ἐκεῖνος, ὡς ἔφη αὐτὸς, ἐπὶ πειρᾷ δοὺς τριάκονθ’ ἡμέρας. (vi. 93.)

[141] Diog, L. vi. 82-88. Μόνιμος ὁ Κύων, Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii. 48-88.

About Krates, Plutarch, De Vit. Aere Alieno, 7, p. 831 F.

[142] Diog. L. vi. 93. ἔχειν δὲ πατρίδα ἀδοξίαν τε καὶ πενίαν, ἀνάλωτα τῇ τύχῃ: καὶ — Διογένους εἶναι πολίτης ἀνεπιβουλεύτου φθόνῳ. The parody or verses of Krates, about his city of Pera (the Wallet), vi. 85, are very spirited —

Πήρη τις πόλις ἐστὶ μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι τύφῳ, &c.

Krates composed a collection of philosophical Epistles, which Diogenes pronounces to be excellent, and even to resemble greatly the style of Plato (vi. 98).

[143] Diog. L. vi. 86, ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ θυρεπανοίκτης, διὰ τὸ εἰς πᾶσαν εἰσιέναι οἰκίαν καὶ νουθετεῖν. Compare Seneca, Epist. 29.

Zeno of Kitium in Cyprus.

Among other hearers of Krates, who carried on, and at the same time modified, the Cynic discipline, we have to mention Zeno, of Kitium in Cyprus, who became celebrated as the founder of the Stoic sect. In him the Cynic, Megaric, and Herakleitean tendencies may be said to have partially converged, though with considerable modifications:[144] the ascetic doctrines (without the ascetic practices or obtrusive forwardness) of the Cynics — and the logical subtleties of the others. He blended them, however, with much of new positive theory, both physical and cosmological. His compositions were voluminous; and those of the Stoic Chrysippus, after him, were still more numerous. The negative and oppugning function, which in the fourth century B.C. had been directed by the Megarics against Aristotle, was in the third century B.C. transferred to the Platonists, or Academy represented by Arkesilaus: whose formidable dialectic was brought to bear upon the Stoic and Epikurean schools — both of them positive, though greatly opposed to each other.

[144] Numenius ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. xiv. 5.

---

ARISTIPPUS.

Along with Antisthenes, among the hearers and companions of Sokrates, stood another Greek of very opposite dispositions, yet equally marked and original — Aristippus of Kyrênê. The stimulus of the Sokratic method, and the novelty of the topics on which it was brought to bear, operated forcibly upon both, prompting each of them to theorise in his own way on the best plan of life.

Aristippus — life, character, and doctrine.

Aristippus, a Kyrenean of easy circumstances, having heard of the powerful ascendancy exercised by Sokrates over youth, came to Athens for the express purpose of seeing him, and took warm interest in his conversation.[145] He set great value upon mental cultivation and accomplishments; but his habits of life were inactive, easy, and luxurious. Upon this last count, one of the most interesting chapters in the Xenophontic Memorabilia reports an interrogative lecture addressed to him by Sokrates, in the form of dialogue.[146]

[145] Plutarch (De Curiositate, p. 516 A) says that Aristippus informed himself, at the Olympic games, from Ischomachus respecting the influence of Sokrates.

[146] See the first chapter of the Second Book of the Memorabilia.

I give an abstract of the principal points in the dialogue, not a literal translation.

Discourse of Sokrates with Aristippus.

Sokrates points out to Aristippus that mankind may be distributed into two classes: 1. Those who have trained themselves to habits of courage, energy, bodily strength, and command over their desires and appetites, together with practice in the actual work of life:—these are the men who become qualified to rule, and who do actually rule. 2. The rest of mankind, inferior in these points, who have no choice but to obey, and who do obey.[147] — Men of the first or ruling class possess all the advantages of life: they perform great exploits, and enjoy a full measure of delight and happiness, so far as human circumstances admit. Men of the second class are no better than slaves, always liable to suffer, and often actually suffering, ill-treatment and spoliation of the worst kind. To which of these classes (Sokrates asks Aristippus) do you calculate on belonging — and for which do you seek to qualify yourself? — To neither of them (replies Aristippus). I do not wish to share the lot of the subordinate multitude: but I have no relish for a life of command, with all the fatigues, hardships, perils, &c., which are inseparable from it. I prefer a middle course: I wish neither to rule, nor to be ruled, but to be a freeman: and I consider freedom as the best guarantee for happiness.[148] I desire only to pass through life as easily and pleasantly as possible.[149] — Which of the two do you consider to live most pleasantly, the rulers or the ruled? asks Sokrates. — I do not rank myself with either (says Aristippus): nor do I enter into active duties of citizenship anywhere: I pass from one city to another, but everywhere as a stranger or non-citizen. — Your scheme is impracticable (says Sokrates). You cannot obtain security in the way that you propose. You will find yourself suffering wrong and distress along with the subordinates[150] — and even worse than the subordinates: for a stranger, wherever he goes, is less befriended and more exposed to injury than the native citizens. You will be sold into slavery, though you are fit for no sort of work: and your master will chastise you until you become fit for work. — But (replies Aristippus) this very art of ruling, which you consider to be happiness,[151] is itself a hard life, a toilsome slavery, not only stripped of enjoyment, but full of privation and suffering. A man must be a fool to embrace such discomforts of his own accord. — It is that very circumstance (says Sokrates), that he does embrace them of his own accord — which renders them endurable, and associates them with feelings of pride and dignity. They are the price paid beforehand, for a rich reward to come. He who goes through labour and self-denial, for the purpose of gaining good friends or subduing enemies, and for the purpose of acquiring both mental and bodily power, so that he may manage his own concerns well and may benefit both his friends and his country — such a man will be sure to find his course of labour pleasurable. He will pass his life in cheerful[152] satisfaction, not only enjoying his own esteem and admiration, but also extolled and envied by others. On the contrary, whoever passes his earlier years in immediate pleasures and indolent ease, will acquire no lasting benefit either in mind or body. He will have a soft lot at first, but his future will be hard and dreary.[153]

[147] Xen. Memor. ii. 1, 1 seq. τὸν μὲν ὅπως ἱκανὸς ἔσται ἄρχειν, τὸν δὲ ὅπως μήδ’ ἀντιποιήσεται ἀρχῆς — τοὺς ἀρχικούς.

[148] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 11. ἀλλ’ εἶναι τίς μοι δοκεῖ μέση τούτων ὁδός, ἢν πειρῶμαι βαδίζειν, οὔτε δι’ ἀρχῆς, οὔτε διὰ δουλείας, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐλευθερίας, ἤπερ μάλιστα πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἄγει.

[149] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 9. ἐμαυτον τοίνυν τάττω εἰς τοὺς βουλομένους ᾖ ῥᾷστα καὶ ἥδιστα βιοτεύειν.

[150] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 12. εἰ μέντοι ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὢν μήτε ἄρχειν ἀξιώσεις μήτε ἄρχεσθαι, μήτε τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἑκὼν θεραπεύσεις, οἶμαί σε ὁρᾷν ὡς ἐπίστανται οἱ κρείττονες τοὺς ἥττονας καὶ κοινῇ καὶ ἰδίᾳ κλαίοντας καθίσαντες, ὡς δούλοις χρῆσθαι.

What follows is yet more emphatic, about the unjust oppression of rulers, and the suffering on the part of subjects.

[151] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 17. Ἀλλὰ γὰρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, οἱ εἰς τὴν βασιλικὴν τέχνην παιδευόμενοι, ἢν δοκεῖς μοι σὺ νομίζειν εὐδαιμονίαν εἶναι.

Compare Memor. ii. 3, 4.

[152] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 19. πῶς οὐκ οἴεσθαι χρὴ τούτους καὶ πονεῖν ἡδέως εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα, καὶ ζῆν εὐφρονομένους, ἀγαμένους μὲν ἑαυτοὺς, ἐπαινουμένους δὲ καὶ ζηλουμένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων;

[153] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 20, cited from Epicharmus:—

μὴ τὰ μαλακὰ μώεο, μὴ τὰ σκλήρ’ ἔχῃς.

Choice of Hêraklês.

Sokrates enforces his lecture by reciting to Aristippus the memorable lecture or apologue, which the Sophist Prodikus was then delivering in lofty diction to numerous auditors[154] — the fable still known as the Choice of Hêraklês. Virtue and Pleasure (the latter of the two being here identified with Evil or Vice) are introduced as competing for the direction of the youthful Hêraklês. Each sets forth her case, in dramatic antithesis. Pleasure is introduced as representing altogether the gratification of the corporeal appetites and the love of repose: while Virtue replies by saying, that if youth be employed altogether in pursuing such delights, at the time when the appetites are most vigorous — the result will be nothing but fatal disappointment, accompanied with entire loss of the different and superior pleasures available in mature years and in old age. Youth is the season of labour: the physical appetites must be indulged sparingly, and only at the call of actual want: accomplishments of body and mind must be acquired in that season, which will enable the mature man to perform in after life great and glorious exploits. He will thus realise the highest of all human delights — the love of his friends and the admiration of his countrymen — the sound of his own praises and the reflexion upon his own deserts. At the price of a youth passed in labour and self-denial, he will secure the fullest measure of mature and attainable happiness.

[154] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 21-34. ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις ἐπιδείκνυται — μεγαλειοτέροις ῥήμασιν.

“It is worth your while, Aristippus” (says Sokrates, in concluding this lecture), “to bestow some reflexion on what is to happen in the latter portions of your life.”

Illustration afforded of the views of Sokrates respecting Good and Evil.

This dialogue (one of the most interesting remnants of antiquity, and probably reported by Xenophon from actual hearing) is valuable in reference not only to Aristippus, but also to Sokrates himself. Many recent historians of philosophy describe Sokrates and Plato as setting up an idea of Virtue or Good Absolute (i.e. having no essential reference to the happiness or security of the agent or of any one else) which they enforce — and an idea of Vice or Evil Absolute (i.e. having no essential reference to suffering or peril, or disappointment, either of the agent or of any one else) which they denounce and discommend and as thereby refuting the Sophists, who are said to have enforced Virtue and denounced Vice only relatively — i.e. in consequence of the bearing of one and the other upon the security and happiness of the agent or of others. Whether there be any one doctrine or style of preaching which can be fairly ascribed to the Sophists as a class, I will not again discuss here: but I believe that the most eminent among them, Protagoras and Prodikus, held the language here ascribed to them. But it is a mistake to suppose that upon this point Sokrates was their opponent. The Xenophontic Sokrates (a portrait more resembling reality than the Platonic) always holds this same language: the Platonic Sokrates not always, yet often. In the dialogue between Sokrates and Aristippus, as well as in the apologue of Prodikus, we see that the devotion of the season of youth to indulgence and inactive gratification of appetite, is blamed as productive of ruinous consequences — as entailing loss of future pleasures, together with a state of weakness which leaves no protection against future suffering; while great care is taken to show, that though laborious exercise is demanded during youth, such labour will be fully requited by the increased pleasures and happiness of after life. The pleasure of being praised, and the pleasure of seeing good deeds performed by one’s self, are especially insisted on. On this point both Sokrates and Prodikus concur.[155]

[155] Xenoph. Mem. ii. 1, 31. τοῦ δὲ πάντων ἡδίστου ἀκούσματος, ἐπαίνου σεαυτῆς, ἀνήκοος εἶ, καὶ τοῦ πάντων ἡδιστου θεάματος ἀθέατος· οὐδὲν γὰρ πώποτε σεαυτῆς ἔργον καλὸν τεθέασαι.…

τὰ μὲν ἡδέα ἐν τῇ vεότητι διαδραμόντες, τὰ δὲ χαλεπὰ ἐς τὸ γῆρας ἀποθέμενοι.

Comparison of the Xenophontic Sokrates with the Platonic Sokrates.

If again we compare the Xenophontic Sokrates with the Platonic Sokrates, we shall find that the lecture of the former to Aristippus coincides sufficiently with the theory laid down by the latter in the dialogue Protagoras; to which theory the Sophist Protagoras is represented as yielding a reluctant adhesion. But we shall find also that it differs materially from the doctrine maintained by Sokrates in the Platonic Gorgias. Nay, if we follow the argument addressed by the Xenophontic Sokrates to Aristippus, we perceive that it is in substance similar to that which the Platonic dialogue Gorgias puts in the mouth of the rhetor Pôlus and the politician Kalliklês. The Xenophontic Sokrates distributes men into two classes — the rulers and the ruled: the former strong, well-armed, and well-trained, who enjoy life at the expense of the submission and suffering of the latter: the former committing injustice, the latter enduring injustice. He impresses upon Aristippus the misery of being confounded with the suffering many, and exhorts him to qualify himself by a laborious apprenticeship for enrolment among the ruling few. If we read the Platonic Gorgias, we shall see that this is the same strain in which Pôlus and Kalliklês address Sokrates, when they invite him to exchange philosophy for rhetoric, and to qualify himself for active political life. “Unless you acquire these accomplishments, you will be helpless and defenceless against injury and insult from others: while, if you acquire them, you will raise yourself to political influence, and will exercise power over others, thus obtaining the fullest measure of enjoyment which life affords: see the splendid position to which the Macedonian usurper Archelaus has recently exalted himself.[156] Philosophy is useful, when studied in youth for a short time as preface to professional and political apprenticeship: but if a man perseveres in it and makes it the occupation of life, he will not only be useless to others, but unable to protect himself; he will be exposed to suffer any injustice which the well-trained and powerful men may put upon him.” To these exhortations of Pôlus and Kalliklês Sokrates replies by admitting their case as true matter of fact. “I know that I am exposed to such insults and injuries: but my life is just and innocent. If I suffer, I shall suffer wrong: and those who do the wrong will thereby inflict upon themselves a greater mischief than they inflict upon me. Doing wrong is worse for the agent than suffering wrong.”[157]

[156] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 466-470-486.

[157] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 508-509-521-527 C. καὶ ἔασόν τινα σοῦ καταφρονῆσαι ὡς ἀνοήτου, καὶ προπηλακίσαι ἐὰν βούληται, καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία σύ γε θαῤῥῶν πατάξαι τὴν ἄτιμον ταύτην πληγήν· οὐδὲν γὰρ δεινὸν πείσει, ἐὰν τῷ ὄντι ᾗς καλὸς κἀγαθός, ἀσκῶν ἀρετήν.

Xenophontic Sokrates talking to Aristippus — Kallikes in Platonic Gorgias.

There is indeed this difference between the Xenophontic Sokrates in his address to Aristippus, and the Platonic Kalliklês in his exhortation to Sokrates: That whereas Kalliklês proclaims and even vindicates it as natural justice and right, that the strong should gratify their desires by oppressing and despoiling the weak — the Xenophontic Sokrates merely asserts such oppression as an actual fact, notorious and undeniable,[158] without either approving or blaming it. Plato, constructing an imaginary conversation with the purpose that Sokrates shall be victorious, contrives intentionally and with dramatic consistency that the argument of Kalliklês shall be advanced in terms so invidious and revolting that no one else would be bold enough to speak it out:[159] which contrivance was the more necessary, as Sokrates is made not only to disparage the poets, rhetors, and most illustrious statesmen of historical Athens, but to sustain a thesis in which he admits himself to stand alone, opposed to aristocrats as well as democrats.[160] Yet though there is this material difference in the manner of handling, the plan of life which the Xenophontic Sokrates urges upon Aristippus, and the grounds upon which he enforces it, are really the same as those which Kalliklês in the Platonic Gorgias urges upon Sokrates. “Labour to qualify yourself for active political power” — is the lesson addressed in the one case to a wealthy man who passed his life in ease and indulgence, in the other case to a poor man who devoted himself to speculative debate on general questions, and to cross-examination of every one who would listen and answer. The man of indulgence, and the man of speculation,[161] were both of them equally destitute of those active energies which were necessary to confer power over others, or even security against oppression by others.

[158] If we read the conversation alleged by Thucydides (v. 94-105-112) to have taken place between the Athenian generals and the executive council of Melos, just before the siege of that island by the Athenians, we shall see that this same language is held by the Athenians. “You, the Melians, being much weaker, must submit to us who are much stronger; this is the universal law and necessity of nature, which we are not the first to introduce, but only follow out, as others have done before us, and will do after us. Submit — or it will be worse for you. No middle course, or neutrality, is open to you.”

[159] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 482-487-492.

[160] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 472-521.

[161] If we read the treatise of Plutarch, Περὶ Στωίκων ἐναντιωμάτων (c. 2-3, p. 1033 C-D), we shall see that the Stoic writers, Zeno, Kleanthes, Chrysippus, Diogenes, Antipater, all of them earnestly recommended a life of active citizenship and laborious political duty, as incumbent upon philosophers not less than upon others; and that they treated with contempt a life of literary leisure and speculation. Chrysippus explicitly declared οὐδὲν διαφέρειν τὸν σχολαστικὸν βίον τοῦ ἡδονικοῦ i. e. that the speculative philosopher who kept aloof from political activity, was in substance a follower of Epikurus. Tacitus holds much the same language (Hist. iv. 5) when he says about Helvidius Priscus:—“ingenium illustre altioribus studiis juvenis admodum dedit: non, ut plerique, ut nomine magnifico segne otium velaret, sed quo constantior adversus fortuita rempublicam capesseret,” &c.

The contradiction which Plutarch notes is, that these very Stoic philosophers (Chrysippus and the others) who affected to despise all modes of life except active civic duty — were themselves, all, men of literary leisure, spending their lives away from their native cities, in writing and talking philosophy. The same might have been said about Sokrates and Plato (except as to leaving their native cities), both of whom incurred the same reproach for inactivity as Sokrates here addresses to Aristippus.

Language held by Aristippus — his scheme of life.

In the Xenophontic dialogue, Aristippus replies to Sokrates that the apprenticeship enjoined upon him is too laborious, and that the exercise of power, itself laborious, has no charm for him. He desires a middle course, neither to oppress nor to be oppressed: neither to command, nor to be commanded — like Otanes among the seven Persian conspirators.[162] He keeps clear of political obligation, and seeks to follow, as much as he can, his own individual judgment. Though Sokrates, in the Xenophontic dialogue, is made to declare this middle course impossible, yet it is substantially the same as what the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias aspires to:—moreover the same as what the real Sokrates at Athens both pursued as far as he could, and declared to be the only course consistent with his security.[163] The Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias declares emphatically that no man can hope to take active part in the government of a country, unless he be heartily identified in spirit with the ethical and political system of the country: unless he not merely professes, but actually and sincerely shares, the creed, doctrines, tastes, and modes of appreciation prevalent among the citizens.[164] Whoever is deficient in this indispensable condition, must be content “to mind his own business and to abstain from active meddling with public affairs”. This is the course which the Platonic Sokrates claims both for himself and for the philosopher generally:[165] it is also the course which Aristippus chooses for himself, under the different title of a middle way between the extortion of the ruler and the suffering of the subordinate. And the argument of Sokrates that no middle way is possible — far from refuting Aristippus (as Xenophon says that it did)[166] is founded upon an incorrect assumption: had it been correct, neither literature nor philosophy could have been developed.

[162] Herodot. iii. 80-83.

[163] Plato, Apol. So. p. 32 A. ἰδιωτεύειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ δημοσιεύειν.

[164] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 510-513. Τίς οὖν ποτ’ ἐστὶ τέχνη τῆς παρασκευῆς τοῦ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖσθαι ἢ ὡς ὀλίγιστα; σκέψαι εἴ σοι δοκεῖ ᾗπερ ἐμοί. ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ δοκεῖ ἥδε· ἢ αὐτὸν ἄρχειν δεῖν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἢ καὶ τυραννεῖν, ἢ τῆς ὑπαρχούσης πολιτείας ἑταῖρον εἶναι. (This is exactly the language which Sokrates holds to Aristippus, Xenoph. Memor. ii. 1, 12.)

ὃς ἂν ὁμοήθης ὢν, ταὐτα ψέγων καὶ ἐπαινῶν, ἐθέλῃ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ὑποκεῖσθαι τῷ ἄρχοντι — εὐθὺς ἐκ νέου ἐθίζειν αὑτὸν τοῖς αὐτοῖς χαίρειν καὶ ἄχθεσθαι τῷ δεσπότῃ (510 D). οὐ γὰρ μιμητὴν δεῖ εἶναι ἀλλ’ αὐτοφυῶς ὅμοιον τούτοις (513 B).

[165] Plato, Gorgias, p. 526 C-D. (Compare Republic, vi. p. 496 D.) ἀνδρὸς ἰδιώτου ἢ ἄλλου τινός, μάλιστα μέν, ἔγωγέ φημι, ὦ Καλλίκλεις, φιλοσόφου τὰ αὑτοῦ πράξαντος καὶ οὐ πολυπραγμονήσαντος ἐν τῷ βίῳ — καὶ δὴ καὶ σὲ ἀντιπαρακαλῶ (Sokrates to Kalliklês) ἐπὶ τοῦτον τὸν βίον. Upon these words Routh remarks: “Respicitur inter hæc verba ad Calliclis orationem, quâ rerum civilium tractatio et πολυπραγμοσύνη Socrati persuadentur,” — which is the same invitation as the Xenophontic Sokrates addresses to Aristippus. Again, in Plat. Republ. viii. pp. 549 C, 550 A, we read, that corruption of the virtuous character begins by invitations to the shy youth to depart from the quiet plan of life followed by a virtuous father (who is τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττει) and to enter on a career of active political ambition. The youth is induced, by instigation of his mother and relatives without, to pass from ἀπραγμοσύνη to φιλοπραγμοσύνη, which is described as a change for the worse. Even in Xenophon (Memor. iii. 11, 16) Sokrates recognises and jests upon his own ἀπραγμοσύνη.

[166] Xen. Mem. iii. 8, 1. Diogenes L. says (and it is probable enough, from radical difference of character) that Xenophon was adversely disposed to Aristippus. In respect to other persons also, Xenophon puts invidious constructions (for which at any rate no ground is shown) upon their purposes in questioning Sokrates: thus, in the dialogue (i. 6) with the Sophist Antiphon, he says that Antiphon questioned Sokrates in order to seduce him away from his companions (Mem. i. 6, 1).

Diversified conversations of Sokrates, according to the character of the hearer.

The real Sokrates, since he talked incessantly and with every one, must of course have known how to diversify his conversation and adapt it to each listener. Xenophon not only attests this generally,[167] but has preserved the proofs of it in his Memorabilia — real conversations, reported though doubtless dressed up by himself. The conversations which he has preserved relate chiefly to piety and to the duties and proceedings of active life: and to the necessity of controuling the appetites: these he selected partly because they suited his proclaimed purpose of replying to the topics of indictment, partly because they were in harmony with his own idéal. Xenophon was a man of action, resolute in mind and vigorous in body, performing with credit the duties of the general as well as of the soldier. His heroes were men like Cyrus, Agesilaus, Ischomachus — warriors, horsemen, hunters, husbandmen, always engaged in active competition for power, glory, or profit, and never shrinking from danger, fatigue, or privation. For a life of easy and unambitious indulgence, even though accompanied by mental and speculative activity — “homines ignavâ operâ et philosophiâ sententiâ” — he had no respect. It was on this side that the character of Aristippus certainly seemed to be, and probably really was, the most defective. Sokrates employed the arguments the most likely to call forth within him habits of action — to render him πρακτικώτερον.[168] In talking with the presumptuous youth Glaukon, and with the diffident Charmides,[169] Sokrates used language adapted to correct the respective infirmities of each. In addressing Kritias and Alkibiades, he would consider it necessary not only to inculcate self-denial as to appetite, but to repress an exorbitance of ambition.[170] But in dealing with Aristippus, while insisting upon command of appetite and acquirement of active energy, he at the same time endeavours to kindle ambition, and the love of command: he even goes so far as to deny the possibility of a middle course, and to maintain (what Kritias and Alkibiades[171] would have cordially approved) that there was no alternative open, except between the position of the oppressive governors and that of the suffering subjects. Addressed to Aristippus, these topics were likely to thrust forcibly upon his attention the danger of continued indulgences during the earlier years of life, and the necessity, in view to his own future security, for training in habits of vigour, courage, self-command, endurance.

[167] Xen. Mem. iv. 1, 2-3.

[168] Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 1. ὡς δὲ καὶ πρακτικωτέρους ἐποίει τοὺς συνόντας αὐτῷ, νῦν αὖ τοῦτο λέξω.

[169] Xenoph. Mem. iii. capp. 6 and 7.

[170] Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 15-18-24. Respecting the different tone and arguments employed by Sokrates, in his conversations with different persons, see a good passage in the Rhetor Aristeides, Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττάρων, p. 161, Dindorf.

[171] We see from the first two chapters of the Memorabilia of Xenophon (as well as from the subsequent intimation of Æschines, in the oration against Timarchus, p. 173) how much stress was laid by the accusers of Sokrates on the fact that he had educated Kritias and Alkibiades; and how the accusers alleged that his teaching tended to encourage the like exorbitant aspirations in others, dangerous to established authority, traditional, legal, parental, divine. I do not doubt (what Xenophon affirms) that Sokrates, when he conversed with Kritias and Alkibiades, held a very opposite language. But it was otherwise when he talked with men of ease and indulgence without ambition, such as Aristippus. If Melêtus and Anytus could have put in evidence the conversation of Sokrates with Aristippus, many points of it would have strengthened their case against Sokrates before the Dikasts. We read in Xenophon (Mem. i. 2, 58) how the point was made to tell, that Sokrates often cited and commented on the passage of the Iliad (ii. 188) in which the Grecian chiefs, retiring from the agora to their ships, are described as being respectfully addressed by Odysseus — while the common soldiers are scolded and beaten by him, for the very same conduct: the relation which Sokrates here dwells on as subsisting between οἱ ἀρχικοὶ and οἱ ἀρχόμενοι, would favour the like colouring.

Conversations between Sokrates and Aristippus about the Good and Beautiful.

Xenophon notices briefly two other colloquies between Sokrates and Aristippus. The latter asked Sokrates, “Do you know anything good?” in order (says Xenophon) that if Sokrates answered in the affirmative and gave as examples, health, wealth, strength, courage, bread, &c., he (Aristippus) might show circumstances in which this same particular was evil; and might thus catch Sokrates in a contradiction, as Sokrates had caught him before.[172] But Sokrates (says Xenophon) far from seeking to fence with the question, retorted it in such a way as to baffle the questioner, and at the same time to improve and instruct the by-standers.[173] “Do you ask me if I know anything good for a fever? — No. Or for ophthalmic distemper? — No. Or for hunger? — No. Oh! then, if you mean to ask me, whether I know anything good, which is good for nothing — I reply that I neither know any such thing, nor care to know it.”

[172] Xenoph. Memor. iii. 8, 1. Both Xenophon and some of his commentators censure this as a captious string of questions put by Aristippus — “captiosas Aristippi quæstiunculas”. Such a criticism is preposterous, when we recollect that Sokrates was continually examining and questioning others in the same manner. See in particular his cross-examination of Euthydêmus, reported by Xenophon, Memor. iv. 2; and many others like it, both in Xenophon and in Plato.

[173] Xenoph. Memor. iii. 8, 1. βουλόμενος τοὺς συνόντας ὡφελεῖν.

Again, on another occasion Aristippus asked him “Do you know anything beautiful? — Yes; many things. — Are they all like to each other? — No; they are as unlike as possible to each other. — How then (continues Aristippus) can that which is unlike to the beautiful, be itself beautiful? — Easily enough (replies Sokrates); one man is beautiful for running; another man, altogether unlike him, is beautiful for wrestling. A shield which is beautiful for protecting your body, is altogether unlike to a javelin, which is beautiful for being swiftly and forcibly hurled. — Your answer (rejoined Aristippus) is exactly the same as it was when I asked you whether you knew anything good. — Certainly (replies Sokrates). Do you imagine, that the Good is one thing, and the Beautiful another? Do you not know that all things are good and beautiful in relation to the same purpose? Virtue is not good in relation to one purpose, and beautiful in relation to another. Men are called both good and beautiful in reference to the same ends: the bodies of men, in like manner: and all things which men use, are considered both good and beautiful, in consideration of their serving their ends well. — Then (says Aristippus) a basket for carrying dung is beautiful? — To be sure (replied Sokrates), and a golden shield is ugly; if the former be well made for doing its work, and the latter badly. — Do you then assert (asked Aristippus) that the same things are beautiful and ugly? — Assuredly (replied Sokrates); and the same things are both good and evil. That which is good for hunger, is often bad for a fever: that which is good for a fever, is often bad for hunger. What is beautiful for running is often ugly for wrestling — and vice versâ. All things are good and beautiful, in relation to the ends which they serve well: all things are evil and ugly, in relation to the ends which they serve badly.”[174]

[174] Xenoph. Memor. iii. 8, 1-9.

Remarks on the conversation — Theory of Good.

These last cited colloquies also, between Sokrates and Aristippus, are among the most memorable remains of Grecian philosophy: belonging to one of the years preceding 399 B.C., in which last year Sokrates perished. Here (as in the former dialogue) the doctrine is distinctly enunciated by Sokrates — That Good and Evil — Beautiful (or Honourable) and Ugly (or Dishonourable — Base) — have no intelligible meaning except in relation to human happiness and security. Good or Evil Absolute (i.e., apart from such relation) is denied to exist. The theory of Absolute Good (a theory traceable to the Parmenidean doctrines, and adopted from them by Eukleides) becomes first known to us as elaborated by Plato. Even in his dialogues it is neither always nor exclusively advocated, but is often modified by, and sometimes even exchanged for, the eudæmonistic or relative theory.

Good is relative to human beings and wants, in the view of Sokrates.

Sokrates declares very explicitly, in his conversation with Aristippus, what he means by the Good and the Beautiful: and when therefore in the name of the Good and the Beautiful, he protests against an uncontrolled devotion to the pleasures of sense (as in one of the Xenophontic dialogues with Euthydemus[175]), what he means is, that a man by such intemperance ruins his prospects of future happiness, and his best means of being useful both to himself and others. Whether Aristippus first learnt from Sokrates the relative theory of the Good and the Beautiful, or had already embraced it before, we cannot say. Some of his questions, as reported in Xenophon, would lead us to suspect that it took him by surprise: just as we find, in the Protagoras of Plato that a theory substantially the same, though in different words, is proposed by the Platonic Sokrates to the Sophist Protagoras: who at first repudiates it, but is compelled ultimately to admit it by the elaborate dialectic of Sokrates.[176] If Aristippus did not learn the theory from Sokrates, he was at any rate fortified in it by the authority of Sokrates; to whose doctrine, in this respect, he adhered more closely than Plato.

[175] Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5.

Sokrates exhorts those with whom he converses to be sparing in indulgences, and to cultivate self-command and fortitude as well as bodily energy and activity. The reason upon which these exhortations are founded is eudæmonistic: that a person will thereby escape or be able to confront serious dangers — and will obtain for himself ultimately greater pleasures than those which he foregoes (Memor. i. 6, 8; ii. 1, 31-33; iii. 12, 2-5). Τοῦ δὲ μὴ δουλεύειν γαστρὶ μηδὲ ὕπνῳ καὶ λαγνείᾳ οἴει τι ἄλλο αἰτιώτερον εἶναι, ἢ τὸ ἕτερα ἔχειν τούτων ἡδίω, ἃ οὐ μόνον ἐν χρείᾳ ὄντα εὐφραίνει, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔλπιδας παρέχοντα ὠφελήσειν ἀεί; See also Memor. ii. 4, ii. 10, 4, about the importance of acquiring and cultivating friends, because a good friend is the most useful and valuable of all possessions. Sokrates, like Aristippus, adopts the prudential view of life, and not the transcendental; recommending sobriety and virtue on the ground of pleasures secured and pains averted. We find Plutarch, in his very bitter attacks on Epikurus, reasoning on the Hedonistic basis, and professing to prove that Epikurus discarded pleasures more and greater for the sake of obtaining pleasures fewer and less. See Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, pp. 1096-1099.

[176] Plato, Protagoras, pp. 351-361.

Aristippus adhered to the doctrine of Sokrates.

Aristippus is recognised by Aristotle[177] in two characters: both as a Sophist, and as a companion of Sokrates and Plato. Moreover it is remarkable that the doctrine, in reference to which Aristotle cites him as one among the Sophists, is a doctrine unquestionably Sokratic — contempt of geometrical science as useless, and as having no bearing on the good or evil of life.[178] Herein also Aristippus followed Sokrates, while Plato departed from him.

[177] Aristot. Rhetoric. ii. 24; Metaphysic. B. 996, a. 32.

[178] Xenophon. Memor. iv. 7, 2.

Life and dicta of Aristippus — His type of character.

In estimating the character of Aristippus, I have brought into particular notice the dialogues reported by Xenophon, because the Xenophontic statements, with those of Aristotle, are the only contemporary evidence (for Plato only names him once to say that he was not present at the death of Sokrates, and was reported to be in Ægina). The other statements respecting Aristippus, preserved by Diogenes and others, not only come from later authorities, but give us hardly any facts; though they ascribe to him a great many sayings and repartees, adapted to a peculiar type of character. That type of character, together with an imperfect notion of his doctrines, is all that we can make out. Though Aristippus did not follow the recommendation of Sokrates, to labour and qualify himself for a ruler, yet both the advice of Sokrates, to reflect and prepare himself for the anxieties and perils of the future — and the spectacle of self-sufficing independence which the character of Sokrates afforded — were probably highly useful to him. Such advice being adverse to the natural tendencies of his mind, impressed upon him forcibly those points of the case which he was most likely to forget: and contributed to form in him that habit of self-command which is a marked feature in his character. He wished (such are the words ascribed to him by Xenophon) to pass through life as easily and agreeably as possible. Ease comes before pleasure: but his plan of life was to obtain as much pleasure as he could, consistent with ease, or without difficulty and danger. He actually realised, as far as our means of knowledge extend, that middle path of life which Sokrates declared to be impracticable.

Aristippus acted conformably to the advice of Sokrates.

Much of the advice given by Sokrates, Aristippus appears to have followed, though not from the reasons which Sokrates puts forward for giving it. When Sokrates reminds him that men liable to be tempted and ensnared by the love of good eating, were unfit to command — when he animadverts on the insanity of the passionate lover, who exposed himself to the extremity of danger for the purpose of possessing a married woman, while there were such abundant means of gratifying the sexual appetite without any difficulty or danger whatever[179] — to all this Aristippus assents: and what we read about his life is in perfect conformity therewith. Reason and prudence supply ample motives for following such advice, whether a man be animated with the love of command or not. So again, when Sokrates impresses upon Aristippus that the Good and the Beautiful were the same, being relative only to human wants or satisfaction — and that nothing was either good or beautiful, except in so far as it tended to confer relief, security, or enjoyment — this lesson too Aristippus laid to heart, and applied in a way suitable to his own peculiar dispositions and capacities.

[179] Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 5. καὶ τηλικούτων μὲν ἐπικειμένων τῷ μοιχεύοντι κακῶν τε καὶ αἰσχρῶν, ὄντων δὲ πολλῶν τῶν ἀπολυσόντων τῆς τῶν ἀφροδισιῶν ἐπιθυμίας ἐν ἀδείᾳ, ὅμως εἰς τὰ ἐπικίνδυνα φέρεσθαι, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἤδη τοῦτο παντάπασι κακοδαιμονῶντός ἐστιν; Ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, ἔφη (Ἀρίστιππος).

Self-mastery and independence — the great aspiration of Aristippus.

The type of character represented by Aristippus is the man who enjoys what the present affords, so far as can be done without incurring future mischief, or provoking the enmity of others — but who will on no account enslave himself to any enjoyment; who always maintains his own self-mastery and independence and who has prudence and intelligence enabling him to regulate each separate enjoyment so as not to incur preponderant evil in future.[180] This self-mastery and independence is in point of fact the capital aspiration of Aristippus, hardly less than of Antisthenes and Diogenes. He is competent to deal suitably with all varieties of persons, places, and situations, and to make the best of each — Οὗ γὰρ τοιούτων δεῖ, τουοῦτος εἶμ’ ἐγώ:[181] but he accepts what the situation presents, without yearning or struggling for that which it cannot present.[182] He enjoys the society both of the Syracusan despot Dionysius, and of the Hetæra Lais; but he will not make himself subservient either to one or to the other: he conceives himself able to afford, to both, as much satisfaction as he receives.[183] His enjoyments are not enhanced by the idea that others are excluded from the like enjoyment, and that he is a superior, privileged man: he has no jealousy or antipathy, no passion for triumphing over rivals, no demand for envy or admiration from spectators. Among the Hetæræ in Greece were included all the most engaging and accomplished women — for in Grecian matrimony, it was considered becoming and advantageous that the bride should be young and ignorant, and that as a wife she should neither see nor know any thing beyond the administration of her own feminine apartments and household.[184] Aristippus attached himself to those Hetæræ who pleased him; declaring that the charm of their society was in no way lessened by the knowledge that others enjoyed it also, and that he could claim no exclusive privilege.[185] His patience and mildness in argument is much commended. The main lesson which he had learnt from philosophy (he said), was self-appreciation — to behave himself with confidence in every man’s society: even if all laws were abrogated, the philosopher would still, without any law, live in the same way as he now did.[186] His confidence remained unshaken, when seized as a captive in Asia by order of the Persian satrap Artaphernes: all that he desired was, to be taken before the satrap himself.[187] Not to renounce pleasure, but to enjoy pleasure moderately and to keep desires under controul, — was in his judgment the true policy of life. But he was not solicitous to grasp enjoyment beyond what was easily attainable, nor to accumulate wealth or power which did not yield positive result.[188] While Sokrates recommended, and Antisthenes practised, the precaution of deadening the sexual appetite by approaching no women except such as were ugly and repulsive,[189] — while Xenophon in the Cyropædia,[190] working out the Sokratic idea of the dangerous fascination of beauty, represents Cyrus as refusing to see the captive Pantheia, and depicts the too confident Araspes (who treats such precaution as exaggerated timidity, and fully trusts his own self-possession), when appointed to the duty of guarding her, as absorbed against his will in a passion which makes him forget all reason and duty — Aristippus has sufficient self-mastery to visit the most seductive Hetæræ without being drawn into ruinous extravagance or humiliating subjugation. We may doubt whether he ever felt, even for Lais, a more passionate sentiment than Plato in his Epigram expresses towards the Kolophonian Hetæra Archeanassa.

[180] Diog. L. ii. 67. οὔτως ἦν καὶ ἑλέσθαι καὶ καταφρονῆσαι πολὺς.

[181] Diog. L. ii. 66. ἦν δὲ ἱκανὸς ἁρμόσασθαι καὶ τόπῳ καὶ χρόνῳ καὶ προσώπῳ, καὶ πᾶσαν περίστασιν ἁρμονίως ὑποκρίνασθαι· διὸ καὶ παρὰ Διονυσίῳ τῶν ἄλλων ηὐδοκίμει μᾶλλον, ἀεὶ τὸ προσπεσὸν εὖ διατιθέμενος· ἀπέλαυε μὲν γὰρ ἡδονῆς τῶν παρόντων, οὐκ ἐθήρα δὲ πόνῳ τὴν ἀπόλαυσιν τῶν οὐ παρόντων.

Horat. Epistol. i. 17, 23-24:—

“Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res, Tentantem majora, ferè præsentibus æquum.”

[182] Sophokles, Philoktêtes, 1049 (the words of Odysseus).

[183] Diog. L. ii. 75. ἔχρητο καὶ Λαΐδι τῇ ἑταίρᾳ· πρὸς οὖν τοὺς μεμφομένους ἔφη, Ἔχω Λαΐδα, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔχομαι· ἐπεὶ τὸ κρατεῖν καὶ μὴ ἡττᾶσθαι ἡδονῶν, ἄριστον — οὐ τὸ μὴ χρῆσθαι. ii. 77, Διονυσίου ποτὲ ἐρομένου, ἐπὶ τί ἥκοι, ἔφη, ἐπὶ τῷ μεταδώσειν ὧν ἔχοι, καὶ μεταλήψεσθαι ὧν μὴ ἔχοι.

Lucian introduces Ἀρετὴ and Τρυφὴ as litigating before Δίκη for the possession of Aristippus: the litigation is left undecided (Bis Accusatus, c. 13-23).

[184] Xenophon, Œconomic. iii. 13, vii. 6, Ischomachus says to Sokrates about his wife, Καὶ τί ἂν ἐπισταμένην αὐτὴν παρέλαβον, ἣ ἔτη μὲν οὔπω πεντεκαίδεκα γεγονυῖα ἦλθε πρὸς ἐμέ, τὸν δ’ ἐμπροσθεν χρόνον ἔζη ὑπὸ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας, ὅπως ὡς ἔλαχιστα μὲν ὄψοιτο, ἐλάχιστα δ’ ἀκούσοιτο, ἐλάχιστα δὲ ἔροιτο;

[185] Diog. L. ii. 74. On this point his opinion coincided with that of Diogenes, and of the Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus (D. L. vii. 131), who maintained, that among the wise wives ought to be in common, and that all marital jealousy ought to be discarded. Ἀρέσκει δ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ κοινὰς εἶναι τὰς γυναῖκας δεῖν παρὰ τοῖς σοφοῖς ὥστε τὸν ἐντυχόντα τῇ ἐντυχούσῃ χρῆσθαι, καθά φησι Ζήνων ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ καὶ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Πολιτείας, ἀλλά τε Διογένης ὁ Κυνικὸς καὶ Πλάτων· πάντας τε παῖδας ἐπίσης στέρξομεν πατέρων τρόπον, καὶ ἡ ἐπὶ μοιχείᾳ ζηλοτυπία περιαιρεθήσεται. Compare Sextus Emp. Pyrrh. H. iii. 205.

[186] Diog. L. ii. 68. The like reply is ascribed to Aristotle. Diog. L. v. 20; Plutarch, De Profect. in Virtut. p. 80 D.

[187] Diog. L. ii. 79.

[188] Diog. L. ii. 72-74.

[189] Xenoph. Memor. i. 3, 11-14; Symposion, iv. 38; Diog. L. vi. 3. (Ἀντισθένης) ἔλεγε συνεχὲς — Μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην — καὶ — χρὴ τοιαύταις πλησιάζειν γυναιξίν, αἳ χάριν εἴσονται.

[190] Xenoph. Cyropæd. v. 1, 2-18.

Aristippus compared with Antisthenes and Diogenes — Points of agreement and disagreement between them.

Aristippus is thus remarkable, like the Cynics Antisthenes and Diogenes, not merely for certain theoretical doctrines, but also for acting out a certain plan of life.[191] We know little or nothing of the real life of Aristippus, except what appears in Xenophon. The biography of him (as of the Cynic Diogenes) given by Diogenes Laertius, consists of little more than a string of anecdotes, mostly sayings, calculated to illustrate a certain type of character.[192] Some of these are set down by those who approved the type, and who therefore place it in a favourable point of view — others by those who disapprove it and give the opposite colour.

[191] Sextus Empiricus and others describe this by the Greek word ἀγωγή (Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. i. 150). Plato’s beautiful epigram upon Archeanassa is given by Diogenes L. iii. 31. Compare this with the remark of Aristippus — Plutarch, Amatorius, p. 750 E.

That the society of these fascinating Hetæræ was dangerous, and exhaustive to the purses of those who sought it, may be seen from the expensive manner of life of Theodotê, described in Xenophon, Mem. iii. 11, 4.

The amorous impulses or fancies of Plato were censured by Dikæarchus. See Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iv. 34, 71, with Davies’s note.

[192] This is justly remarked by Wendt in his instructive Dissertation, De Philosophiâ Cyrenaicâ, p. 8 (Göttingen, 1841).

We can understand and compare the different types of character represented by Antisthenes or Diogenes, and by Aristippus: but we have little knowledge of the real facts of their lives. The two types, each manifesting that marked individuality which belongs to the Sokratic band, though in many respects strongly contrasted, have also some points of agreement. Both Aristippus and Diogenes are bent on individual freedom and independence of character: both of them stand upon their own appreciation of life and its phenomena: both of them are impatient of that servitude to the opinions and antipathies of others, which induces a man to struggle for objects, not because they afford him satisfaction, but because others envy him for possessing them — and to keep off evils, not because he himself feels them as such, but because others pity or despise him for being subject to them; both of them are exempt from the competitive and ambitious feelings, from the thirst after privilege and power, from the sense of superiority arising out of monopolised possession and exclusion of others from partnership. Diogenes kept aloof from political life and civil obligations as much as Aristippus; and would have pronounced (as Aristippus replies to Sokrates in the Xenophontic dialogue) that the task of ruling others, instead of being a prize to be coveted, was nothing better than an onerous and mortifying servitude,[193] not at all less onerous because a man took up the burthen of his own accord. These points of agreement are real: but the points of disagreement are not less real. Diogenes maintains his free individuality, and puts himself out of the reach of human enmity, by clothing himself in impenetrable armour: by attaining positive insensibility, as near as human life permits. This is with him not merely the acting out of a scheme of life, but also a matter of pride. He is proud of his ragged garment and coarse[194] fare, as exalting him above others, and as constituting him a pattern of endurance: and he indulges this sentiment by stinging and contemptuous censure of every one. Aristippus has no similar vanity: he achieves his independence without so heavy a renunciation: he follows out his own plan of life, without setting himself up as a pattern for others. But his plan is at the same time more delicate; requiring greater skill and intelligence, more of manifold sagacity, in the performer. Horace, who compares the two and gives the preference to Aristippus, remarks that Diogenes, though professing to want nothing, was nevertheless as much dependent upon the bounty of those who supplied his wallet with provisions, as Aristippus upon the favour of princes: and that Diogenes had only one fixed mode of proceeding, while Aristippus could master and turn to account a great diversity of persons and situations — could endure hardship with patience and dignity, when it was inevitable, and enjoy the opportunities of pleasure when they occurred. “To Aristippus alone it is given to wear both fine garments and rags” is a remark ascribed to Plato.[195] In truth, Aristippus possesses in eminent measure that accomplishment, the want of which Plato proclaims to be so misleading and mischievous — artistic skill in handling human affairs, throughout his dealings with mankind.[196]

[193] It is this servitude of political life, making the politician the slave of persons and circumstances around him, which Horace contrasts with the philosophical independence of Aristippus:—

Ac ne forté roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter; Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri Quo me cunque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes. Nunc agilis fio et mersor civilibus undis, Virtutis veræ custos rigidusque satelles: Nunc in Aristippi furtim præcepta relabor, Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor. (Epist. i. 1, 15.)

So also the Platonic Sokrates (Theætêt. pp. 172-175) depicts forcibly the cramped and fettered lives of rhetors and politicians; contrasting them with the self-judgment and independence of speculative and philosophical enquirers — ὡς οἰκέται πρὸς ἐλευθέρους τεθράφθαι — ὁ μὲν τῷ ὄντι ἐν ἐλευθερίᾳ τε καὶ σχολῇ τεθραμμένος, ὃν δὴ φιλόσοφον καλεῖς.

[194] Diog. L. ii. 36. στρέψαντος Ἀντισθένους τὸ διεῤῥωγὸς τοῦ τρίβωνος εἰς τοὐμφανές, Ὁρῶ σοῦ, ἔφη (Σωκράτης), διὰ τοῦ τρίβωνος τὴν κενοδοξίαν.

[195] Horat. Epistol. i. 17, 13-24; Diog. L. vi. 46-56-66.

“Si pranderet olus patienter, regibus uti Nollet Aristippus.” “Si sciret regibus uti, Fastidiret olus, qui me notat.” Utrius horum Verba probes et facta, doce: vel junior audi Cur sit Aristippi potior sententia. Namque Mordacem Cynicum sic eludebat, ut aiunt: “Scurror ego ipse mihi, populo tu: rectius hoc et Splendidius multò est. Equus ut me portet, alat rex, Officium facio: tu poscis vilia rerum, Dante minor, quamvis fers te nullius egentem.” Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res, Tentantem majora, ferè præsentibus æquum.

(Compare Diog. L. ii. 102, vi. 58, where this anecdote is reported as of Plato instead of Aristippus.)

Horace’s view and scheme of life are exceedingly analogous to those of Aristippus. Plutarch, Fragm. De Homero, p. 1190; De Fortunâ Alex. p. 330 D. Diog. Laert. ii. 67. διό ποτε Στράτωνα, οἱ δὲ Πλάτωνα, πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν, Σοὶ μόνῳ δέδοται καὶ χλανίδα φορεῖν καὶ ῥάκος. The remark cannot have been made by Straton, who was not contemporary with Aristippus. Even Sokrates lived by the bounty of his rich friends, and indeed could have had no other means of supporting his wife and children; though he accepted only a portion of what they tendered to him, declining the remainder. See the remark of Aristippus, Diog. L. ii. 74.

[196] Plato, Phædon, p. 89 E. ὅτι ἄνευ τέχνης τῆς περὶ τἀνθρώπεια ὁ τοιοῦτος χρῆσθαι ἐπιχειρεῖ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.

Attachment of Aristippus to ethics and philosophy — contempt for other studies.

That the scheme of life projected by Aristippus was very difficult requiring great dexterity, prudence, and resolution, to execute it — we may see plainly by the Xenophontic dialogue; wherein Sokrates pronounces it to be all but impracticable. As far as we can judge, he surmounted the difficulties of it: yet we do not know enough of his real life to determine with accuracy what varieties of difficulties he experienced. He followed the profession of a Sophist, receiving fees for his teaching: and his attachment to philosophy (both as contrasted with ignorance and as contrasted with other studies not philosophy) was proclaimed in the most emphatic language. It was better (he said) to be a beggar, than an uneducated man:[197] the former was destitute of money, but the latter was destitute of humanity. He disapproved varied and indiscriminate instruction, maintaining that persons ought to learn in youth what they were to practise in manhood: and he compared those who, neglecting philosophy, employed themselves in literature or physical science, to the suitors in the Odyssey who obtained the favours of Melantho and the other female servants, but were rejected by the Queen Penelopê herself.[198] He treated with contempt the study of geometry, because it took no account, and made no mention, of what was good and evil, beautiful and ugly. In other arts (he said), even in the vulgar proceeding of the carpenter and the currier, perpetual reference was made to good, as the purpose intended to be served and to evil as that which was to be avoided: but in geometry no such purpose was ever noticed.[199]

[197] Diog. L. ii. 70; Plutarch, Fragm. Ὑπομνήματ’ εἰς Ἡσίοδον, s. 9. Ἀρίστιππος δὲ ἀπ’ ἐναντίας ὁ Σωκρατικὸς ἔλεγε, συμβούλου δεῖσθαι χεῖρον εἶναι ἢ προσαιτεῖν.

[198] Diog. L. ii. 79-80. τοὺς τῶν ἐγκυκλίων παιδευμάτων μετασχόντας, φιλοσοφίας δὲ ἀπολειφθέντας, &c. Plutarch, Fragm. Στρωματέων, sect. 9.

[199] Aristot. Metaph. B. 996, a 32, M. 1078, a. 35. ὥστε διὰ ταῦτα καὶ τῶν σοφιστῶν τινὲς οἷον Ἀρίστιππος προεπηλάκιζον αὐτὰς, &c.

Aristippus taught as a Sophist. His reputation thus acquired procured for him the attentions of Dionysius and others.

This last opinion of Aristippus deserves particular attention, because it is attested by Aristotle. And it confirms what we hear upon less certain testimony, that Aristippus discountenanced the department of physical study generally (astronomy and physics) as well as geometry; confining his attention to facts and reasonings which bore upon the regulation of life.[200] In this restrictive view he followed the example and precepts of Sokrates — of Isokrates — seemingly also of Protagoras and Prodikus though not of the Eleian Hippias, whose course of study was larger and more varied.[201] Aristippus taught as a Sophist, and appears to have acquired great reputation in that capacity both at Athens and elsewhere.[202] Indeed, if he had not acquired such intellectual and literary reputation at Athens, he would have had little chance of being invited elsewhere, and still less chance of receiving favours and presents from Dionysius and other princes:[203] whose attentions did not confer celebrity, but waited upon it when obtained, and doubtless augmented it. If Aristippus lived a life of indulgence at Athens, we may fairly presume that his main resources for sustaining it, like those of Isokrates, were derived from his own teaching: and that the presents which he received from Dionysius of Syracuse, like those which Isokrates received from Nikokles of Cyprus, were welcome additions, but not his main income. Those who (like most of the historians of philosophy) adopt the opinion of Sokrates and Plato, that it is disgraceful for an instructor to receive payment from the persons taught will doubtless despise Aristippus for such a proceeding: for my part I dissent from this opinion, and I therefore do not concur in the disparaging epithets bestowed upon him. And as for the costly indulgences, and subservience to foreign princes, of which Aristippus stands accused, we must recollect that the very same reproaches were advanced against Plato and Aristotle by their contemporaries: and as far as we know, with quite as much foundation.[204]

[200] Diog. L. ii. 92. Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 11. Plutarch, apud Eusebium Præp. Ev. i. 8, 9.

[201] Plato, Protagor. p. 318 E, where the different methods followed by Protagoras and Hippias are indicated.

[202] Diog. Laert. ii. 62. Alexis Comicus ap. Athenæ. xii. 544.

Aristokles (ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xiv. 18) treats the first Aristippus as a mere voluptuary, who said nothing generally περὶ τοῦ τέλους. All the doctrine (he says) came from the younger Aristippus. I think this very improbable. To what did the dialogues composed by the first Aristippus refer? How did he get his reputation?

[203] Several anecdotes are recounted about sayings and doings of Aristippus in his intercourse with Dionysius. Which Dionysius is meant? — the elder or the younger? Probably the elder.

It is to be remembered that Dionysius the Elder lived and reigned until the year 367 B.C., in which year his son Dionysius the Younger succeeded him. The death of Sokrates took place in 399 B.C.: between which, and the accession of Dionysius the Younger, an interval of 32 years occurred. Plato was old, being sixty years of age, when he first visited the younger Dionysius, shortly after the accession of the latter. Aristippus cannot well have been younger than Plato, and he is said to have been older than Æschines Sokraticus (D. L. ii. 83). Compare D. L. ii. 41.

When, with these dates present to our minds, we read the anecdotes recounted by Diogenes L. respecting the sayings and doings of Aristippus with Dionysius, we find: that several of them relate to the contrast between the behaviour of Aristippus and that of Plato at Syracuse. Now it is certain that Plato went once to Syracuse when he was forty years of age (Epist. vii. init.), in 387 B.C. — and according to one report (Lucian, De Parasito, 34), he went there twice — while the elder Dionysius was in the plenitude of power: but he made an unfavourable impression, and was speedily sent away in displeasure. I think it very probable that Aristippus may have visited the elder Dionysius, and may have found greater favour with him than Plato found (see Lucian, l. c.), since Dionysius was an accomplished man and a composer of tragedies. Moreover Aristippus was a Kyrenæan, and Aristippus wrote about Libya (D. L. ii. 83).

[204] See the epigram of the contemporary poet, Theokritus of Chios, in Diog. L. v. 11; compare Athenæus, viii. 354, xiii. 566. Aristokles, ap. Eusebium Præp. Ev. xv. 2.

Aristippus composed several dialogues, of which the titles alone are preserved.[205] They must however have been compositions of considerable merit, since Theopompus accused Plato of borrowing largely from them.

[205] Diog. L. ii. 84-85.

Ethical theory of Aristippus and the Kyrenaic philosophers.

As all the works of Aristippus are lost, we cannot pretend to understand fully his theory from the meagre abstract given in Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes. Yet the theory is of importance in the history of ancient speculation, since it passed with some modifications to Epikurus, and was adopted by a large proportion of instructed men. The Kyrenaic doctrine was transmitted by Aristippus to his disciples Æthiops and Antipater: but his chief disciple appears to have been his daughter Arêtê: whom he instructed so well, that she was able to instruct her own son, the second Aristippus, called for that reason Metrodidactus. The basis of his ethical theory was, pleasure and pain: pleasure being smooth motion, pain, rough motion:[206] pleasure being the object which all animals, by nature and without deliberation, loved, pursued, and felt satisfaction in obtaining pain being the object which they all by nature hated and tried to avoid. Aristippus considered that no one pleasure was different from another, nor more pleasurable than another:[207] that the attainment of these special pleasurable moments, or as many of them as practicable, was The End to be pursued in life. By Happiness, they understood the sum total of these special pleasures, past, present, and future: yet Happiness was desirable not on its own account, but on account of its constituent items, especially such of those items as were present and certainly future.[208] Pleasures and pains of memory and expectation were considered to be of little importance. Absence of pain or relief from pain, on the one hand — they did not consider as equivalent to positive pleasure — nor absence of pleasure or withdrawal of pleasure, on the other hand — as equivalent to positive pain. Neither the one situation nor the other was a motion (κίνησις), i.e. a positive situation, appreciable by the consciousness: each was a middle state — a mere negation of consciousness, like the phenomena of sleep.[209] They recognised some mental pleasures and pains as derivative from bodily sensation and as exclusively individual — others as not so: for example, there were pleasures and pains of sympathy; and a man often felt joy at the prosperity of his friends and countrymen, quite as genuine as that which he felt for his own good fortune. But they maintained that the bodily pleasures and pains were much more vehement than the mental which were not bodily: for which reason, the pains employed by the laws in punishing offenders were chiefly bodily. The fear of pain was in their judgments more operative than the love of pleasure: and though pleasure was desirable for its own sake, yet the accompanying conditions of many pleasures were so painful as to deter the prudent man from aiming at them. These obstructions rendered it impossible for any one to realise the sum total of pleasures constituting Happiness. Even the wise man sometimes failed, and the foolish man sometimes did well, though in general the reverse was the truth: but under the difficult conditions of life, a man must be satisfied if he realised some particular pleasurable conjunctions, without aspiring to a continuance or totality of the like.[210]

[206] Diog. L. ii. 86-87. δύο πάθη ὑφίσταντο, πόνον καὶ ἡδονήν· τὴν μὲν λείαν κίνησιν, τὴν ἡδονήν, τὸν δὲ πόνον, τραχεῖαν κίνησιν· μὴ διαφέρειν τε ἡδονὴν ἡδονῆς, μηδὲ ἥδιον τι εἶναι· καὶ τὴν μὲν, εὐδοκητὴν πᾶσι ζώοις, τὸν δὲ ἀποκρουστικόν.

[207] Diog. L. ii. p. 87. μὴ διαφέρειν τε ἡδονὴν ἡδονῆς, μηδὲ ἥδιον τι εἶναι. They did not mean by these words to deny that one pleasure was more vehement and attractive than another pleasure, or that one pain is more vehement and deterrent than another pain: for it is expressly said afterwards (s. 90) that they admitted this. They meant to affirm that one pleasure did not differ from another so far forth as pleasure: that all pleasures must be ranked as a class, and compared with each other in respect of intensity, durability, and other properties possessed in greater or less degree.

[208] Diog. L. ii. pp. 88-89. Athenæus, xii. p. 544.

[209] Diog. L. ii. 89-90. μὴ οὔσης τῆς ἀπονίας ἢ τῆς ἀηδονίας κινήσεως, ἐπεὶ ἡ ἀπονία οἱονεὶ καθεύδοντός ἐστι κατάστασις — μέσας καταστάσεις ὠνόμαζον ἀηδονίαν καὶ ἀπονίαν.

A doctrine very different from this is ascribed to Aristippus in Galen — Placit. Philos. (xix. p. 230, Kühn). It is there affirmed that by pleasure Aristippus understood, not the pleasure of sense, but that disposition of mind whereby a person becomes insensible to pain, and hard to be imposed upon (ἀνάλγητος καὶ δυσγοήτευτος).

[210] Diog. L. ii. 91.

It does not appear that the Kyrenaic sect followed out into detail the derivative pleasures and pains; nor the way in which, by force of association, these come to take precedence of the primary, exercising influence on the mind both more forcible and more constant. We find this important fact remarkably stated in the doctrine of Kalliphon.

Clemens Alexandr. Stromat. ii. p. 415, ed. 1629. Κατὰ δὲ τοὺς περὶ Καλλιφῶντα, ἕνεκα μὲν τῆς ἡδονῆς παρεισῆλθεν ἡ ἀρετή· χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον, τὸ περὶ αὐτὴν κάλλος κατιδοῦσα, ἰσότιμον ἑαυτὴν τῇ ἀρχῇ, τουτέστι τῇ ἡδονῇ, παρέσχεν.

Prudence — good, by reason of the pleasure which it ensured, and of the pains which it was necessary to avoid. Just and honourable, by law or custom — not by nature.

Aristippus regarded prudence or wisdom as good, yet not as good per se, but by reason of the pleasures which it enabled us to procure and the pains which it enabled us to avoid — and wealth as a good, for the same reason. A friend also was valuable, for the use and necessities of life: just as each part of one’s own body was precious, so long as it was present and could serve a useful purpose.[211] Some branches of virtue might be possessed by persons who were not wise: and bodily training was a valuable auxiliary to virtue. Even the wise man could never escape pain and fear, for both of these were natural: but he would keep clear of envy, passionate love, and superstition, which were not natural, but consequences of vain opinion. A thorough acquaintance with the real nature of Good and Evil would relieve him from superstition as well as from the fear of death.[212]

[211] Diog. L. ii. 91. τὴν φρόνησιν ἀγαθὸν μὲν εἶναι λέγουσιν, οὐ δι’ ἑαυτὴν δὲ αἱρετήν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξ αὐτῆς περιγινόμενα· τὸν φίλον τῆς χρείας ἕνεκα· καὶ γὰρ μέρος σώματος, μέχρις ἂν παρῇ, ἀσπάζεσθαι.

The like comparison is employed by the Xenophontic Sokrates in the Memorabilia (i. 2, 52-55), that men cast away portions of their own body, so soon as these portions cease to be useful.

[212] Diog. L. ii. p. 92.

The Kyrenaics did not admit that there was anything just, or honourable, or base, by nature: but only by law and custom: nevertheless the wise man would be sufficiently restrained, by the fear of punishment and of discredit, from doing what was repugnant to the society in which he lived. They maintained that wisdom was attainable; that the senses did not at first judge truly, but might be improved by study; that progress was realised in philosophy as in other arts, and that there were different gradations of it, as well as different gradations of pain and suffering, discernible in different men. The wise man, as they conceived him, was a reality; not (like the wise man of the Stoics) a sublime but unattainable ideal.[213]

[213] Diog. L. ii. p. 93.

Their logical theory — nothing knowable except the phenomenal, our own sensations and feelings — no knowledge of the absolute.

Such were (as far as our imperfect evidence goes) the ethical and emotional views of the Kyrenaic school: their theory and precepts respecting the plan and prospects of life. In regard to truth and knowledge, they maintained that we could have no knowledge of anything but human sensations, affections, feelings, &c. (πάθη): that respecting the extrinsic, extra-sensational, absolute, objects or causes from whence these feelings proceeded, we could know nothing at all. Partly for this reason, they abstained from all attention to the study of nature — to astronomy and physics: partly also because they did not see any bearing of these subjects upon good and evil, or upon the conduct of life. They turned their attention mainly to ethics, partly also to logic as subsidiary to ethical reasoning.[214]

[214] Diog. L. ii. p. 92. Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vi. 53.

Such low estimation of mathematics and physics and attention given almost exclusively to the feelings and conduct of human life — is a point common to the opposite schools of Aristippus and Antisthenes, derived by both of them from Sokrates. Herein Plato stands apart from all the three.

The theory of Aristippus, as given above, is only derived from a meagre abstract and from a few detached hints. We do not know how he himself stated it: still less how he enforced and vindicated it. — He, as well as Antisthenes, composed dialogues: which naturally implies diversity of handling. Their main thesis, therefore — the text, as it were, upon which they debated or expatiated (which is all that the abstract gives) — affords very inadequate means, even if we could rely upon the accuracy of the statement, for appreciating their philosophical competence. We should form but a poor idea of the acute, abundant, elastic and diversified dialectic of Plato, if all his dialogues had been lost — and if we had nothing to rely upon except the summary of Platonism prepared by Diogenes Laertius: which summary, nevertheless, is more copious and elaborate than the same author has furnished either of Aristippus or Antisthenes.

Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus passed to the Stoics and Epikureans.

In the history of the Greek mind these two last-mentioned philosophers (though included by Cicero among the plebeii philosophi) are not less important than Plato and Aristotle. The speculations and precepts of Antisthenes passed, with various enlargements and modifications, into the Stoic philosophy: those of Aristippus into the Epikurean: the two most widely extended ethical sects in the subsequent Pagan world. — The Cynic sect, as it stood before it embraced the enlarged physical, kosmical, and social theories of Zeno and his contemporaries, reducing to a minimum all the desires and appetites — cultivating insensibility to the pains of life, and even disdainful insensibility to its pleasures — required extraordinary force of will and obstinate resolution, but little beyond. Where there was no selection or discrimination, the most ordinary prudence sufficed. It was otherwise with the scheme of Aristippus and the Kyrenaics: which, if it tasked less severely the powers of endurance, demanded a far higher measure of intelligent prudence. Selection of that which might safely be enjoyed, and determination of the limit within which enjoyment must be confined, were constantly indispensable. Prudence, knowledge, the art of mensuration or calculation, were essential to Aristippus, and ought to be put in the foreground when his theory is stated.

Ethical theory of Aristippus is identical with that of the Platonic Sokrates in the Protagoras.

That theory is, in point of fact, identical with the theory expounded by the Platonic Sokrates in Plato’s Protagoras. The general features of both are the same. Sokrates there lays it down explicitly, that pleasure per se is always good, and pain per se always evil: that there is no other good (per se) except pleasure and diminution of pain — no other evil (per se) except pain and diminution of pleasure: that there is no other object in life except to live through it as much as possible with pleasures and without pains;[215] but that many pleasures become evil, because they cannot be had without depriving us of greater pleasures or imposing upon us greater pains while many pains become good, because they prevent greater pains or ensure greater pleasures: that the safety of life thus lies in a correct comparison of the more or less in pleasures and pains, and in a selection founded thereupon. In other words, the safety of life depends upon calculating knowledge or prudence, the art or science of measuring.

[215] Plato, Protag. p. 355 A. ἢ ἀρκεῖ ὑμῖν τὸ ἡδέως καταβιῶναι τὸν βίον ἄνευ λυπῶν; εἰ δὲ ἀρκεῖ, καὶ μὴ ἔχετε μηδὲν ἄλλο φάναι εἶναι ἀγαθὸν ἢ κακόν, ὃ μὴ εἰς ταῦτα τελευτᾷ, τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο ἀκούετε.

The exposition of this theory, by the Platonic Sokrates, occupies the latter portion of the Protagoras, from p. 351 to near the conclusion. See below, [ch. xxiii.] of the present work.

The language held by Aristippus to Sokrates, in the Xenophontic dialogue (Memor. ii. 1. 9), is exactly similar to that of the Platonic Sokrates, as above cited — ἐμαυτὸν τάττω εἰς τοὺς βουλομένους ᾗ ῥᾷστά τε καὶ ἥδιστα βιοτεύειν.

Difference in the manner of stating the theory by the two.

The theory here laid down by the Platonic Sokrates is the same as that of Aristippus. The purpose of life is stated almost in the same words by both: by the Platonic Sokrates, and by Aristippus in the Xenophontic dialogue — “to live through with enjoyment and without suffering.” The Platonic Sokrates denies, quite as emphatically as Aristippus, any good or evil, honourable or base, except as representing the result of an intelligent comparison of pleasures and pains. Judicious calculation is postulated by both: pleasures and pains being assumed by both as the only ends of pursuit and avoidance, to which calculation is to be applied. The main difference is, that the prudence, art, or science, required for making this calculation rightly, are put forward by the Platonic Sokrates as the prominent item in his provision for passing through life: whereas, in the scheme of Aristippus, as far as we know it, such accomplished intelligence, though equally recognised and implied, is not equally thrust into the foreground. So it appears at least in the abstract which we possess of his theory; if we had his own exposition of it, perhaps we might find the case otherwise. In that abstract, indeed, we find the writer replying to those who affirmed prudence or knowledge, to be good per se — and maintaining that it is only good by reason of its consequences:[216] that is, that it is not good as End, in the same sense in which pleasure or mitigation, of pain are good. This point of the theory, however, coincides again with the doctrine of the Platonic Sokrates in the Protagoras: where the art of calculation is extolled simply as an indispensable condition to the most precious results of human happiness.

[216] Diog. L. ii. p. 91.

What I say here applies especially to the Protagoras: for I am well aware that in other dialogues the Platonic Sokrates is made to hold different language.[217] But in the Protagoras he defends a theory the same as that of Aristippus, and defends it by an elaborate argument which silences the objections of the Sophist Protagoras; who at first will not admit the unqualified identity of the pleasurable, judiciously estimated and selected, with the good. The general and comprehensive manner in which Plato conceives and expounds the theory, is probably one evidence of his superior philosophical aptitude as compared with Aristippus and his other contemporaries. He enunciates, side by side, and with equal distinctness, the two conditions requisite for his theory of life. 1. The calculating or measuring art. 2. A description of the items to which alone such measurement must be applied — pleasures and pains. — These two together make the full theory. In other dialogues Plato insists equally upon the necessity of knowledge or calculating prudence: but then he is not equally distinct in specifying the items to which such prudence or calculation is to be applied. On the other hand, it is quite possible that Aristippus, in laying out the same theory, may have dwelt with peculiar emphasis upon the other element in the theory: i.e. that while expressly insisting upon pleasures and pains, as the only data to be compared, he may have tacitly assumed the comparing or calculating intelligence, as if it were understood by itself, and did not require to be formally proclaimed.

[217] See chapters [xxiii.], [xxiv.], [xxxii]. of the present work, in which I enter more fully into the differences between the Protagoras, Gorgias, and Philêbus, in respect to this point.

Aristippus agrees with the Platonic Sokrates in the Protagoras, as to the general theory of life respecting pleasure and pain.

He agrees with the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias (see pp. 500-515), in keeping aloof from active political life. ἂ αὑτοῦ πράττειν, καὶ οὐ πολυπραγμονεῖν ἐν τῷ βίῳ — which Sokrates, in the Gorgias (p. 526 C), proclaims as the conduct of the true philosopher, proclaimed with equal emphasis by Aristippus. Compare the Platonic Apology, p. 31 D-E.

Distinction to be made between a general theory — and the particular application of it made by the theorist to his own tastes and circumstances.

A distinction must here be made between the general theory of life laid down by Aristippus — and the particular application which he made of that theory to his own course of proceeding. What we may observe is, that the Platonic Sokrates (in the Protagoras) agrees in the first, or general theory: whether he would have agreed in the second (or application to the particular case) we are not informed, but we may probably assume the negative. And we find Sokrates (in the Xenophontic dialogue) taking the same negative ground against Aristippus — upon the second point, not upon the first. He seeks to prove that the course of conduct adopted by Aristippus, instead of carrying with it a preponderance of pleasure, will entail a preponderance of pain. He does not dispute the general theory.

Kyrenaic theorists after Aristippus.

Though Aristippus and the Kyrenaic sect are recognised as the first persons who laid down this general theory, yet various others apart from them adopted it likewise. We may see this not merely from the Protagoras of Plato, but also from the fact that Aristotle, when commenting upon the theory in his Ethics,[218] cites Eudoxus (eminent both as mathematician and astronomer, besides being among the hearers of Plato) as its principal champion. Still the school of Kyrênê are recorded as a continuous body, partly defending, partly modifying the theory of Aristippus.[219] Hegesias, Annikeris, and Theodôrus are the principal Kyrenaics named: the last of them contemporary with Ptolemy Soter, Lysimachus, Epikurus, Theophrastus, and Stilpon.

[218] Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. x. 2.

[219] Sydenham, in his notes on Philêbus (note 39, p. 76), accuses Aristippus and the Kyrenaics of prevarication and sophistry in the statement of their doctrine respecting Pleasure. He says that they called it indiscriminately ἀγαθὸν and τἀγαθόν — (a good — The Good) — “they used the fallacy of changing a particular term for a term which is universal, or vice versâ, by the sly omission or insertion of the definite article The before the word Good” (p. 78). He contrasts with this prevarication the ingenuousness of Eudoxus, as the advocate of Pleasure (Aristot. Eth. N. x. 2). I know no evidence for either of these allegations: either for the prevarication of Aristippus or the ingenuousness of Eudoxus.

Theodôrus — Annikeris — Hegesias.

Diogenes Laertius had read a powerfully written book of Theodôrus, controverting openly the received opinions respecting the Gods:—which few of the philosophers ventured to do. Cicero also mentions a composition of Hegesias.[220] Of Annikeris we know none; but he, too, probably, must have been an author. The doctrines which we find ascribed to these Kyrenaics evince how much affinity there was, at bottom, between them and the Cynics, in spite of the great apparent opposition. Hegesias received the surname of the Death-Persuader: he considered happiness to be quite unattainable, and death to be an object not of fear, but of welcome acceptance, in the eyes of a wise man. He started from the same basis as Aristippus: pleasure as the expetendum, pain as the fugiendum, to which all our personal friendships and aversions were ultimately referable. But he considered that the pains of life preponderated over the pleasures, even under the most favourable circumstances. For conferring pleasure, or for securing continuance of pleasure — wealth, high birth, freedom, glory, were of no greater avail than their contraries poverty, low birth, slavery, ignominy. There was nothing which was, by nature or universally, either pleasurable or painful. Novelty, rarity, satiety, rendered one thing pleasurable, another painful, to different persons and at different times. The wise man would show his wisdom, not in the fruitless struggle for pleasures, but in the avoidance or mitigation of pains: which he would accomplish more successfully by rendering himself indifferent to the causes of pleasure. He would act always for his own account, and would value himself higher than other persons: but he would at the same time reflect that the mistakes of these others were involuntary, and he would give them indulgent counsel, instead of hating them. He would not trust his senses as affording any real knowledge: but he would be satisfied to act upon the probable appearances of sense, or upon phenomenal knowledge.[221]

[220] Diog. L. ii. 97. Θεόδωρος — παντάπασιν ἀναιρῶν τὰς περὶ θεῶν δόξας. Diog. L. ii. 86, 97. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 34, 83-84. Ἡγησίας ὁ πεισιθάνατος.

[221] Diog. L. ii. 93, 94.

Hegesias — Low estimation of life — renunciation of pleasure — coincidence with the Cynics.

Such is the summary which we read of the doctrines of Hegesias: who is said to have enforced his views,[222] — of the real character of life, as containing a great preponderance of misfortune and suffering — in a manner so persuasive, that several persons were induced to commit suicide. Hence he was prohibited by the first Ptolemy from lecturing in such a strain. His opinions respecting life coincide in the main with those set forth by Sokrates in the Phædon of Plato: which dialogue also is alleged to have operated so powerfully on the Platonic disciple Kleombrotus, that he was induced to terminate his own existence. Hegesias, agreeing with Aristippus that pleasure would be the Good, if you could get it — maintains that the circumstances of life are such as to render pleasure unattainable: and therefore advises to renounce pleasure at once and systematically, in order that we may turn our attention to the only practicable end — that of lessening pain. Such deliberate renunciation of pleasure brings him into harmony with the doctrine of the Cynics.

[222] Compare the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue entitled Axiochus, pp. 366, 367, and the doctrine of Kleanthes in Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. ix. 88-92. Lucretius, v. 196-234.

Doctrine of Relativity affirmed by the Kyrenaics, as well as by Protagoras.

On another point, however, Hegesias repeats just the same doctrine as Aristippus. Both deny any thing like absolute knowledge: they maintain that all our knowledge is phenomenal, or relative to our own impressions or affections: that we neither do know, nor can know, anything about any real or supposed ultra-phenomenal object, i.e., things in themselves, as distinguished from our own impressions and apart from our senses and other capacities. Having no writings of Aristippus left, we know this doctrine only as it is presented by others, and those too opponents. We cannot tell whether Aristippus or his supporters stated their own doctrine in such a way as to be open to the objections which we read as urged by opponents. But the doctrine itself is not, in my judgment, refuted by any of those objections. “Our affections (πάθη) alone are known to us, but not the supposed objects or causes from which they proceed.” The word rendered by affections must here be taken in its most general and comprehensive sense — as including not merely sensations, but also remembrances, emotions, judgments, beliefs, doubts, volitions, conscious energies, &c. Whatever we know, we can know only as it appears to, or implicates itself somehow with, our own minds. All the knowledge which I possess, is an aggregate of propositions affirming facts, and the order or conjunction of facts, as they are, or have been, or may be, relative to myself. This doctrine of Aristippus is in substance the same as that which Protagoras announced in other words as — “Man is the measure of all things”. I have already explained and illustrated it, at considerable length, in my chapter on the Platonic Theætêtus, where it is announced by Theætetus and controverted by Sokrates.[223]

[223] See below, [vol. iii. ch. xxviii.] Compare Aristokles ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xiv. 18, 19, and Sextus Emp. adv. Mathemat. vii. 190-197, vi. 53. Sextus gives a summary of this doctrine of the Kyrenaics, more fair and complete than that given by Aristokles — at least so far as the extract from the latter in Eusebius enables us to judge. Aristokles impugns it vehemently, and tries to fasten upon it many absurd consequences — in my judgment without foundation. It is probable that by the term πάθος the Kyrenaics meant simply sensations internal and external: and that the question, as they handled it, was about the reality of the supposed Substratum or Object of sense, independent of any sentient Subject. It is also probable that, in explaining their views, they did not take account of the memory of past sensations — and the expectation of future sensations, in successions or conjunctions more or less similar — associating in the mind with the sensation present and actual, to form what is called a permanent object of sense. I think it likely that they set forth their own doctrine in a narrow and inadequate manner.

But this defect is noway corrected by Aristokles their opponent. On the contrary, he attacks them on their strong side: he vindicates against them the hypothesis of the ultra phenomenal, absolute, transcendental Object, independent of and apart from any sensation, present, past, or future — and from any sentient Subject. Besides that, he assumes them to deny, or ignore, many points which their theory noway requires them to deny. He urges one argument which, when properly understood, goes not against them, but strongly in their favour. “If these philosophers,” says Aristokles (Eus. xiv. 19, 1), “know that they experience sensation and perceive, they must know something beyond the sensation itself. If I say ἐγὼ καίομαι, ‘I am being burned,’ this is a proposition, not a sensation. These three things are of necessity co-essential — the sensation itself, the Object which causes it, the Subject which feels it (ἀνάγκη γε τρία ταῦτα συνυφίστασθαι — τό τε πάθος αὐτὸ καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον).” In trying to make good his conclusion — That you cannot know the sensation without the Object of sense — Aristokles at the same time asserts that the Object cannot be known apart from the sensation, nor apart from the knowing Subject. He asserts that the three are by necessity co-essential — i.e. implicated and indivisible in substance and existence: if distinguishable therefore, distinguishable only logically (λόγῳ χωριστὰ), admitting of being looked at in different points of view. But this is exactly the case of his opponents, when properly stated. They do not deny Object: they do not deny Subject: but they deny the independent and separate existence of the one as well as of the other: they admit the two only as relative to each other, or as reciprocally implicated in the indivisible fact of cognition. The reasoning of Aristokles thus goes to prove the opinion which he is trying to refute. Most of the arguments, which Sextus adduces in favour of the Kyrenaic doctrine, show forcibly that the Objective Something, apart from its Subjective correlate, is unknowable and a non-entity; but he does not include in the Subjective as much as ought to be included; he takes note only of the present sensation, and does not include sensations remembered or anticipated. Another very forcible part of Sextus’s reasoning may be found, vii. sect. 269-272, where he shows that a logical Subject per se is undefinable and inconceivable — that those who attempt to define Man (e.g.) do so by specifying more or fewer of the predicates of Man — and that if you suppose all the predicates to vanish, the Subject vanishes along with them.

CHAPTER IV.

XENOPHON.

Xenophon — his character — essentially a man of action and not a theorist — the Sokratic element in him an accessory.

There remains one other companion of Sokrates, for whom a dignified place must be reserved in this volume — Xenophon the son of Gryllus. It is to him that we owe, in great part, such knowledge as we possess of the real Sokrates. For the Sokratic conversations related by Xenophon, though doubtless dressed up and expanded by him, appear to me reports in the main of what Sokrates actually said. Xenophon was sparing in the introduction of his master as titular spokesman for opinions, theories, or controversial difficulties, generated in his own mind: a practice in which Plato indulged without any reserve, as we have seen by the numerous dialogues already passed in review.

I shall not however give any complete analysis of Xenophon’s works: because both the greater part of them, and the leading features of his personal character, belong rather to active than to speculative Hellenic life. As such, I have dealt with them largely in my History of Greece. What I have here to illustrate is the Sokratic element in his character, which is important indeed as accessory and modifying — yet not fundamental. Though he exemplifies and attests, as a witness, the theorising negative vein, the cross-examining Elenchus of Sokrates it is the preceptorial vein which he appropriates to himself and expands in its bearing on practical conduct. He is the semi-philosophising general; undervalued indeed as a hybrid by Plato — but by high-minded Romans like Cato, Agricola, Helvidius Priscus, &c. likely to be esteemed higher than Plato himself.[1] He is the military brother of the Sokratic family, distinguished for ability and energy in the responsible functions of command: a man of robust frame, courage, and presence of mind, who affronts cheerfully the danger and fatigues of soldiership, and who extracts philosophy from experience of the variable temper of armies, together with the multiplied difficulties and precarious authority of a Grecian general.[2] For our knowledge, imperfect as it is, of real Grecian life, we are greatly indebted to his works. All historians of Greece must draw largely from his Hellenica and Anabasis: and we learn much even from his other productions, not properly historical; for he never soars high in the region of ideality, nor grasps at etherial visions — “nubes et inania” — like Plato.

[1] See below, my remarks on the Platonic Euthydêmus, [vol. ii. chap. xxi.]

[2] We may apply to Plato and Xenophon the following comparison by Euripides, Supplices, 905. (Tydeus and Meleager.)

γνώμῃ δ’ ἀδελφοῦ Μελεάγρου λελειμμένος, ἰσον παρέσχεν ὄνομα διὰ τέχνην δορός, εὑρὼν ἀκριβῆ μουσικὴν ἐν ἀσπίδι· φιλότιμον ἦθος, πλούσιον φρόνημα δὲ ἐν τοῖσιν ἔργοις, οὐχὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἔχων.

Date of Xenophon — probable year of his birth.

Respecting the personal history of Xenophon himself, we possess but little information: nor do we know the year either of his birth or death. His Hellenica concludes with the battle of Mantineia in 362 B.C.. But he makes incidental mention in that work of an event five years later — the assassination of Alexander, despot of Pheræ, which took place in 357 B.C.[3] — and his language seems to imply that the event was described shortly after it took place. His pamphlet De Vectigalibus appears to have been composed still later — not before 355 B.C. In the year 400 B.C., when Xenophon joined the Grecian military force assembled at Sardis to accompany Cyrus the younger in his march to Babylon, he must have been still a young man: yet he had even then established an intimacy with Sokrates at Athens: and he was old enough to call himself the “ancient guest” of the Bœotian Proxenus, who engaged him to come and take service with Cyrus.[4] We may suppose him to have been then about thirty years of age; and thus to have been born about 430 B.C. — two or three years earlier than Plato. Respecting his early life, we have no facts before us: but we may confidently affirm (as I have already observed about[5] Plato), that as he became liable to military service in 412 B.C., the severe pressure of the war upon Athens must have occasioned him to be largely employed, among other citizens, for the defence of his native city, until its capture in 405 B.C. He seems to have belonged to an equestrian family in the census, and therefore to have served on horseback. More than one of his compositions evinces both intelligent interest in horsemanship, and great familiarity with horses.

[3] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 37. τῶν δὲ ταῦτα πραξάντων (i.e. of the brothers of Thêbê, which brothers had assassinated Alexander) ἄχρι οὖ ὁδε ὁ λόγος ἐγράφετο, Τισίφονος, πρεσβύτατος ὧν τῶν ἀδελφῶν, τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶχε.

[4] That he was still a young man appears from his language, Anabas. iii. 1, 25. His intimacy with Sokrates, whose advice he asked about the propriety of accepting the invitation of Proxenus to go to Asia, is shown iii. 1, 5. Proxenus was his ξένος ἀρχαῖος, iii. 1, 4.

The story mentioned by Strabo (ix. 403) that Xenophon served in the Athenian cavalry at the battle of Delium (424 B.C.), and that his life was saved by Sokrates, I consider to be not less inconsistent with any reasonable chronology, than the analogous anecdote — that Plato distinguished himself at the battle of Delium. See below, [ch. v.]

[5] See [ ch. v.]

His personal history — He consults Sokrates — takes the opinion of the Delphian oracle.

Our knowledge of his personal history begins with what he himself recounts in the Anabasis. His friend Proxenus, then at Sardis commanding a regiment of Hellenic mercenaries under Cyrus the younger, wrote recommending him earnestly to come over and take service, in the army prepared ostensibly against the Pisidians. Upon this Xenophon asked the advice of Sokrates: who exhorted him to go and consult the Delphian oracle — being apprehensive that as Cyrus had proved himself the strenuous ally of Sparta, and had furnished to her the principal means for crushing Athens, an Athenian taking service under him would incur unpopularity at home. Xenophon accordingly went to Delphi: but instead of asking the question broadly — “Shall I go, or shall I decline to go?” — he put to Apollo the narrower question — “Having in contemplation a journey, to which of the Gods must I sacrifice and pray, in order to accomplish it best, and to come back with safety and success?” Apollo indicated to him the Gods to whom he ought to address himself: but Sokrates was displeased with him for not having first asked, whether he ought to go at all. Nevertheless (continued Sokrates), since you have chosen to put the question in your own way you must act as the God has prescribed.[6]

[6] Xenoph. Anab. iii. 1, 4-6.

His service and command with the Ten Thousand Greeks; afterwards under Agesilaus and the Spartans. — He is banished from Athens.

The anecdote here recounted by Xenophon is interesting, as it illustrates his sincere faith, as well as that of Sokrates, in the Delphian oracle: though we might have expected that on this occasion, Sokrates would have been favoured with some manifestation of that divine sign, which he represents to have warned him afterwards so frequently and on such trifling matters. Apollo however was perhaps displeased (as Sokrates was) with Xenophon, for not having submitted the question to him with full frankness: since the answer given was proved by subsequent experience to be incomplete.[7] After fifteen months passed, first, in the hard upward march — next, in the still harder retreat — of the Ten Thousand, to the preservation of whom he largely contributed by his energy, presence of mind, resolute initiative, and ready Athenian eloquence, as one of their leaders — Xenophon returned to Athens. It appears that he must have come back not long after the death of Sokrates. But Athens was not at that time a pleasant residence for him. The Sokratic companions shared in the unpopularity of their deceased master, and many of them were absent: moreover Xenophon himself was unpopular as the active partisan of Cyrus. After a certain stay, we know not how long, at Athens, Xenophon appears to have gone back to Asia; and to have resumed his command of the remaining Cyreian soldiers, then serving under the Lacedæmonian generals against the Persian satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus. He served first under Derkyllidas, next under Agesilaus. For the latter he conceived the warmest admiration, and contracted with him an intimate friendship. At the time when Xenophon rejoined the Cyreians in Asia, Athens was not at war with the Lacedæmonians: but after some time, the hostile confederacy of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, against them was organised: and Agesilaus was summoned home by them from Asia, to fight their battles in Greece. Xenophon and his Cyreians were still a portion of the army of Agesilaus, and accompanied him in his march into Bœotia; where they took part in his desperate battle and bloody victory at Koroneia.[8] But he was now lending active aid to the enemies of Athens, and holding conspicuous command in their armies. A sentence of banishment, on the ground of Laconism, was passed against him by the Athenians, on the proposition of Eubulus.[9]

[7] Compare Anabas. vi. 1, 22, and vii. 8, 1-6.

See also Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 33 C, and Plato, Theagês, p. 129; also below, [ vol. ii. ch. xv.]

Sokrates and Xenophon are among the most imposing witnesses cited by Quintus Cicero, in his long pleading to show the reality of divination (Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 25, 52, i. 54, 122). Antipater the Stoic collected a large number of examples, illustrating the miraculous divining power of Sokrates. Several of these examples appear much more trifling than this incident of Xenophon.

[8] Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 6; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 18.

[9] Diog. L. ii. 51-69. ἐπὶ Λακωνισμῷ φυγὴν ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων κατεγνώσθη.

His residence at Skillus near Olympia.

How long he served with Agesilaus, we are not told. At the end of his service, the Lacedæmonians provided him with a house and land at the Triphylian town of Skillûs near Olympia, which they had seemingly taken from the Eleians and re-colonised. Near this residence he also purchased, under the authority of the God (perhaps Olympian Zeus) a landed estate to be consecrated to the Goddess Artemis: employing therein a portion of the tithe of plunder devoted to Artemis by the Cyreian army, and deposited by him for the time in the care of Megabyzus, priest of Artemis at Ephesus. The estate of the Goddess contained some cultivated ground, but consisted chiefly of pasture; with wild ground, wood and mountain, abounding in game and favourable for hunting. Xenophon became Conservator of this property for Artemis: to whom he dedicated a shrine and a statue, in miniature copy of the great temple at Ephesus. Every year he held a formal hunting-match, to which he invited all the neighbours, with abundant hospitality, at the expense of the Goddess. The Conservator and his successors were bound by formal vow, on pain of her displeasure, to employ one tenth of the whole annual produce in sacrifices to her: and to keep the shrine and statue in good order, out of the remainder.[10]

[10] Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 8-12; Diog. L. ii. 52: Pausanias, v. 6, 3.

φησὶ δ’ ὁ Δείναρχος ὅτι καὶ οἰκίαν καὶ ἄγρον αὐτῷ ἕδοσαν Λακεδαιμόνιοι.

Deinarchus appears to have composed for a client at Athens a judicial speech against Xenophon, the grandson of Xenophon Sokraticus. He introduced into the speech some facts relating to the grandfather.

Family of Xenophon — his son Gryllus killed at Mantinea.

Xenophon seems to have passed many years of his life either at Skillus or in other parts of Peloponnesus, and is said to have died very old at Corinth. The sentence of banishment passed against him by the Athenians was revoked after the battle of Leuktra, when Athens came into alliance with the Lacedæmonians against Thebes. Some of Xenophon’s later works indicate that he must have availed himself of this revocation to visit Athens: but whether he permanently resided there is uncertain. He had brought over with him from Asia a wife named Philesia, by whom he had two sons, Gryllus and Diodorus.[11] He sent these two youths to be trained at Sparta, under the countenance of Agesilaus:[12] afterwards the eldest of them, Gryllus, served with honour in the Athenian cavalry which assisted the Lacedæmonians and Mantineians against Epameinondas, B.C. 362. In the important combat[13] of the Athenian and Theban cavalry, close to the gates of Mantineia — shortly preceding the general battle of Mantineia, in which Epameinondas was slain — Gryllus fell, fighting with great bravery. The death of this gallant youth — himself seemingly of great promise, and the son of so eminent a father — was celebrated by Isokrates and several other rhetors, as well as by the painter Euphranor at Athens, and by sculptors at Mantineia itself.[14]

[11] Æschines Sokraticus, in one of his dialogues, introduced Aspasia conversing with Xenophon and his (Xenophon’s) wife. Cicero, De Invent. i. 31, 51-54; Quintil. Inst. Orat. v. p. 312.

[12] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 20.

[13] Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 5, 15-16-17. This combat of cavalry near the gates of Mantineia was very close and sharply contested; but at the great battle fought a few days afterwards the Athenian cavalry were hardly at all engaged, vii. 5, 25.

[14] Pausanias, i. 3, 3, viii. 11, 4, ix. 15, 3; Diogenes L. ii. 54. Harpokration v. Κηφισόδωρος.

It appears that Euphranor, in his picture represented Gryllus as engaged in personal conflict with Epameinondas and wounding him — a compliment not justified by the facts. The Mantineians believed Antikrates, one of their own citizens, to have mortally wounded the great Theban general with his spear, and they awarded to him as recompense immunity from public burthens (ἀτέλειαν), both for himself and his descendants. One of his descendants, Kallikrates, continued even in Plutarch’s time to enjoy this immunity. Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 35.

Death of Xenophon at Corinth — Story of the Eleian Exegetæ.

Skillus, the place in which the Lacedæmonians had established Xenophon, was retaken by the Eleians during the humiliation of Lacedæmonian power, not long before the battle of Mantineia. Xenophon himself was absent at the time; but his family were constrained to retire to Lepreum. It was after this, we are told, that he removed to Corinth, where he died in 355 B.C. or in some year later. The Eleian Exegetæ told the traveller Pausanias, when he visited the spot five centuries afterwards, that Xenophon had been condemned in the judicial Council of Olympia as wrongful occupant of the property at Skillus, through Lacedæmonian violence; but that the Eleians had granted him indulgence, and had allowed him to remain.[15] As it seems clearly asserted that he died at Corinth, he can hardly have availed himself of the indulgence; and I incline to suspect that the statement is an invention of subsequent Eleian Exegetæ, after they had learnt to appreciate his literary eminence.

[15] Pausan. v. 6, 3; Diog. L. ii. 53-56.

Xenophon different from Plato and the other Sokratic brethren.

From the brief outline thus presented of Xenophon’s life, it will plainly appear that he was quite different in character and habits from Plato and the other Sokratic brethren. He was not only a man of the world (as indeed Aristippus was also), but he was actively engaged in the most responsible and difficult functions of military command: he was moreover a landed proprietor and cultivator, fond of strong exercise with dogs and horses, and an intelligent equestrian. His circumstances were sufficiently easy to dispense with the necessity of either composing discourses or taking pupils for money. Being thus enabled to prosecute letters and philosophy in an independent way, he did not, like Plato and Aristotle, open a school.[16] His relations, as active coadjutor and subordinate, with Agesilaus, form a striking contrast to those of Plato with Dionysius, as tutor and pedagogue. In his mind, the Sokratic conversations, suggestive and stimulating to every one, fell upon the dispositions and aptitudes of a citizen-soldier, and fructified in a peculiar manner. My present work deals with Xenophon, not as an historian of Grecian affairs or of the Cyreian expedition, but only on the intellectual and theorising side:—as author of the Memorabilia, the Cyropædia, Œkonomikus, Symposion, Hieron, De Vectigalibus, &c.

[16] See, in the account of Theopompus by Photius (Cod. 176, p. 120; compare also Photius, Cod. 159, p. 102, a. 41), the distinction taken by Theopompus: who said that the four most celebrated literary persons of his day were, his master Isokrates, Theodektês of Phasêlis, Naukrates of Erythræ, and himself (Theopompus). He himself and Naukrates were in good circumstances, so that he passed his life in independent prosecution of philosophy and philomathy. But Isokrates and Theodektês were compelled δι’ ἀπορίαν βίου, μισθοῦ λόγους γράφειν καὶ σοφιστεύειν, ἐκπαιδεύοντες τοὺς νέους, κἀκεῖθεν καρπουμένους τὰς ὑφελείας.

Theopompus does not here present the profession of a Sophist (as most Platonic commentators teach us to regard it) as a mean, unprincipled, and corrupting employment.

His various works — Memorabilia, Œkonomikus, &c.

The Memorabilia were composed as records of the conversations of Sokrates, expressly intended to vindicate Sokrates against charges of impiety and of corrupting youthful minds, and to show that he inculcated, before every thing, self-denial, moderation of desires, reverence for parents, and worship of the Gods. The Œkonomikus and the Symposion are expansions of the Memorabilia: the first[17] exhibiting Sokrates not only as an attentive observer of the facts of active life (in which character the Memorabilia present him also), but even as a learner of husbandry[18] and family management from Ischomachus — the last describing Sokrates and his behaviour amidst the fun and joviality of a convivial company. Sokrates declares[19] that as to himself, though poor, he is quite as rich as he desires to be; that he desires no increase, and regards poverty as no disadvantage. Yet since Kratobulus, though rich, is beset with temptations to expense quite sufficient to embarrass him, good proprietary management is to him a necessity. Accordingly, Sokrates, announcing that he has always been careful to inform himself who were the best economists in the city,[20] now cites as authority Ischomachus, a citizen of wealth and high position, recognised by all as one of the “super-excellent”.[21] Ischomachus loves wealth, and is anxious to maintain and even enlarge his property: desiring to spend magnificently for the honour of the Gods, the assistance of friends, and the support of the city.[22] His whole life is arranged, with intelligence and forethought, so as to attain this object, and at the same time to keep up the maximum of bodily health and vigour, especially among the horsemen of the city as an accomplished rider[23] and cavalry soldier. He speaks with respect, and almost with enthusiasm, of husbandry, as an occupation not merely profitable, but improving to the character: though he treats with disrespect other branches of industry and craft.[24] In regard to husbandry, too, as in regard to war or steersmanship, he affirms that the difference between one practitioner and another consists, not so much in unequal knowledge, as in unequal care to practise what both of them know.[25]

[17] Galen calls the Œkonomicus the last book of the Memorabilia (ad Hippokrat. De Articulis, t. xviii. p. 301, Kühn). It professes to be repeated by Xenophon from what he himself heard Sokrates say — ἤκουσα δέ ποτε αὐτοῦ καὶ περὶ οἰκονομίας τοιάδε διαλεγομένου, &c. Sokrates first instructs Kritobulus that economy, or management of property, is an art, governed by rules, and dependent upon principles; next, he recounts to him the lessons which he professes to have himself received from Ischomachus.

I have already adverted to the Xenophontic Symposion as containing jocular remarks which some erroneously cite as serious.

[18] To learn in this way the actualities of life, and the way of extracting the greatest amount of wheat and barley from a given piece of land, is the sense which Xenophon puts on the word φιλόσοφος (Xen. Œk. xvi. 9; compare Cyropædia, vi. 1, 41).

[19] Xenoph. Œkonom. ii. 3; xi. 3, 4.

I have made some observations on the Xenophontic Symposion, comparing it with the Platonic Symposion, in a subsequent chapter of this work, [ch. xxvi.]

[20] Xen. Œkon. ii. 16.

[21] Xen. Œkon. vi. 17, xi. 3. πρὸς πάντων καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, καὶ ξένων καὶ ἀστῶν, καλόν τε κἀγαθὸν ἐπονομαζόμενονς.

[22] Xen. Œkon. xi. 9.

[23] Xen. Œkon. xi. 17-21. ἐν τοῖς ἱπποκωτάτοις τε καὶ πλουσιωτάτοις.

[24] Xen. Œkon. iv. 2-3, vi. 5-7. Ischomachus asserts that his father had been more devoted to agriculture (φιλογεωργότατος) than any man at Athens; that he had bought several pieces of land (χώρους) when out of order, improved them, and then resold them with very large profit, xx. 26.

[25] Xen. Œkon. xx. 2-10.

Ischomachus, hero of the Œkonomikus — ideal of an active citizen, cultivator, husband, house-master, &c.

Ischomachus describes to Sokrates, in reply to a string of successive questions, both his scheme of life and his scheme of husbandry. He had married his wife before she was fifteen years of age: having first ascertained that she had been brought up carefully, so as to have seen and heard as little as possible, and to know nothing but spinning and weaving.[26] He describes how he took this very young wife into training, so as to form her to the habits which he himself approved. He declares that the duties and functions of women are confined to in-door work and superintendence, while the out-door proceedings, acquisition as well as defence, belong to men:[27] he insists upon such separation of functions emphatically, as an ordinance of nature — holding an opinion the direct reverse of that which we have seen expressed by Plato.[28] He makes many remarks on the arrangements of the house, and of the stores within it: and he dwells particularly on the management of servants, male and female.

[26] Xen. Œkon. vii. 3-7. τὸν δ’ ἔμπροσθεν χρόνον ἔζη ὑπὸ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας, ὅπως ὡς ἐλάχιστα μὲν ὄψοιτο, ἐλάχιστα δὲ ἀκούσοιτο, ἐλάχιστα δὲ ἔροιτο.

The διδασκαλία addressed to Sokrates by Ischomachus is in the form of ἐρώτησις, xix. 15. The Sokratic interrogation is here brought to bear upon Sokrates, instead of by Sokrates: like the Elenchus in the Parmenidês of Plato.

[27] Xen. Œkon. vii. 22-32.

[28] See below, [ch. xxxvii.]

Compare also Aristotel. Politic. iii. 4, 1277, b. 25, where Aristotle lays down the same principle as Xenophon.

Text upon which Xenophon insists — capital difference between command over subordinates willing, and subordinates unwilling.

It is upon this last point that he lays more stress than upon any other. To know how to command men — is the first of all accomplishments in the mind of Xenophon. Ischomachus proclaims it as essential that the superior shall not merely give orders to his subordinates, but also see them executed, and set the example of personal active watchfulness in every way. Xenophon aims at securing not simply obedience, but cheerful and willing obedience — even attachment from those who obey. “To exercise command over willing subjects”[29] (he says) “is a good more than human, granted only to men truly consummated in virtue of character essentially divine. To exercise command over unwilling subjects, is a torment like that of Tantalus.”

[29] Xen. Œkon. xxi. 10-12. ἤθους βασιλικοῦ — θεῖον γενέσθαι. Οὐ γὰρ πάνυ μοὶ δοκεῖ τουτὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀνθρώπινον εἶναι, ἀλλὰ θεῖον, τὸ ἐθελόντων ἄρχειν· σαφῶς δὲ δίδοται τοῖς ἀληθινῶς σωφροσύνῃ τετελεσμένοις. Τὸ δὲ ἀκόντων τυραννεῖν διδόασιν, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, οὓς ἂν ἡγῶνται ἀξίους εἶναι βιοτεύειν, ὥσπερ ὁ Τάνταλος ἐν ᾅδου λέγεται. Compare also iv. 19, xiii. 3-7.

Probable circumstances generating these reflections in Xenophon’s mind.

The sentence just transcribed (the last sentence in the Œkonomikus) brings to our notice a central focus in Xenophon’s mind, from whence many of his most valuable speculations emanate. “What are the conditions under which subordinates will cheerfully obey their commanders?” — was a problem forced upon his thoughts by his own personal experience, as well as by contemporary phenomena in Hellas. He had been elected one of the generals of the Ten Thousand: a large body of brave warriors from different cities, most of them unknown to him personally, and inviting his authority only because they were in extreme peril, and because no one else took the initiative.[30] He discharged his duties admirably: and his ready eloquence was an invaluable accomplishment, distinguishing him from all his colleagues. Nevertheless when the army arrived at the Euxine, out of the reach of urgent peril, he was made to feel sensibly the vexations of authority resting upon such precarious basis, and perpetually traversed by jealous rivals. Moreover, Xenophon, besides his own personal experience, had witnessed violent political changes running extensively through the cities of the Grecian world: first, at the close of the Peloponnesian war — next, after the battle of Knidus — again, under Lacedæmonian supremacy, after the peace of Antalkidas, and the subsequent seizure of the citadel of Thebes — lastly, after the Thebans had regained their freedom and humbled the Lacedæmonians by the battle of Leuktra. To Xenophon — partly actor, partly spectator — these political revolutions were matters of anxious interest; especially as he ardently sympathised with Agesilaus, a political partisan interested in most of them, either as conservative or revolutionary.

[30] The reader will find in my ‘History of Greece,’ ch. 70, p. 103 seq., a narrative of the circumstances under which Xenophon was first chosen to command, as well as his conduct afterwards.

This text affords subjects for the Hieron and Cyropædia — Name of Sokrates not suitable.

We thus see, from the personal history of Xenophon, how his attention came to be peculiarly turned to the difficulty of ensuring steady obedience from subordinates, and to the conditions by which such difficulty might be overcome. The sentence, above transcribed from the Œkonomikus, embodies two texts upon which he has discoursed in two of his most interesting compositions — Cyropædia and Hieron. In Cyropædia he explains and exemplifies the divine gift of ruling over cheerful subordinates: in Hieron, the torment of governing the disaffected and refractory. For neither of these purposes would the name and person of Sokrates have been suitable, exclusively connected as they were with Athens. Accordingly Xenophon, having carried that respected name through the Œkonomikus and Symposion, now dismisses it, yet retaining still the familiar and colloquial manner which belonged to Sokrates. The Epilogue, or concluding chapter, of the Cyropædia, must unquestionably have been composed after 364 B.C. — in the last ten years of Xenophon’s life: the main body of it may perhaps have been composed earlier.

Hieron — Persons of the dialogue — Simonides and Hieron.

The Hieron gives no indication of date: but as a picture purely Hellenic, it deserves precedence over the Cyropædia, and conveys to my mind the impression of having been written earlier. It describes a supposed conversation (probably suggested by current traditional conversations, like that between Solon and Krœsus) between the poet Simonides and Hieron the despot of Syracuse; who, shortly after the Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes, had succeeded his brother Gelon the former despot.[31] Both of them had been once private citizens, of no remarkable consequence: but Gelon, an energetic and ambitious military man, having raised himself to power in the service of Hippokrates despot of Gela, had seized the sceptre on the death of his master: after which he conquered Syracuse, and acquired a formidable dominion, enjoyed after his death by his brother Hieron. This last was a great patron of eminent poets — Pindar, Simonides, Æschylus, Bacchylides: but he laboured under a painful internal complaint, and appears to have been of an irritable and oppressive temper.[32]

[31] Plato, Epistol. ii. p. 311 A. Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 16, 1391, a. 9; Cicero, Nat. Deo. i. 22, 60. How high was the opinion entertained about Simonides as a poet, may be seen illustrated in a passage of Aristophanes, Vespæ, 1362.

[32] See the first and second Pythian Odes of Pindar, addressed to Hieron, especially Pyth. i. 55-61-90, with the Scholia and Boeckh’s Commentary. Pindar compliments Hieron upon having founded his new city of Ætna — θεοδμάτῳ σὺν ἐλευθεριᾳ. This does not coincide with the view of Hieron’s character taken by Xenophon; but Pindar agrees with Xenophon in exhorting Hieron to make himself popular by a liberal expenditure.

Questions put to Hieron; view taken by Simonides. Answer of Hieron.

Simonides asks of Hieron, who had personally tried both the life of a private citizen and that of a despot, which of the two he considered preferable, in regard to pleasures and pains. Upon this subject, a conversation of some length ensues, in which Hieron declares that the life of a despot has much more pain, and much less pleasure, than that of a private citizen under middling circumstances:[33] while Simonides takes the contrary side, and insists in detail upon the superior means of enjoyment, apparent at least, possessed by the despot. As each of these means is successively brought forward, Hieron shews that however the matter may appear to the spectator, the despot feels no greater real happiness in his own bosom: while he suffers many pains and privations, of which the spectator takes no account. As to the pleasures of sight, the despot forfeits altogether the first and greatest, because it is unsafe for him to visit the public festivals and matches. In regard to hearing — many praises, and no reproach, reach his ears: but then he knows that the praises are insincere — and that reproach is unheard, only because speakers dare not express what they really feel. The despot has finer cookery and richer unguents; but others enjoy a modest banquet as much or more — while the scent of the unguents pleases those who are near him more than himself.[34] Then as to the pleasures of love, these do not exist, except where the beloved person manifests spontaneous sympathy and return of attachment. Now the despot can never extort such return by his power; while even if it be granted freely, he cannot trust its sincerity and is compelled even to be more on his guard, since successful conspiracies against his life generally proceed from those who profess attachment to him.[35] The private citizen on the contrary knows that those who profess to love him, may be trusted, as having no motive for falsehood.

[33] Xenoph. Hier. i. 8. εὖ ἴσθι, ὦ Σιμωνίδη, ὅτι πολὺ μείω εὐφραίνονται οἱ τύραννοι τῶν μετρίως διαγόντων ἰδιωτῶν, πολὺ δὲ πλείω καὶ μείζω λυποῦνται.

[34] Xen. Hieron, i. 12-15-24.

[35] Xen. Hier. i. 26-38. Τῷ τυράννῳ οὔ ποτ’ ἐστὶ πιστεῦσαι, ὡς φιλεῖται. Αἱ ἐπιβουλαὶ ἐξ οὐδένων πλέονες τοῖς τυράννοις εἰσὶν ἢ ἀπὸ τῶν μάλιστα φιλεῖν αὐτοὺς προσποιησαμένων.

This chapter affords remarkable illustration of Grecian manners, especially in the distinction drawn between τὰ παιδικὰ ἀφροδίσια and τὰ τεκνοποιὰ ἀφροδίσια.

Misery of governing unwilling subjects declared by Hieron.

Still (contends Simonides) there are other pleasures greater than those of sense. You despots possess the greatest abundance and variety of possessions — the finest chariots and horses, the most splendid arms, the finest palaces, ornaments, and furniture — the most brilliant ornaments for your wives — the most intelligent and valuable servants. You execute the greatest enterprises: you can do most to benefit your friends, and hurt your enemies: you have all the proud consciousness of superior might.[36] — Such is the opinion of the multitude (replies Hieron), who are misled by appearances: but a wise man like you, Simonides, ought to see the reality in the background, and to recollect that happiness or unhappiness reside only in a man’s internal feelings. You cannot but know that a despot lives in perpetual insecurity, both at home and abroad: that he must always go armed himself, and have armed guards around him: that whether at war or at peace, he is always alike in danger: that, while suspecting every one as an enemy, he nevertheless knows that when he has put to death the persons suspected, he has only weakened the power of the city:[37] that he has no sincere friendship with any one: that he cannot count even upon good faith, and must cause all his food to be tasted by others, before he eats it: that whoever has slain a private citizen, is shunned in Grecian cities as an abomination — while the tyrannicide is everywhere honoured and recompensed: that there is no safety for the despot even in his own family, many having been killed by their nearest relatives:[38] that he is compelled to rely upon mercenary foreign soldiers and liberated slaves, against the free citizens who hate him: and that the hire of such inauspicious protectors compels him to raise money, by despoiling individuals and plundering temples:[39] that the best and most estimable citizens are incurably hostile to him, while none but the worst will serve him for pay: that he looks back with bitter sorrow to the pleasures and confidential friendships which he enjoyed as a private man, but from which he is altogether debarred as a despot.[40]

[36] Xen. Hier. ii. 2.

[37] Xen. Hieron, ii. 5-17.

[38] Xenoph. Hieron, ii. 8, iii. 1, 5. Compare Xenophon, Hellenic. iii. 1, 14.

[39] Xen. Hieron, iv. 7-11.

[40] Xen. Hieron, vi. 1-12.

Nothing brings a man so near to the Gods (rejoins Simonides) as the feeling of being honoured. Power and a brilliant position must be of inestimable value, if they are worth purchasing at the price which you describe.[41] Otherwise, why do you not throw up your sceptre? How happens it that no despot has ever yet done this? To be honoured (answers Hieron) is the greatest of earthly blessings, when a man obtains honour from the spontaneous voice of freemen. But a despot enjoys no such satisfaction. He lives like a criminal under sentence of death by every one: and it is impossible for him to lay down his power, because of the number of persons whom he has been obliged to make his enemies. He can neither endure his present condition, nor yet escape from it. The best thing he can do is to hang himself.[42]

[41] Xen. Hieron, vii. 1-5.

[42] Xen. Hieron, vii. 5-13. Ὁ δὲ τύραννος, ὡς ὑπὸ πάντων ἀνθρώπων κατακεκριμένος δι’ ἀδικίαν ἀποθνήσκειν — καὶ νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν διάγει.… Ἀλλ’ εἴπερ τῳ ἄλλῳ λυσιτελεῖ ἀπάγξασθαι, ἴσθι ὅτι τυράννῳ ἔγωγε εὑρίσκω μάλιστα τοῦτο λυσιτελοῦν ποιῆσαι. Μόνῳ γὰρ αὑτῷ οὔτε ἔχειν, οὔτε καταθέσθαι τὰ κακὰ λυσιτελεῖ.

Solon in his poems makes the remark, that for the man who once usurps the sceptre no retreat is possible. See my ‘History of Greece,’ chap. xi. p. 132 seq.

The impressive contrast here drawn by Hieron (c. vi.) between his condition as a despot and the past enjoyments of private life and citizenship which he has lost, reminds one of the still more sorrowful contrast in the Atys of Catullus, v. 58-70.

Advice to Hieron by Simonides — that he should govern well, and thus make himself beloved by his subjects.

Simonides in reply, after sympathising with Hieron’s despondency, undertakes to console him by showing that such consequences do not necessarily attend despotic rule. The despot’s power is an instrument available for good as well as for evil. By a proper employment of it, he may not only avoid being hated, but may even make himself beloved, beyond the measure attainable by any private citizen. Even kind words, and petty courtesies, are welcomed far more eagerly when they come from a powerful man than from an equal: moreover a showy and brilliant exterior seldom fails to fascinate the spectator.[43] But besides this, the despot may render to his city the most substantial and important services. He may punish criminals and reward meritorious men: the punishments he ought to inflict by the hands of others, while he will administer the rewards in person — giving prizes for superior excellence in every department, and thus endearing himself to all.[44] Such prizes would provoke a salutary competition in the performance of military duties, in choric exhibitions, in husbandry, commerce, and public usefulness of every kind. Even the foreign mercenaries, though usually odious, might be so handled and disciplined as to afford defence against foreign danger, — to ensure for the citizens undisturbed leisure in their own private affairs — to protect and befriend the honest man, and to use force only against criminals.[45] If thus employed, such mercenaries, instead of being hated, would be welcome companions: and the despot himself may count, not only upon security against attack, but upon the warmest gratitude and attachment. The citizens will readily furnish contributions to him when asked, and will regard him as their greatest benefactor. “You will obtain in this way” (Simonides thus concludes his address to Hieron), “the finest and most enviable of all acquisitions. You will have your subjects obeying you willingly, and caring for you of their own accord. You may travel safely wherever you please, and will be a welcome visitor at all the crowded festivals. You will be happy, without jealousy from any one.”[46]

[43] Xen. Hieron, viii. 2-7.

[44] Xen. Hieron, ix. 1-4.

[45] Xen. Hieron, x. 6-8.

[46] Xen. Hieron, xi. 10-12-15. κἂν ταῦτα πάντα ποιῆς, εὖ ἴσθι πάντων τῶν ἀνθρώποις κάλλιστον καὶ μακαριώτατον κτῆμα κεκτημένος· εὐδαιμονῶν γὰρ οὐ φθονηθήσῃ.

Probable experience had by Xenophon of the feelings at Olympia against Dionysius.

The dialogue of which I have given this short abstract, illustrates what Xenophon calls the torment of Tantalus — the misery of a despot who has to extort obedience from unwilling subjects:—especially if the despot be one who has once known the comfort and security of private life, under tolerably favourable circumstances. If we compare this dialogue with the Platonic Gorgias, where we have seen a thesis very analogous handled in respect to Archelaus, — we shall find Plato soaring into a sublime ethical region of his own, measuring the despot’s happiness and misery by a standard peculiar to himself, and making good what he admits to be a paradox by abundant eloquence covering faulty dialectic: while Xenophon, herein following his master, applies to human life the measure of a rational common sense, talks about pleasures and pains which every one can feel to be such, and points out how many of these pleasures the despot forfeits, how many of these pains and privations he undergoes, — in spite of that great power of doing hurt, and less power, though still considerable, of doing good, which raises the envy of spectators. The Hieron gives utterance to an interesting vein of sentiment, more common at Athens than elsewhere in Greece; enforced by the conversation of Sokrates, and serving as corrective protest against that unqualified worship of power which prevailed in the ancient world no less than in the modern. That the Syrakusan Hieron should be selected as an exemplifying name, may be explained by the circumstance, that during thirty-eight years of Xenophon’s mature life (405-367 B.C.), Dionysius the elder was despot of Syrakuse; a man of energy and ability, who had extinguished the liberties of his native city, and acquired power and dominion greater than that of any living Greek. Xenophon, resident at Skillus, within a short distance from Olympia, had probably[47] seen the splendid Thêory (or sacred legation of representative envoys) installed in rich and ornamented tents, and the fine running horses sent by Dionysius, at the ninety-ninth Olympic festival (384 B.C.): but he probably also heard the execration with which the name of Dionysius himself had been received by the spectators, and he would feel that the despot could hardly shew himself there in person. There were narratives in circulation about the interior life of Dionysius,[48] analogous to those statements which Xenophon puts into the mouth of Hieron. A predecessor of Dionysius as despot of Syracuse[49] and also as patron of poets, was therefore a suitable person to choose for illustrating the first part of Xenophon’s thesis — the countervailing pains and penalties which spoilt all the value of power, if exercised over unwilling and repugnant subjects.[50]

[47]Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 11.

[48]See chap. 83, vol. xi. pp. 40-50, of my ‘History of Greece,’ where this memorable scene at Olympia is described.

[49] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 20, 57-63; De Officiis, ii. 7, 24-25.

“Multos timebit ille, quem multi timent.”

[50] An anecdote is told about a visit of Xenophon to Dionysius at Syracuse — whether the elder or the younger is not specified — but the tenor of the anecdote points to the younger; if so the visit must have been later than 367 B.C. (Athenæus x. 427).

Xenophon could not have chosen a Grecian despot to illustrate his theory of the happiness of governing willing subjects.

But when Xenophon came to illustrate the second part of his thesis — the possibility of exercising power in such manner as to render the holder of it popular and beloved — it would have been scarcely possible for him to lay the scene in any Grecian city. The repugnance of the citizens of a Grecian city towards a despot who usurped power over them, was incurable — however much the more ambitious individuals among them might have wished to obtain such power for themselves: a repugnance as great among oligarchs as among democrats — perhaps even greater. When we read the recommendations addressed by Simonides, teaching Hieron how he might render himself popular, we perceive at once that they are alike well intentioned and ineffectual. Xenophon could neither find any real Grecian despot corresponding to this portion of his illustrative purpose — nor could he invent one with any shew of plausibility. He was forced to resort to other countries and other habits different from those of Greece.

Cyropædia — blending of Spartan and Persian customs — Xenophon’s experience of Cyrus the Younger.

To this necessity probably we owe the Cyropædia: a romance in which Persian and Grecian experience are singularly blended, and both of them so transformed as to suit the philosophical purpose of the narrator. Xenophon had personally served and communicated with Cyrus the younger: respecting whom also he had large means of information, from his intimate friend Proxenus, as well as from the other Grecian generals of the expedition. In the first book of the Anabasis, we find this young prince depicted as an energetic and magnanimous character, faithful to his word and generous in his friendships — inspiring strong attachment in those around him, yet vigorous in administration and in punishing criminals — not only courting the Greeks as useful for his ambitious projects, but appreciating sincerely the superiority of Hellenic character and freedom over Oriental servitude.[51] And in the Œkonomikus, Cyrus is quoted as illustrating in his character the true virtue of a commander; the test of which Xenophon declares to be — That his subordinates follow him willingly, and stand by him to the death.[52]

[51] Xenoph. Anab. i. 9, also i. 7, 3, the address of Cyrus to the Greek soldiers — Ὅπως οὖν ἔσεσθε ἄνδρες ἄξιοι τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἧς κέκτησθε, καὶ ὑπὲρ ἧς ὑμᾶς εὐδαιμονίζω. Εὖ γὰρ ἴστε, ὅτι τὲν ἐλευθερίαν ἑλοίμην ἂν, ἀντὶ ὧν ἔχω πάντων καὶ ἄλλων πολλαπλασίων, compared with i. 5, 16, where Cyrus gives his appreciation of the Oriental portion of his army, and the remarkable description of the trial of Orontes, i. 6.

[52] Xenoph. Œconom. iv. 18-19. Κῦρος, εἰ ἐβίωσεν, ἄριστος ἂν δοκεῖ ἄρχων γενέσθαι — ἡγοῦμαι μέγα τεκμήριον ἄρχοντος ἀρετῆς εἶναι, ᾧ ἂν ἑκόντες ἕπωνται, καὶ ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς παραμένειν ἐθέλωσιν. Compare Anab. i. 9, 29-30.

Portrait of Cyrus the Great — his education — Preface to the Cyropædia.

It is this character Hellenised, Sokratised, idealised — that Xenophon paints into his glowing picture of Cyrus the founder of the Persian monarchy, or the Cyropædia. He thus escapes the insuperable difficulty arising from the position of a Grecian despot; who never could acquire willing or loving obedience, because his possession of power was felt by a majority of his subjects to be wrongful, violent, tainted. The Cyrus of the Cyropædia begins as son of Kambyses, king or chief of Persia, and grandson of Astyages, king of Media; recognised according to established custom by all, as the person to whom they look for orders. Xenophon furnishes him with a splendid outfit of heroic qualities, suitable to this ascendant position: and represents the foundation of the vast Persian empire, with the unshaken fidelity of all the heterogeneous people composing it, as the reward of a laborious life spent in the active display of such qualities. In his interesting Preface to the Cyropædia, he presents this as the solution of a problem which had greatly perplexed him. He had witnessed many revolutions in the Grecian cities — subversions of democracies, oligarchies, and despotisms: he had seen also private establishments, some with numerous servants, some with few, yet scarcely any house-master able to obtain hearty or continued obedience. But as to herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, on the contrary, he had seen them uniformly obedient; suffering the herdsman or shepherd to do what he pleased with them, and never once conspiring against him. The first inference of Xenophon from these facts was, that man was by nature the most difficult of all animals to govern.[53] But he became satisfied that he was mistaken, when he reflected on the history of Cyrus; who had acquired and maintained dominion over more men than had ever been united under one empire, always obeying him cheerfully and affectionately. This history proved to Xenophon that it was not impossible, nor even difficult,[54] to rule mankind, provided a man undertook it with scientific or artistic competence. Accordingly, he proceeded to examine what Cyrus was in birth, disposition, and education — and how he came to be so admirably accomplished in the government of men.[55] The result is the Cyropædia. We must observe, however, that his solution of the problem is one which does not meet the full difficulties. These difficulties, as he states them, had been suggested to him by his Hellenic experience: by the instability of government in Grecian cities. But the solution which he provides departs from Hellenic experience, and implies what Aristotle and Hippokrates called the more yielding and servile disposition of Asiatics:[56] for it postulates an hereditary chief of heroic or divine lineage, such as was nowhere acknowledged in Greece, except at Sparta — and there, only under restrictions which would have rendered the case unfit for Xenophon’s purpose. The heroic and regal lineage of Cyrus was a condition not less essential to success than his disposition and education:[57] and not merely his lineage, but also the farther fact, that besides being constant in the duties of prayer and sacrifice to the Gods, he was peculiarly favoured by them with premonitory signs and warnings in all difficult emergencies.[58]

[53] Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 2.

[54] Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 3. ἐκ τούτου δὴ ἠναγκαζόμεθα μετανοεῖν, μὴ οὔτε τῶν ἀδυνάτων οὔτε τῶν χαλεπῶν ἔργων ᾗ τὸ ἀνθρώπων ἄρχειν, ἤν τις ἐπισταμένως τοῦτο πράττῃ.

[55] Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 3-8.

[56] Aristot. Politic. vii. 7, 1327, b. 25. τὰ δὲ περὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν, διανοητικὰ μὲν καὶ τὲχνικὰ τὴν ψυχήν, ἄθυμα δέ· διόπερ ἀρχόμενα καὶ δουλεύοντα διατελεῖ.

Hippokrates, De Aere, Locis, et Aquis, c. 19-23.

[57] So it is stated by Xenophon himself, in the speech addressed by Krœsus after his defeat and captivity to Cyrus, vii. 2, 24 — ἀγνοῶν ἐμαυτὸν ὅτι σοι ἀντιπολεμεῖν ἱκανὸς ᾧμην εἶναι, πρῶτον μὲν ἐκ θεῶν γεγονότι, ἔπειτα δὲ διὰ βασιλέων πεφυκότι, ἔπειτα δὲ ἐκ παιδὸς ἀρετὴν ἀσκοῦντι· τῶν δ’ ἐμῶν προγόνων ἀκούω τὸν πρῶτον βασιλεύσαντα ἄμα τε βασιλέα καὶ ἐλεύθερον γενέσθαι. Cyrop. i. 2, 1: τοῦ Περσειδῶν γένους, &c.

[58] See the remarkable words addressed by Cyrus, shortly before his death, in sacrificing on the hill-top to Ζεὺς Πατρῷος and Ἥλιος, Cyrop. viii. 7, 3.

The special communications of the Gods to Cyrus are insisted on by Xenophon, like those made to Sokrates, and like the constant aid of Athênê to Odysseus in Homer, Odyss. iii. 221:—

Οὐ γὰρ πω ἴδον ὧδε θεοὺς ἀναφανδὰ φιλεῦντας ὡς κείνῳ ἀναφανδὰ παρίστατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη.

Xenophon does not solve his own problem — The governing aptitude and popularity of Cyrus come from nature, not from education.

The fundamental principle of Xenophon is, that to obtain hearty and unshaken obedience is not difficult for a ruler, provided he possesses the science or art of ruling. This is a principle expressly laid down by Sokrates in the Xenophontic Memorabilia.[59] We have seen Plato affirming in the Politikus[60] that this is the only true government, though very few individuals are competent to it: Plato gives to it a peculiar application in the Republic, and points out a philosophical or dialectic tuition whereby he supposes that his Elders will acquire the science or art of command. The Cyropædia presents to us an illustrative example. Cyrus is a young prince who, from twenty-six years of age to his dying day, is always ready with his initiative, provident in calculation of consequences, and personally active in enforcement: giving the right order at the right moment, with good assignable reasons. As a military man, he is not only personally forward, but peculiarly dexterous in the marshalling and management of soldiers; like the Homeric Agamemnon[61] —

Ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθός, κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής.

But we must consider this aptitude for command as a spontaneous growth in Cyrus — a portion of his divine constitution or of the golden element in his nature (to speak in the phrase of the Platonic Republic): for no means are pointed out whereby he acquired it, and the Platonic Sokrates would have asked in vain, where teachers of it were to be found. It is true that he is made to go through a rigorous and long-continued training: but this training is common to him with all the other Persian youths of good family, and is calculated to teach obedience, not to communicate aptitude for command; while the master of tactics, whose lessons he receives apart, is expressly declared to have known little about the duties of a commander.[62] Kambyses indeed (father of Cyrus) gives to his son valuable general exhortations respecting the multiplicity of exigencies which press upon a commander, and the constant watchfulness, precautions, fertility of invention, required on his part to meet them. We read the like in the conversations of Sokrates in the Memorabilia:[63] but neither Kambyses nor Sokrates are teachers of the art of commanding. For this art, Cyrus is assumed to possess a natural aptitude; like the other elements of his dispositions — his warm sympathies, his frank and engaging manners, his ardent emulation combined with perfect freedom from jealousy, his courage, his love of learning, his willingness to endure any amount of labour for the purpose of obtaining praise, &c., all which Xenophon represents as belonging to him by nature, together with a very handsome person.[64]

[59] Xenoph. Mem. iii. 9, 10-12.

[60] See what is said below about the Platonic Politikus, [chap. xxx.]

[61] Cicero, when called upon in his province of Cilicia to conduct warlike operations against the Parthians, as well as against some refractory mountaineers, improved his military knowledge by studying and commenting on the Cyropædia. Epist. ad Famil. ix. 25. Compare the remarkable observation made by Cicero (Academic. Prior. ii. init.) about the way in which Lucullus made up his deficiency of military experience by reading military books.

[62] Xen. Cyrop. i. 6, 12-15.

[63] Compare Cyropæd. i. 6, with Memorab. iii. 1.

[64] Cyropæd. i. 2, 1. φῦναι δὲ ὁ Κῦρος λέγεται, &c. i. 3, 1-2. πάντων τῶν ἡλίκων διαφέρων ἐφαίνετο … παῖς φύσει φιλόστοργος, &c.

Views of Xenophon about public and official training of all citizens.

The Cyropædia is a title not fairly representing the contents of the work, which contains a more copious biography of the hero than any which we read in Plutarch or Suetonius. But the education of Cyrus[65] is the most remarkable part of it, in which the ethico-political theory of Xenophon, generated by Sokratic refining criticism brought to bear on the Spartan drill and discipline, is put forth. Professing to describe the Persian polity, he in reality describes only the Persian education; which is public, and prescribed by law, intended to form the character of individuals so that they shall stand in no need of coercive laws or penalties. Most cities leave the education of youth to be conducted at the discretion of their parents, and think it sufficient to enact and enforce laws forbidding, under penal sanction, theft, murder, and various other acts enumerated as criminal. But Xenophon (like Plato and Aristotle) disapproves of this system.[66] His Persian polity places the citizen even from infancy under official tuition, and aims at forming his first habits and character, as well as at upholding them when formed, so that instead of having any disposition of his own to commit such acts, he shall contract a repugnance to them. He is kept under perpetual training, drill, and active official employment throughout life, but the supervision is most unremitting during boyhood and youth.

[65] I have already [observed] that the phrase of Plato in Legg. iii. p. 694 C may be considered as conveying his denial of the assertion, that Cyrus had received a good education.

[66] Xenophon says the same about the scheme of Lykurgus at Sparta, De Lac. Repub. c. 2.

Details of (so-called) Persian education — Severe discipline — Distribution of four ages.

There are four categories of age:—boys, up to sixteen — young men or ephêbi, from sixteen to twenty-six — mature men, as far as fifty-one — above that age, elders. To each of these four classes there is assigned a certain portion of the “free agora”: i.e., the great square of the city, where no buying or selling or vulgar occupation is allowed — where the regal residence is situated, and none but dignified functions, civil or military, are carried on. Here the boys and the mature men assemble every day at sunrise, continue under drill, and take their meals; while the young men even pass the night on guard near the government house. Each of the four sections is commanded by superintendents or officers: those superintending the boys are Elders, who are employed in administering justice to the boys, and in teaching them what justice is. They hold judicial trials of the boys for various sorts of misconduct: for violence, theft, abusive words, lying, and even for ingratitude. In cases of proved guilt, beating or flogging is inflicted. The boys go there to learn justice (says Xenophon), as boys in Hellas go to school to learn letters. Under this discipline, and in learning the use of the bow and javelin besides, they spend the time until sixteen years of age. They bring their food with them from home (wheaten bread, with a condiment of kardamon, or bruised seed of the nasturtium), together with a wooden cup to draw water from the river: and they dine at public tables under the eye of the teacher. The young men perform all the military and police duty under the commands of the King and the Elders: moreover, they accompany the King when he goes on a hunting expedition — which accustoms them to fatigue and long abstinence, as well as to the encounter of dangerous wild animals. The Elders do not take part in these hunts, nor in any foreign military march, nor are they bound, like the others, to daily attendance in the agora. They appoint all officers, and try judicially the cases shown up by the superintendents, or other accusers, of all youths or mature men who have failed in the requirements of the public discipline. The gravest derelictions they punish with death: where this is not called for, they put the offender out of his class, so that he remains degraded all his life.[67]

[67] Xen. Cyrop. i. 2, 6-16. καὶ ἤν τις ἢ ἐν ἐφήβοις ἢ ἐν τελείοις ἀνδράσιν ἐλλίπῃ τι τῶν νομίμων, φαίνουσι μὲν οἱ φύλαρχοι ἕκαστον, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁ βουλόμενος· οἱ δὲ γεραίτεροι ἀκούσαντες ἐκκρίνουσιν· ὁ δὲ ἐκκριθεὶς ἄτιμος τὸν λοιπὸν βίον διατελεῖ.

Evidence of the good effect of this discipline — Hard and dry condition of the body.

This severe discipline is by law open to all Persians who choose to attend and the honours of the state are attainable by all equally. But in practice it is confined to a few: for neither boys nor men can attend it continuously, except such as possess an independent maintenance; nor is any one allowed to enter the regiment of youths or mature men, unless he has previously gone through the discipline of boyhood. The elders, by whom the higher functions are exercised, must be persons who have passed without reproach through all the three preceding stages: so that these offices, though legally open to all, are in practice confined to a few — the small class of Homotimoi.[68]

[68] Cyropæd. i. 2, 14-15.

Such is Xenophon’s conception of a perfect Polity. It consists in an effective public discipline and drill, begun in early boyhood and continued until old age. The evidence on which he specially insists to prove its good results relates first to the body. The bodies of the Persians become so dry and hard, that they neither spit, nor have occasion to wipe their noses, nor are full of wind, nor are ever seen to retire for the satisfaction of natural wants.[69] Besides this, the discipline enforces complete habits of obedience, sobriety, justice, endurance of pain and privation.

[69] Cyrop. i. 2, 16.

We may note here both the agreement, and the difference, between Xenophon and Plato, as to the tests applied for measuring the goodness of their respective disciplinarian schemes. In regard to the ethical effects desirable (obedience, sobriety, &c.) both were agreed. But while Plato (in Republic) dwells much besides upon the musical training necessary, Xenophon omits this, and substitutes in its place the working off of all the superfluous moisture of the body.[70]

[70] See below, [chap. xxxvii.]

Exemplary obedience of Cyrus to the public discipline — He had learnt justice well — His award about the two coats — Lesson inculcated upon him by the Justice-Master.

Through the two youthful stages of this discipline Cyrus is represented as having passed; undergoing all the fatigues as well as the punishment (he is beaten or flogged by the superintendent[71]) with as much rigour as the rest, and even surpassing all his comrades in endurance and exemplary obedience, not less than in the bow and the javelin. In the lessons about justice he manifests such pre-eminence, that he is appointed by the superintendent to administer justice to other boys: and it is in this capacity that he is chastised for his well-known decision, awarding the large coat to the great boy and the little coat to the little boy, as being more convenient to both,[72] though the proprietorship was opposite: the master impressing upon him, as a general explanation, that the lawful or customary was the Just.[73] Cyrus had been brought as a boy by his mother Mandanê to visit her father, the Median king Astyages. The boy wins the affection of Astyages and all around by his child-like frankness and affectionate sympathy (admirably depicted in Xenophon): while he at the same time resists the corruptions of a luxurious court, and adheres to the simplicity of his Persian training. When Mandanê is about to depart and to rejoin her husband Kambyses in Persis, she is entreated by Astyages to allow Cyrus to remain with him. Cyrus himself also desires to remain: but Mandanê hesitates to allow it: putting to Cyrus, among other difficulties, the question — How will you learn justice here, when the teachers of it are in Persis? To which Cyrus replies — I am already well taught in justice: as you may see by the fact, that my teacher made me a judge over other boys, and compelled me to render account to him of all my proceedings.[74] Besides which, if I am found wanting, my grandfather Astyages will make up the deficient teaching. But (says Mandanê) justice is not the same here under Astyages, as it is in Persis. Astyages has made himself master of all the Medes: while among the Persians equality is accounted justice. Your father Kambyses both performs all that the city directs, and receives nothing more than what the city allows: the measure for him is, not his own inclination, but the law. You must therefore be cautious of staying here, lest you should bring back with you to Persia habits of despotism, and of grasping at more than any one else, contracted from your grandfather: for if you come back in this spirit, you will assuredly be flogged to death. Never fear, mother (answered Cyrus): my grandfather teaches every one round him to claim less than his due — not more than his due: and he will teach me the same.[75]

[71] Cyrop. i. 3, 17; i. 5, 4.

[72] Cyrop. i. 3, 17. This is an ingenious and apposite illustration of the law of property.

[73] Cyrop. i. 3, 17. ἔπειτα δὲ ἔφη τὸ μὲν νόμιμον δίκαιον εἶναι· τὸ δὲ ἄνομον, βίαιον.

[74] Cyropæd. i. 4, 2.

[75] Cyrop. i. 3, 17-18. Ὅπως οὖν μὴ ἀπολῇ μαστιγούμενος, ἐπειδὰν οἴκοι ᾖς, ἂν παρὰ τούτου μαθὼν ἥκῃς ἀντὶ τοῦ βασιλικοῦ τὸ τυραννικόν, ἐν ᾧ ἐστι τὸ πλέον οἴεσθαι χρῆναι πάντων ἔχειν.

Xenophon’s conception of the Sokratic problems — He does not recognise the Sokratic order of solution of those problems.

The portion of the Cyropædia just cited deserves especial attention, in reference to Xenophon as a companion and pupil of Sokrates. The reader has been already familiarised throughout this work with the questions habitually propounded and canvassed by Sokrates — What is Justice, Temperance, Courage, &c.? Are these virtues teachable? If they are so, where are the teachers of them to be found? — for he professed to have looked in vain for any teachers.[76] I have farther remarked that Sokrates required these questions to be debated in the order here stated. That is — you must first know what Justice is, before you can determine whether it be teachable or not — nay, before you are in a position to affirm any thing at all about it, or to declare any particular acts to be either just or unjust.[77]

[76] Xenoph. Memor. i. 16, iv. 4, 5.

[77] See below, [ch. xiii.], [ch. xxii], and [ch. xxiii.]

Now Xenophon, in his description of the Persian official discipline, provides a sufficient answer to the second question — Whether justice is teachable — and where are the teachers thereof? It is teachable: there are official teachers appointed: and every boy passes through a course of teaching prolonged for several years. — But Xenophon does not at all recognise the Sokratic requirement, that the first question shall be fully canvassed and satisfactorily answered, before the second is approached. The first question is indeed answered in a certain way — though the answer appears here only as an obiter dictum, and is never submitted to any Elenchus at all. The master explains — What is Justice? — by telling Cyrus, “That the lawful is just, and that the lawless is violent”. Now if we consider this as preceptorial — as an admonition to the youthful Cyrus how he ought to decide judicial cases — it is perfectly reasonable: “Let your decisions be conformable to the law or custom of the country”. But if we consider it as a portion of philosophy or reasoned truth — as a definition or rational explanation of Justice, advanced by a respondent who is bound to defend it against the Sokratic cross-examination — we shall find it altogether insufficient. Xenophon himself tells us here, that Law or Custom is one thing among the Medes, and the reverse among the Persians: accordingly an action which is just in the one place will be unjust in the other. It is by objections of this kind that Sokrates, both in Plato and Xenophon, refutes explanations propounded by his respondents.[78]

[78] Plato, Republ. v. p. 479 A. τούτων τῶν πολλῶν καλῶν μῶν τι ἔστιν, ὁ οὐκ αἰσχρὸν φανήσεται; καὶ τῶν δικαίων, ὃ οὐκ ἄδικον; καὶ τῶν ὁσίων, ὃ οὐκ ἀνόσιον; Compare Republ. i. p. 331 C, and the conversation of Sokrates with Euthydêmus in the Xenophontic Memorab. iv. 2, 18-19, and Cyropædia, i. 6, 27-34, about what is just and good morality towards enemies.

We read in Pascal, Pensées, i. 6, 8-9:—

“On ne voit presque rien de juste et d’injuste, qui ne change de qualité en changeant de climat. Trois degrés d’élévation du pôle renversent toute la jurisprudence. Un méridien décide de la verité: en peu d’années de possession, les loix fondamentales changent: le droit a ses époques. Plaisante justice, qu’une rivière ou une montagne borne! Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées — erreur au delà!

“Ils confessent que la justice n’est pas dans les coutumes, mais qu’elle reside dans les loix naturelles, connues en tout pays. Certainement ils la soutiendraient opiniâtrement, si la témérité du hasard qui a semé les loix humaines en avait rencontré au moins une qui fut universelle: mais la plaisanterie est telle, que le caprice des hommes s’est si bien diversifié, qu’il n’y en a point.

“Le larcin, l’inceste, le meurtre des enfans et des pères, tout a eu sa place entre les actions vertueuses. Se peut-il rien de plus plaisant, qu’un homme ait droit de me tuer parcequ’il demeure au-delà de l’eau, et que son prince a querelle avec le mien, quoique je n’en aie aucune avec lui?

“L’un dit que l’essence de la justice est l’autorité du législateur: l’autre, la commodité du souverain: l’autre, la coutume présente — et c’est le plus sûr. Rien, suivant la seule raison, n’est juste de soi: tout branle avec le temps. La coutume fait toute l’équité, par cela seul qu’elle est reçue: c’est le fondement mystique de son autorité. Qui la ramène à son principe, l’anéantit.”

Definition given by Sokrates of Justice — Insufficient to satisfy the exigencies of the Sokratic Elenchus.

Though the explanation of Justice here given is altogether untenable, yet we shall find it advanced by Sokrates himself as complete and conclusive, in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, where he is conversing with the Sophist Hippias. That Sophist is represented as at first urging difficulties against it, but afterwards as concurring with Sokrates: who enlarges upon the definition, and extols it as perfectly satisfactory. If Sokrates really delivered this answer to Hippias, as a general definition of Justice — we may learn from it how much greater was his negative acuteness in overthrowing the definitions of others, than his affirmative perspicacity in discovering unexceptionable definitions of his own. This is the deficiency admitted by himself in the Platonic Apology — lamented by friends like Kleitophon — arraigned by opponents like Hippias and Thrasymachus. Xenophon, whose intellect was practical rather than speculative, appears not to be aware of it. He does not feel the depth and difficulty of the Sokratic problems, even while he himself enunciates them. He does not appreciate all the conditions of a good definition, capable of being maintained against that formidable cross-examination (recounted by himself) whereby Sokrates humbled the youth Euthydêmus: still less does he enter into the spirit of that Sokratic order of precedence (declared in the negative Platonic dialogues), in the study of philosophical questions:—First define Justice, and find a definition of it such as you can maintain against a cross-examining adversary before you proceed either to affirm or deny any predicates concerning it. The practical advice and reflexions of Xenophon are, for the most part, judicious and penetrating. But he falls very short when he comes to deal with philosophical theory:—with reasoned truth, and with the Sokratic Elenchus as a test for discriminating such truth from the false, the doubtful, or the not-proven.

Biography of Cyrus — constant military success earned by suitable qualities — Variety of characters and situations.

Cyrus is allowed by his mother to remain amidst the luxuries of the Median court. It is a part of his admirable disposition that he resists all its temptations,[79] and goes back to the hard fare and discipline of the Persians with the same exemplary obedience as before. He is appointed by the Elders to command the Persian contingent which is sent to assist Kyaxares (son of Astyages), king of Media; and he thus enters upon that active military career which is described as occupying his whole life, until his conquest of Babylon, and his subsequent organization of the great Persian empire. His father Kambyses sends him forth with excellent exhortations, many of which are almost in the same words as those which we read ascribed to Sokrates in the Memorabilia. In the details of Cyrus’s biography which follow, the stamp of Sokratic influence is less marked, yet seldom altogether wanting. The conversation of Sokrates had taught Xenophon how to make the most of his own large experience and observation. His biography of Cyrus represents a string of successive situations, calling forth and displaying the aptitude of the hero for command. The epical invention with which these situations are imagined — the variety of characters introduced, Araspes, Abradates, Pantheia, Chrysantas, Hystaspes, Gadatas, Gobryas, Tigranes, &c. — the dramatic propriety with which each of these persons is animated as speaker, and made to teach a lesson bearing on the predetermined conclusion — all these are highly honourable to the Xenophontic genius, but all of them likewise bespeak the Companion of Sokrates. Xenophon dwells, with evident pleasure, on the details connected with the rationale of military proceedings: the wants and liabilities of soldiers, the advantages or disadvantages of different weapons or different modes of marshalling, the duties of the general as compared with those of the soldier, &c. Cyrus is not merely always ready with his orders, but also competent as a speaker to explain the propriety of what he orders.[80] We have the truly Athenian idea, that persuasive speech is the precursor of intelligent and energetic action: and that it is an attribute essentially necessary for a general, for the purpose of informing, appeasing, re-assuring, the minds of the soldiers.[81] This, as well as other duties and functions of a military commander, we find laid down generally in the conversations of Sokrates,[82] who conceives these functions, in their most general aspect, as a branch of the comprehensive art of guiding or governing men. What Sokrates thus enunciates generally, is exemplified in detail throughout the life of Cyrus.

[79] Cyropæd. i. 5, 1.

[80] Cyropæd. v. 5, 46. λεκτικώτατος καὶ πρακτικώτατος. Compare the Memorabilia, iv. 6, 1-15.

[81] Memorab. iii. 3, 11; Hipparch. viii. 22; Cyropæd. vi. 2, 13. Compare the impressive portion of the funeral oration delivered by Perikles in Thucydides, ii. 40.

[82] See the four first chapters of the third book of the Xenophontic Memorabilia. The treatise of Xenophon called Ἱππαρχικὸς enumerates also the general duties required from a commander of cavalry: among these, ψευδαυτόμολοι are mentioned (iv. 7). Now the employment, with effect, of a ψευδαυτόμολος, is described with much detail in the Cyropædia. See the case of Araspes (vi. 1, 37, vi. 3, 16).

Generous and amiable qualities of Cyrus, Abradates and Pantheia.

Throughout all the Cyropædia, the heroic qualities and personal agency of Cyrus are always in the foreground, working with unerring success and determining every thing. He is moreover recommended to our sympathies, not merely by the energy and judgment of a leader, but also by the amiable qualities of a generous man — by the remarkable combination of self-command with indulgence towards others — by considerate lenity towards subdued enemies like Krœsus and the Armenian prince — even by solicitude shown that the miseries of war should fall altogether on the fighting men, and that the cultivators of the land should be left unmolested by both parties.[83] Respecting several other persons in the narrative, too — the Armenian Tigranes, Gadatas, Gobryas, &c. — the adventures and scenes described are touching: but the tale of Abradates and Pantheia transcends them all, and is perhaps the most pathetic recital embodied in the works of Hellenic antiquity.[84] In all these narratives the vein of sentiment is neither Sokratic nor Platonic, but belongs to Xenophon himself.

[83] Cyrop. iii. 1, 10-38, vii. 2, 9-29, v. 4, 26, vi. 1, 37. Ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν, ὦ Κῦρε, καὶ ταῦτα ὅμοιος εἶ, πρᾷός τε καὶ συγγνώμων τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἁμαρτημάτων.

[84] Cyrop. vii. 3.

Scheme of government devised by Cyrus when his conquests are completed — Oriental despotism, wisely arranged.

This last remark may also be made respecting the concluding proceedings of Cyrus, after he has thoroughly completed his conquests, and when he establishes arrangements for governing them permanently. The scheme of government which Xenophon imagines and introduces him as organizing, is neither Sokratic nor Platonic, nor even Hellenic: it would probably have been as little acceptable to his friend Agesilaus, the marked “hater of Persia,”[85] as to any Athenian politician. It is altogether an Oriental despotism, skilfully organized both for the security of the despot and for enabling him to keep a vigorous hold on subjects distant as well as near: such as the younger Cyrus might possibly have attempted, if his brother Artaxerxes had been slain at Kunaxa, instead of himself. “Eam conditionem esse imperandi, ut non aliter ratio constet, quam si uni reddatur”[86] — is a maxim repugnant to Hellenic ideas, and not likely to be rendered welcome even by the regulations of detail with which Xenophon surrounds it; judicious as these regulations are for their contemplated purpose. The amiable and popular character which Cyrus has maintained from youth upwards, and by means of which he has gained an uninterrupted series of victories, is difficult to be reconciled with the insecurity, however imposing, in which he dwells as Great King. When we find that he accounts it a necessary precaution to surround himself with eunuchs, on the express ground that they are despised by every one else and therefore likely to be more faithful to their master — when we read also that in consequence of the number of disaffected subjects, he is forced to keep a guard composed of twenty thousand soldiers taken from poor Persian mountaineers[87] — we find realised, in the case of the triumphant Cyrus, much of that peril and insecurity which the despot Hieron had so bitterly deplored in his conversation with Simonides. However unsatisfactory the ideal of government may be, which Plato lays out either in the Republic or the Leges — that which Xenophon sets before us is not at all more acceptable, in spite of the splendid individual portrait whereby he dazzles our imagination. Few Athenians would have exchanged Athens either for Babylon under Cyrus, or for Plato’s Magnêtic colony in Krete.

[85] Xenoph. Agesilaus, vii. 7. εἰ δ’ αὖ καλὸν καὶ μισοπέρσην εἶναι — ἐξέπλευσεν, ὅ, τι δύναιτο κακὸν· ποιήσων τὸν βάρβαρον.

[86] Tacit. Annal. i. 6.

[87] Xen. Cyrop. vii. 5, 58-70.

Persian present reality — is described by Xenophon as thoroughly depraved, in striking contrast to the establishment of Cyrus.

The Xenophontic government is thus noway admirable, even as an ideal. But he himself presents it only as an ideal — or (which is the same thing in the eyes of a present companion of Sokrates) as a quasi-historical fact, belonging to the unknown and undetermined past. When Xenophon talks of what the Persians are now, he presents us with nothing but a shocking contrast to this ideal; nothing but vice, corruption, degeneracy of every kind, exorbitant sensuality, faithlessness and cowardice.[88] His picture of Persia is like that of the of Platonic Kosmos, which we can read in the Timæus:[89] a splendid Kosmos in its original plan and construction, but full of defects and evil as it actually exists. The strength and excellence of the Xenophontic orderly despotism dies with its heroic beginner. His two sons (as Plato remarked) do not receive the same elaborate training and discipline as himself: nor can they be restrained, even by the impressive appeal which he makes to them on his death-bed, from violent dissension among themselves, and misgovernment of every kind.[90]

[88] Cyrop. viii. 8.

[89] See below, [ch. xxxviii.]

[90] Cyropæd. viii. 7, 9-19: Plato, Legg. iii. p. 694 D.

Xenophon has good experience of military and equestrian proceedings — No experience of finance and commerce.

Whatever we may think of the political ideal of Xenophon, his Cyropædia is among the glories of the Sokratic family; as an excellent specimen of the philosophical imagination, in carrying a general doctrine into illustrative details — and of the epical imagination in respect to varied characters and touching incident. In stringing together instructive conversations, moreover, it displays the same art which we trace in the Memorabilia, Œkonomikus, Hieron, &c., and which is worthy of the attentive companion of Sokrates. Whenever Xenophon talks about military affairs, horsemanship, agriculture, house-management, &c., he is within the range of personal experience of his own; and his recommendations, controlled as they thus are by known realities, are for the most part instructive and valuable. Such is the case not merely with the Cyropædia and Œkonomikus, but also in his two short treatises, De Re Equestri and De Officio Magistri Equitum.

But we cannot say so much when he discusses plans of finance.

Discourse of Xenophon on Athenian finance and the condition of Athens. His admiration of active commerce and variety of pursuits.

We read among his works a discourse composed after his sentence of exile had been repealed, and when he was very old, seemingly not earlier than 355 B.C.[91] — criticising the actual condition of Athens, and proposing various measures for the improvement of the finances, as well as for relief of the citizens from poverty. He begins this discourse by a sentiment thoroughly Sokratic and Platonic, which would serve almost as a continuation of the Cyropædia. The government of a city will be measured by the character and ability of its leaders.[92] He closes it by another sentiment equally Sokratic and Platonic; advising that before his measures are adopted, special messengers shall be sent to Delphi and Dodona; to ascertain whether the Gods approve them — and if they approve, to which Gods they enjoin that the initiatory sacrifices shall be offered.[93] But almost everything in the discourse, between the first and last sentences, is in a vein not at all Sokratic — in a vein, indeed, positively anti-Platonic and anti-Spartan. We have already seen that wealth, gold and silver, commerce, influx of strangers, &c., are discouraged as much as possible by Plato, and by the theory (though evaded partially in practice) of Sparta. Now it is precisely these objects which Xenophon, in the treatise before us, does his utmost to foster and extend at Athens. Nothing is here said about the vulgarising influence of trade as compared with farming, which we read in the Œkonomikus: nor about the ethical and pædagogic dictation which pervades so much of the Cyropædia, and reigns paramount throughout the Platonic Republic and Leges. Xenophon takes Athens as she stands, with great variety of tastes, active occupation, and condition among the inhabitants: her mild climate and productive territory, especially her veins of silver and her fine marble: her importing and exporting merchants, her central situation, as convenient entrepôt for commodities produced in the most distant lands:[94] her skilful artisans and craftsmen: her monied capitalists: and not these alone, but also the congregation and affluence of fine artists, intellectual men, philosophers, Sophists, poets, rhapsodes, actors, &c.: last, though not least, the temples adorning her akropolis, and the dramatic representations exhibited at her Dionysiac festivals, which afforded the highest captivation to eye as well as ear, and attracted strangers from all quarters as visitors.[95] Xenophon extols these charms of Athens with a warmth which reminds us of the Periklean funeral oration in Thucydides.[96] He no longer speaks like one whose heart and affections are with the Spartan drill: still less does he speak like Plato — to whom (as we see both by the Republic and the Leges) such artistic and poetical exhibitions were abominations calling for censorial repression — and in whose eyes gold, silver, commerce, abundant influx of strangers, &c., were dangerous enemies of all civic virtue.

[91] Xenophon, Πόροι — ἣ περὶ Προσόδων. De Vectigalibus. See Schneider’s Proleg. to this treatise, pp. 138-140.

[92] De Vectig. i. 1. ἐγὼ μὲν τοῦτο ἀεί ποτε νομίζο, ὁποῖοί τινες ἂν οἱ προστάται ὦσι, τοιαύτας καὶ τὰς πολιτείας γίγνεσθαι.

[93] De Vect. vi. 2. Compare this with Anabas. iii. 1, 5, where Sokrates reproves Xenophon for his evasive manner of putting a question to the Delphian God. Xenophon here adopts the plenary manner enjoined by Sokrates.

[94] De Vectig. c. i. 2-3.

[95] De Vect. v. 3-4. Τί δὲ οἱ πολυέλαιοι; τί δὲ οἱ πολυπρόβατοι; τί δὲ οἱ γνώμῃ καὶ ἀργυρίῳ δυνάμενοι χρηματίζεσθαι; Καὶ μὴν χειροτέχναι τε καὶ σοφισταὶ καὶ φιλόσοφοι· οἱ δὲ ποιηταὶ, οἱ δὲ τὰ τούτων μεταχειριζόμενοι, οἱ δὲ ἀξιοθεάτων ἢ ἀξιακούστων ἱερῶν ἢ ὁσίων ἐπιθυμοῦντες, &c.

[96] Thucydid. ii. 34-42; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 12. Compare Xenophon, Republ. Athen. ii. 7, iii. 8.

Recognised poverty among the citizens. Plan for improvement.

Yet while recognising all these charms and advantages, Xenophon finds himself compelled to lament great poverty among the citizens; which poverty (he says) is often urged by the leading men as an excuse for unjust proceedings. Accordingly he comes forward with various financial suggestions, by means of which he confidently anticipates that every Athenian citizen may obtain a comfortable maintenance from the public.[97]

[97] De Vectig. iv. 33. καὶ ἐμοὶ μὲν δὴ εἴρηται, ὡς ἂν ἡγοῦμαι κατασκευασθείσης τῆς πόλεως ἱκανὴν ἂν πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις τροφὴν ἀπὸ κοινοῦ γενέσθαι.

Advantage of a large number of Metics. How these may be encouraged.

First, he dwells upon the great advantage of encouraging metics, or foreigners resident at Athens, each of whom paid an annual capitation tax to the treasury. There were already many such, not merely Greeks, but Orientals also, Lydians, Phrygians, Syrians, &c.:[98] and by judicious encouragement all expatriated men everywhere might be made to prefer the agreeable residence at Athens, thus largely increasing the annual amount of the tax. The metics ought (he says) to be exempted from military service (which the citizens ought to perform and might perform alone), but to be admitted to the honours of the equestrian duty, whenever they were rich enough to afford it: and farther, to be allowed the liberty of purchasing land and building houses in the city. Moreover not merely resident metics, but also foreign merchants who came as visitors, conducting an extensive commerce — ought to be flattered by complimentary votes and occasional hospitalities: while the curators of the harbour, whose function it was to settle disputes among them, should receive prizes if they adjudicated equitably and speedily.[99]

[98] De Vect. ii. 3-7.

[99] De Vect. iii. 2-6.

Proposal to raise by voluntary contributions a large sum to be employed as capital by the city. Distribution of three oboli per head per day to all the citizens.

All this (Xenophon observes) will require only friendly and considerate demonstrations. His farther schemes are more ambitious, not to be effected without a large outlay. He proposes to raise an ample fund for the purposes of the city, by voluntary contributions; which he expects to obtain not merely from private Athenians and metics, rich and in easy circumstances — but also from other cities, and even from foreign despots, kings, satraps, &c. The tempting inducement will be, that the names of all contributors with their respecting contributions will be inscribed on public tablets, and permanently commemorated as benefactors of the city.[100] Contributors (he says) are found, for the outfit of a fleet, where they expect no return: much more will they come forward here, where a good return will accrue. The fund so raised will be employed under public authority with the most profitable result, in many different ways. The city will build docks and warehouses for bonding goods — houses near the harbour to be let to merchants — merchant-vessels to be let out on freight. But the largest profit will be obtained by working the silver mines at Laureion in Attica. The city will purchase a number of foreign slaves, and will employ them under the superintendence of old free citizens who are past the age of labour, partly in working these mines for public account, each of the ten tribes employing one tenth part of the number — partly by letting them out to private mining undertakers, at so much per diem for each slave: the slaves being distinguished by a conspicuous public stamp, and the undertaker binding himself under penalty always to restore the same number of them as he received.[101] Such competition between the city and the private mining undertakers will augment the total produce, and will be no loss to either, but wholesome for both. The mines will absorb as many workmen as are put into them: for in the production of silver (Xenophon argues) there can never be any glut, as there is sometimes in corn, wine, or oil. Silver is always in demand, and is not lessened in value by increase of quantity. Every one is anxious to get it, and has as much pleasure in hoarding it under ground as in actively employing it.[102] The scheme, thus described, may (if found necessary) be brought into operation by degrees, a certain number of slaves being purchased annually until the full total is made up. From these various financial projects, and especially from the fund thus employed as capital under the management of the Senate, the largest returns are expected. Amidst the general abundance which will ensue, the religious festivals will be celebrated with increased splendour — the temples will be repaired, the docks and walls will be put in complete order — the priests, the Senate, the magistrates, the horsemen, will receive the full stipends which the old custom of Athens destined for them.[103] But besides all these, the object which Xenophon has most at heart will be accomplished: the poor citizens will be rescued from poverty. There will be a regular distribution among all citizens, per head and equally. Three oboli, or half a drachma, will be allotted daily to each, to poor and rich alike. For the poor citizens, this will provide a comfortable subsistence, without any contribution on their part: the poverty now prevailing will thus be alleviated. The rich, like the poor, receive the daily triobolon as a free gift: but if they even compute it as interest for their investments, they will find that the rate of interest is full and satisfactory, like the rate on bottomry. Three oboli per day amount in the year of 360 days to 180 drachmæ: now if a rich man has contributed ten minæ ( = 1000 drachmæ), he will thus receive interest at the rate of 18 per cent. per annum: if another less rich citizen has contributed one mina ( = 100 drachmæ), he will receive interest at the rate of 180 per cent. per annum: more than he could realise in any other investment.[104]

[100] De Vect. iii. 11.

[101] De Vect. iv. 13-19.

[102] De Vect. iv. 4-7.

[103] De Vectig. vi. 1-2. Καὶ ὁ μὲν δῆμος τροφῆς εὐπορήσει, οἱ δὲ πλούσιοι τῆς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον δαπάνης ἀπαλλαγήσονται, περιουσίας δὲ πολλῆς γενομένης, μεγαλοπρεπέστερον μὲν ἔτι ἣ νῦν τὰς ἑορτὰς ἄξομεν, ἱερὰ δ’ ἐπισκευάσομεν, τείχη δὲ καὶ νεώρια ἀνορθώσομεν, ἱερεῦσι δὲ καὶ βουλῇ καὶ ἀρχαῖς καὶ ἱππεῦσι τὰ πάτρια ἀποδώσομεν — πῶς οὐκ ἄξιον ὡς τάχιστα τούτοις ἐγχειρεῖν, ἵνα ἔτι ἐφ’ ἡμῶν ἐπίδωμεν τὴν πόλιν μετ’ ἀσφαλείας εὐδαιμονοῦσαν;

[104] De Vectig. iii. 9-12.

Purpose and principle of this distribution.

Half a drachma, or three oboli, per day, was the highest rate of pay ever received (the rate varied at different times) by the citizens as Dikasts and Ekklesiasts, for attending in judicature or in assembly. It is this amount of pay which Xenophon here proposes to ensure to every citizen, without exception, out of the public treasury; which (he calculates) would be enriched by his project so as easily to bear such a disbursement. He relieves the poor citizens from poverty by making them all pensioners on the public treasury, with or without service rendered, or the pretence of service. He strains yet farther the dangerous principle of the Theôrikon, without the same excuse as can be shown for the Theôrikon itself on religious grounds.[105] If such a proposition had been made by Kleon, Hyperbolus, Kleophon, Agyrrhius, &c., it would have been dwelt upon by most historians of Greece as an illustration of the cacoethes of democracy — to extract money, somehow or other, from the rich, for the purpose of keeping the poor in comfort. Not one of the democratical leaders, so far as we know, ever ventured to propose so sweeping a measure: we have it here from the pen of the oligarchical Xenophon.

[105] Respecting the Theôrikon at Athens, see my ‘History of Greece,’ ch. 88, pp. 492-498.

Visionary anticipations of Xenophon, financial and commercial.

But we must of course discuss Xenophon’s scheme as a whole: the aggregate enlargement of revenue, from his various visionary new ways and means, on one side — against the new mode and increased amount of expenditure, on the other side. He would not have proposed such an expenditure, if he had not thoroughly believed in the correctness of his own anticipations, both as to the profits of the mining scheme, and as to the increase of receipts from other sources: such as the multiplication of tax-paying Metics, the rent paid by them for the new houses to be built by the city, the increase of the harbour dues from expanded foreign trade. But of these anticipations, even the least unpromising are vague and uncertain: while the prospects of the mining scheme appear thoroughly chimerical. Nothing is clear or certain except the disbursement. We scarcely understand how Xenophon could seriously have imagined, either that voluntary contributors could have been found to subscribe the aggregate fund as he proposes — or that, if subscribed, it could have yielded the prodigious return upon which he reckons. We must, however, recollect that he had no familiarity with finance, or with the conditions and liabilities of commerce, or with the raising of money from voluntary contributors for any collective purpose. He would not have indulged in similar fancies if the question had been about getting together supplies for an army. Practical Athenian financiers would probably say, in criticising his financial project — what Heraldus[106] observes upon some views of his opponent Salmasius, about the relations of capital and interest in Attica — “Somnium est hominis harum rerum, etiam cum vigilat, nihil scientis”.[107] The financial management of Athens was doubtless defective in many ways: but it would not have been improved in the hands of Xenophon — any more than the administrative and judiciary department of Athens would have become better under the severe regimen of Plato.[108] The merits of the Sokratic companions — and great merits they were — lay in the region of instructive theory.

[106] This passage of Heraldus is cited by M. Boeckh in his Public Economy of Athens, B. iv. ch. 21, p. 606, Eng. Trans. In that chapter of M. Boeckh’s work (pp. 600-610) some very instructive pages will be found about the Xenophontic scheme here noticed.

I will however mention one or two points on which my understanding of the scheme differs from his. He says (p. 605):—“The author supposes that the profit upon this speculation would amount to three oboli per day, so that the subscribers would obtain a very high per centage on their shares. Xenophon supposes unequal contributions, according to the different amounts of property, agreeable to the principles of a property-tax, but an equal distribution of the receipts for the purpose of favouring and aiding the poor. What Xenophon is speaking of is an income annually arising upon each share, either equal to or exceeding the interest of the loans on bottomry. Where, however, is the security that the undertaking would produce three oboli a day to each subscriber?”

I concur in most of what is here said; but M. Boeckh states the matter too much as if the three oboli per diem were a real return arising from the scheme, and payable to each shareholder upon each share as he calls it. This is an accident of the case, not the essential feature. The poorest citizens — for whose benefit, more than for any other object, the scheme is contrived — would not be shareholders at all: they would be too poor to contribute anything, yet each of them would receive his triobolon like the rest. Moreover, many citizens, even though able to pay, might hold back, and decline to pay: yet still each would receive as much. And again, the foreigners, kings, satraps, &c., would be contributors, but would receive nothing at all. The distribution of the triobolon would be made to citizens only. Xenophon does indeed state the proportion of receipt to payments in the cases of some rich contributors, as an auxiliary motive to conciliate them. But we ought not to treat this receipt as if it were a real return yielded by the public mining speculation, or as profit actually brought in.

As I conceive the scheme, the daily triobolon, and the respective contributions furnished, have no premeditated ratio, no essential connection with each other. The daily payment of the triobolon to every citizen indiscriminately, is a new and heavy burden which Xenophon imposes upon the city. But this is only one among many other burdens, as we may see by cap. 6. In order to augment the wealth of the city, so as to defray these large expenses, he proposes several new financial measures. Of these the most considerable was the public mining speculation; but it did not stand alone. The financial scheme of Xenophon, both as to receipts and as to expenditure, is more general than M. Boeckh allows for.

[107] It is truly surprising to read in one of Hume’s Essays the following sentence. Essay XII. on Civil Liberty, p. 107 ed. of Hume’s Philosophical Works, 1825.

“The Athenians, though governed by a Republic, paid near two hundred per cent for those sums of money which any emergence made it necessary for them to borrow, as we learn from Xenophon.”

In the note Hume quotes the following passage from this discourse, De Vectigalibus:—Κτῆσιν δὲ ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἂν οὕτω καλὴν κτήσαιντο, ὥσπερ ἀφ’ οὖ ἂν προτελέσωσιν εἰς τὴν ἀφορμήν. Οἱ δέ γε πλεῖστοι Ἀθηναίων πλείονα λήψονται κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἢ ὅσα ἂν εἰσενέγκωσιν. Οἱ γὰρ μνᾶν προτελέσαντες, ἐγγὺς δυοῖν μνᾷν πρόσοδον ἔξουσι. Ὃ δοκεῖ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀσφαλέστατόν τε καὶ πολυχρονιώτατον εἶναι.

Hume has been misled by dwelling upon one or two separate sentences. If he had taken into consideration the whole discourse and its declared scope, he would have seen that it affords no warrant for any inference as to the rate of interest paid by the Athenian public when they wanted to borrow. In Xenophon’s scheme there is no fixed proportion between what a contributor to the fund would pay and what he would receive. The triobolon received is a fixed sum to each citizen, whereas the contributions of each would be different. Moreover the foreigners and metics would contribute without receiving anything, while the poor citizens would receive their triobolon per head, without having contributed anything.

[108] Aristeides the Rhetor has some forcible remarks in defending Rhetoric and the Athenian statesmen against the bitter criticisms of Plato in the Gorgias: pointing out that Plato himself had never made trial of the difficulty of governing any real community of men, or of the necessities under which a statesman in actual political life was placed (Orat. xlv. Περὶ Ῥητορικῆς, pp. 109-110, Dindorf).

Xenophon exhorts his countrymen to maintain peace.

Xenophon accompanies his financial scheme with a strong recommendation to his countrymen that they should abstain from warlike enterprises and maintain peace with every one. He expatiates on the manifest advantages, nay, even on the necessity, of continued peace, under the actual poverty of the city: for the purpose of recruiting the exhausted means of the citizens, as well as of favouring his own new projects for the improvement of finance and commerce. While he especially deprecates any attempt on the part of Athens to regain by force her lost headship over the Greeks, he at the same time holds out hopes that this dignity would be spontaneously tendered to her, if, besides abstaining from all violence, she conducted herself with a liberal and conciliatory spirit towards all: if she did her best to adjust differences among other cities, and to uphold the autonomy of the Delphian temple.[109] As far as we can judge, such pacific exhortations were at that time wise and politic. Athens had just then concluded peace (355 B.C.) after the three years of ruinous and unsuccessful war, called the Social War, carried on against her revolted allies Chios, Kos, Rhodes, and Byzantium. To attempt the recovery of empire by force was most mischievous. There was indeed one purpose, for which she was called upon by a wise forecast to put forth her strength — to check the aggrandisement of Philip in Macedonia. But this was a distant purpose: and the necessity, though it became every year more urgent, was not so prominently manifest[110] in 355 B.C. as to affect the judgment of Xenophon. At that early day, Demosthenes himself did not see the danger from Macedonia: his first Philippic was delivered in 351 B.C., and even then his remonstrances, highly creditable to his own forecast, made little impression on others. But when we read the financial oration De Symmoriis we appreciate his sound administrative and practical judgment; compared with the benevolent dreams and ample public largess in which Xenophon here indulges.[111]

[109] Xenoph. De Vectig. v. 3-8.

[110] See my ‘History of Greece,’ ch. 86, p. 325 seq.

I agree with Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, ut suprà, p. 601, that this pamphlet of Xenophon is probably to be referred to the close of the Social War, about 355 B.C.

[111] Respecting the first Philippic, and the Oratio De Symmoriis of Demosthenes, see my ‘History of Greece,’ ch. 87, pp. 401-431.

Difference of the latest compositions of Xenophon and Plato, from their point of view in the earlier.

We have seen that Plato died in 347 B.C., having reached the full age of eighty: Xenophon must have attained the same age nearly, and may perhaps have attained it completely — though we do not know the exact year of his death. With both these two illustrious companions of Sokrates, the point of view is considerably modified in their last compositions as compared to their earlier. Xenophon shows the alteration not less clearly than Plato, though in an opposite direction. His discourse on the Athenian revenues differs quite as much from the Anabasis, Cyropædia, and Œkonomikus — as the Leges and Epinomis differ from any of Plato’s earlier works. Whatever we may think of the financial and commercial anticipations of Xenophon, his pamphlet on the Athenian revenues betokens a warm sympathy for his native city — a genuine appreciation of her individual freedom and her many-sided intellectual activity — an earnest interest in her actual career, and even in the extension of her commercial and manufacturing wealth. In these respects it recommends itself to our feelings more than the last Platonic production — Leges and Epinomis — composed nearly at the same time, between 356-347 B.C. While Xenophon in old age, becoming reconciled to his country, forgets his early passion for the Spartan drill and discipline, perpetual, monotonous, unlettered — we find in the senility of Plato a more cramping limitation of the varieties of human agency — a stricter compression, even of individual thought and speech, under the infallible official orthodoxy — a more extensive use of the pædagogic rod and the censorial muzzle than he had ever proposed before.

In thus taking an unwilling leave of the Sokratic family, represented by these two venerable survivors — to both of whom the students of Athenian letters and philosophy are so deeply indebted — I feel some satisfaction in the belief, that both of them died, as they were born, citizens of free Athens and of unconquered Hellas: and that neither of them was preserved to an excessive old age, like their contemporary Isokrates, to witness the extinction of Hellenic autonomy by the battle of Chæroneia.[112]

[112] Compare the touching passage in Tacitus’s description of the death of Agricola, c. 44-45.

“Festinatæ mortis grande solatium tulit, evasisse postremum illud tempus,” &c.

CHAPTER V.

LIFE OF PLATO.

Scanty information about Plato’s life.

Of Plato’s biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato’s life,[1] composed by his companion and disciple Xenokrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proklus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity — and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him — yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a considerable proportion is poorly attested.[2]

[1] This is cited by Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. De Cœlo, 470, a. 27; 474, a. 12, ed. Brandis.

[2] Diogen. Laert. iv. 1. The person to whom Diogenes addressed his biography of Plato was a female: possibly the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus (see Philostr. Vit. Apoll. i. 3), who greatly loved and valued the Platonic philosophy (Diog. Laert. iii. 47). Ménage (in his commentary on the Proœmium) supposes the person signified to be Arria: this also is a mere conjecture, and in my judgment less probable. We know that the empress gave positive encouragement to writers on philosophy. The article devoted by Diogenes to Plato is of considerable length, including both biography and exposition of doctrine. He makes reference to numerous witnesses — Speusippus, Aristotle, Hermodôrus, Aristippus, Dikæarchus, Aristoxenus, Klearchus, Herakleides, Theopompus, Timon in his Silli or satirical poem, Pamphila, Hermippus, Neanthes, Antileon, Favorinus, Athenodôrus. Timotheus, Idomeneus, Alexander ἐν διαδοχαῖς καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, Satyrus, Onêtor, Alkimus, Euphorion, Panætius, Myronianus, Polemon, Aristophanes of Byzantium, the Alexandrine critic, Antigonus of Karystus, Thrasyllus, &c.

Of the other biographers of Plato, Olympiodorus and the Auctor Anonymus cite no authorities. Apuleius, in his survey of the doctrine of Plato (De Habitudine doctrinarum Platonis, init. p. 567, ed. Paris), mentions only Speusippus, as having attested the early diligence and quick apprehension of Plato. “Speusippus, domesticis instructus documentis, et pueri ejus acre in percipiendo ingenium, et admirandæ verecundiæ indolem laudat, et pubescentis primitias labore atque amore studendi imbutas refert,” &c.

Speusippus had composed a funeral Discourse or Encomium on Plato (Diogen. iii. 1, 2; iv. 1, 11). Unfortunately Diogenes refers to it only once in reference to Plato. We can hardly make out whether any of the authors, whom he cites, had made the life of Plato a subject of attentive study. Hermodôrus is cited by Simplikius as having written a treatise περὶ Πλάτωνος. Aristoxenus, Dikæarchus, and Theopompus — perhaps also Hermippus, and Klearchus — had good means of information.

See K. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie, p. 97, not. 45.

His birth, parentage, and early education.

Plato was born in Ægina (in which island his father enjoyed an estate as kleruch or out-settled citizen) in the month Thargelion (May) of the year B.C. 427.[3] His family, belonging to the Dême Kollytus, was both ancient and noble, in the sense attached to that word at Athens. He was son of Ariston (or, according to some admirers, of the God Apollo) and Periktionê: his maternal ancestors had been intimate friends or relatives of the law-giver Solon, while his father belonged to a Gens tracing its descent from Kodrus, and even from the God Poseidon. He was also nearly related to Charmides and to Kritias — this last the well-known and violent leader among the oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants.[4] Plato was first called Aristoklês, after his grandfather; but received when he grew up the name of Plato — on account of the breadth (we are told) either of his forehead or of his shoulders. Endowed with a robust physical frame, and exercised in gymnastics, not merely in one of the palæstræ of Athens (which he describes graphically in the Charmides) but also under an Argeian trainer, he attained such force and skill as to contend (if we may credit Dikæarchus) for the prize of wrestling among boys at the Isthmian festival.[5] His literary training was commenced under a schoolmaster named Dionysius, and pursued under Drakon, a celebrated teacher of music in the large sense then attached to that word. He is said to have displayed both diligence and remarkable quickness of apprehension, combined too with the utmost gravity and modesty.[6] He not only acquired great familiarity with the poets, but composed poetry of his own — dithyrambic, lyric, and tragic: and he is even reported to have prepared a tragic tetralogy, with the view of competing for victory at the Dionysian festival. We are told that he burned these poems, when he attached himself to the society of Sokrates. No compositions in verse remain under his name, except a few epigrams — amatory, affectionate, and of great poetical beauty. But there is ample proof in his dialogues that the cast of his mind was essentially poetical. Many of his philosophical speculations are nearly allied to poetry, and acquire their hold upon the mind rather through imagination and sentiment than through reason or evidence.

[3] It was affirmed distinctly by Hermodôrus (according to the statement of Diogenes Laertius, iii. 6) that Plato was twenty-eight years old at the time of the death of Sokrates: that is, in May, 399 B.C. (Zeller, Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 39, ed. 2nd.) This would place the birth of Plato in 427 B.C. Other critics refer his birth to 428 or 429: but I agree with Zeller in thinking that the deposition of Hermodôrus is more trustworthy than any other evidence before us.

Hermodôrus was a friend and disciple of Plato, and is even said to have made money by publishing Plato’s dialogues without permission (Cic., Epist. ad Attic. xiii. 21). Suidas, Ἑρμόδωρος. He was also an author: he published a treatise Περὶ Μαθημάτων (Diog. L., Proœm. 2).

See the more recent Dissertation of Zeller, De Hermodoro Ephesio et Hermodoro Platonico, Marburg, 1859, p. 19 seq. He cites two important passages (out of the commentary of Simplikius on Aristot. Physic.) referring to the work of Hermodôrus ὁ Πλάτωνος ἕταιρος — a work Περὶ Πλάτωνος, on Plato.

[4] The statements respecting Plato’s relatives are obscure and perplexing: unfortunately the domestica documenta, which were within the knowledge of his nephew Speusippus, are no longer accessible to us. It is certain that he had two brothers, Glaukon and Adeimantus: besides which, it would appear from the Parmenides (126 B) that he had a younger half-brother by the mother’s side, named Antiphon, and son of Pyrilampes (compare Charmides, p. 158 A, and Plut., De Frat. Amore, 12, p. 484 E). But the age, which this would assign to Antiphon, does not harmonise well with the chronological postulates assumed in the exordium of the Parmenides. Accordingly, K. F. Hermann and Stallbaum are led to believe, that besides the brothers of Plato named Glaukon and Adeimantus, there must also have been two uncles of Plato bearing these same names, and having Antiphon for their younger brother. (See Stallbaum’s Prolegg. ad Charm. pp. 84, 85, and Prolegg. ad Parmen., Part iii. pp. 304-307.) This is not unlikely: but we cannot certainly determine the point — more especially as we do not know what amount of chronological inaccuracy Plato might hold to be admissible in the personnel of his dialogues.

It is worth mentioning, that in the discourse of Andokides de Mysteriis, persons named Plato, Charmides, Antiphon, are named among those accused of concern in the sacrileges of 415 B.C. — the mutilation of the Hermæ and the mock celebration of the mysteries. Speusippus is also named as among the Senators of the year (Andokides de Myst. p. 13-27, seq.). Whether these persons belonged to the same family as the philosopher Plato, we cannot say. He himself was then only twelve years old.

[5] Diog. L. iii. 4; Epiktêtus, i. 8-13, εἰ δὲ καλὸς ἦν Πλάτων καὶ ἰσχυρός, &c.

The statement of Sextus Empiricus — that Plato in his boyhood had his ears bored and wore ear-rings — indicates the opulent family to which he belonged. (Sex. Emp. adv. Gramm. s. 258.) Probably some of the old habits of the great Athenian families, as to ornaments worn on the head or hair, were preserved with the children after they had been discontinued with adults. See Thuc. i. 6.

[6] Diog. L. iii. 26.

Early relations of Plato with Sokrates.

According to Diogenes[7] (who on this point does not cite his authority), it was about the twentieth year of Plato’s age (407 B.C.) that his acquaintance with Sokrates began. It may possibly have begun earlier, but certainly not later — since at the time of the conversation (related by Xenophon) between Sokrates and Plato’s younger brother Glaukon, there was already a friendship established between Sokrates and Plato: and that time can hardly be later than 406 B.C., or the beginning of 405 B.C.[8] From 406 B.C. down to 399 B.C., when Sokrates was tried and condemned, Plato seems to have remained in friendly relation and society with him: a relation perhaps interrupted during the severe political struggles between 405 B.C. and 403 B.C., but revived and strengthened after the restoration of the democracy in the last-mentioned year.

[7] Ibid. 6.

[8] Xen. Mem. iii. 6, 1. Sokrates was induced by his friendship for Plato and for Charmides the cousin of Plato, to admonish the forward youth Glaukon (Plato’s younger brother), who thrust himself forward obtrusively to speak in the public assembly before he was twenty years of age. The two discourses of Sokrates — one with the presumptuous Glaukon, the other with the diffident Charmides — are both reported by Xenophon.

These discourses must have taken place before the battle of Ægospotami: for Charmides was killed during the Anarchy, and Glaukon certainly would never have attempted such acts of presumption after the restoration of the democracy, at a time when the tide of public feeling had become vehemently hostile to Kritias, Charmides, and all the names and families connected with the oligarchical rule just overthrown.

I presume the conversation of Sokrates with Glaukon to have taken place in 406 B.C. or 405 B.C.: it was in 405 B.C. that the disastrous battle of Ægospotami occurred.

Plato’s youth — service as a citizen and soldier.

But though Plato may have commenced at the age of twenty his acquaintance with Sokrates, he cannot have been exclusively occupied in philosophical pursuits between the nineteenth and the twenty-fifth year of his age — that is, between 409-403 B.C. He was carried, partly by his own dispositions, to other matters besides philosophy; and even if such dispositions had not existed, the exigencies of the time pressed upon him imperatively as an Athenian citizen. Even under ordinary circumstances, a young Athenian of eighteen years of age, as soon as he was enrolled on the public register of citizens, was required to take the memorable military oath in the chapel of Aglaurus, and to serve on active duty, constant or nearly constant, for two years, in various posts throughout Attica, for the defence of the country.[9] But the six years from 409-403 B.C. were years of an extraordinary character. They included the most strenuous public efforts, the severest suffering, and the gravest political revolution, that had ever occurred at Athens. Every Athenian citizen was of necessity put upon constant (almost daily) military service; either abroad, or in Attica against the Lacedæmonian garrison established in the permanent fortified post of Dekeleia, within sight of the Athenian Akropolis. So habitually were the citizens obliged to be on guard, that Athens, according to Thucydides,[10] became a military post rather than a city. It is probable that Plato, by his family and its place on the census, belonged to the Athenian Hippeis or Horsemen, who were in constant employment for the defence of the territory. But at any rate, either on horseback, or on foot, or on shipboard, a robust young citizen like Plato, whose military age commenced in 409, must have borne his fair share in this hard but indispensable duty. In the desperate emergency, which preceded the battle of Arginusæ (406 B.C.), the Athenians put to sea in thirty days a fleet of 110 triremes for the relief of Mitylenê; all the men of military age, freemen, and slaves, embarking.[11] We can hardly imagine that at such a season Plato can have wished to decline service: even if he had wished it, the Strategi would not have permitted him. Assuming that he remained at home, the garrison-duty at Athens must have been doubled on account of the number of departures. After the crushing defeat of the Athenians at Ægospotami, came the terrible apprehension at Athens, then the long blockade and famine of the city (wherein many died of hunger); next the tyranny of the Thirty, who among their other oppressions made war upon all free speech, and silenced even the voice of Sokrates: then the gallant combat of Thrasybulus followed by the intervention of the Lacedæmonians — contingencies full of uncertainty and terror, but ending in the restoration of the democracy. After such restoration, there followed all the anxieties, perils, of reaction, new enactments and provisions, required for the revived democracy, during the four years between the expulsion of the Thirty and the death of Sokrates.

[9] Read the oath sworn by the Ephêbi in Pollux viii. 105. Æschines tells us that he served his two ephebic years as περίπολος τῆς χώρας, when there was no remarkable danger or foreign pressure. See Æsch. De Fals. Legat. s. 178. See the facts about the Athenian Ephêbi brought together in a Dissertation by W. Dittenberger, p. 9-12.

[10] Thuc. vii. 27: ὁσημέραι ἐξελαυνόντων τῶν ἱππέων, &c. Cf., viii. 69. Antiphon, who is described in the beginning of the Parmenides, as devoted to ἱππικὴ, must have been either brother or uncle of Plato.

[11] Xen. Hell. i. 6, 24. Οἱ δὲ Ἀθηναῖοι, τὰ γεγενημένα καὶ τὴν πολιορκίαν ἐπεὶ ἤκουσαν, ἐψηφίσαντο βοηθεῖν ναυσὶν ἑκατὸν καὶ δέκα, εἰσβιβάζοντες τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ ὄντας ἅπαντας, καὶ δούλους καὶ ἐλευθέρους· καὶ πληρώσαντες τὰς δέκα καὶ ἑκατὸν ἐν τριάκοντα ἡμέραις, ἀπῆραν· εἰσέβησαν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἱππέων πολλοί. In one of the anecdotes given by Diogenes (iii. 24) Plato alludes to his own military service. Aristoxenus (Diog. L. iii. 8) said that Plato had been engaged thrice in military expeditions out of Attica: once to Tanagra, a second time to Corinth, a third time to Delium, where he distinguished himself. Aristoxenus must have had fair means of information, yet I do not know what to make of this statement. All the three places named are notorious for battles fought by Athens; nevertheless chronology utterly forbids the supposition that Plato could have been present either at the battle of Tanagra or at the battle of Delium. At the battle of Delium Sokrates was present, and is said to have distinguished himself: hence there is ground for suspecting some confusion between his name and that of Plato. It is however possible that there may have been, during the interval between 410-405 B.C., partial invasions of the frontiers of Bœotia by Athenian detachments: both Tanagra and Delium were on the Bœotian frontier. The great battle of Corinth took place in 394 B.C. Plato left Athens immediately after the death of Sokrates in 399 B.C., and visited several foreign countries during the years immediately following; but he may have been at Athens in 394 B.C., and may have served in the Athenian force at Corinth. See Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hell. ad ann. 395 B.C. I do not see how Plato could have been engaged in any battle of Delium after the battle of Corinth, for Athens was not then at war with the Bœotians.

At the same time I confess that the account given by or ascribed to Aristoxenus appears to me to have been founded on little positive information, when we compare it with the military duty which Plato must have done between 410-405 B.C.

It is curious that Antisthenes also is mentioned as having distinguished himself at the battle of Tanagra (Diog. vi. 1). The same remarks are applicable to him as have just been made upon Plato.

Period of political ambition.

From the dangers, fatigues, and sufferings of such an historical decad, no Athenian citizen could escape, whatever might be his feeling towards the existing democracy, or however averse he might be to public employment by natural temper. But Plato was not thus averse, during the earlier years of his adult life. We know, from his own letters, that he then felt strongly the impulse of political ambition usual with young Athenians of good family;[12] though probably not with any such premature vehemence as his younger brother Glaukon, whose impatience Sokrates is reported to have so judiciously moderated.[13] Whether Plato ever spoke with success in the public assembly, we do not know: he is said to have been shy by nature, and his voice was thin and feeble, ill adapted for the Pnyx.[14] However, when the oligarchy of Thirty was established, after the capture and subjugation of Athens, Plato was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising into political influence, through Kritias (his near relative) and Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato affirms that he had always disapproved the antecedent democracy, and that he entered on the new scheme of government with full hope of seeing justice and wisdom predominant. He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny,[15] filling him with disappointment and disgust. He was especially revolted by their treatment of Sokrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing his habitual colloquy with young men,[16] but even tried to implicate in nefarious murders, by ordering him along with others to arrest Leon the Salaminian, one of their intended victims: an order which Sokrates, at the peril of his life, disobeyed.

[12] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 324-325.

[13] Xen., Mem. iii. 6.

[14] Diogen. Laert. iii. 5: Ἰσχνόφωνός τε ἦν, &c. iii. 26: αἰδήμων καὶ κόσμιος.

[15] History of Greece, vol. viii. ch. 65.

[16] Xen. Mem. i. 2, 36; Plato, Apol. Sokrat. c. 20, p. 32.

He becomes disgusted with politics.

Thus mortified and disappointed, Plato withdrew from public functions. What part he took in the struggle between the oligarchy and its democratical assailants under Thrasybulus, we are not informed. But when the democracy was re-established, his political ambition revived, and he again sought to acquire some active influence on public affairs. Now however the circumstances had become highly unfavourable to him. The name of his deceased relative Kritias was generally abhorred, and he had no powerful partisans among the popular leaders. With such disadvantages, with anti-democratical sentiments, and with a thin voice, we cannot wonder that Plato soon found public life repulsive;[17] though he admits the remarkable moderation displayed by the restored Demos. His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Sokrates (399 B.C.), four years after the renewal of the democracy. At that moment doubtless the Sokratic men or companions were unpopular in a body. Plato, after having yielded his best sympathy and aid at the trial of Sokrates, retired along with several others of them to Megara. He made up his mind that for a man of his views and opinions, it was not only unprofitable, but also unsafe, to embark in active public life, either at Athens or in any other Grecian city. He resolved to devote himself to philosophical speculation, and to abstain from practical politics; unless fortune should present to him some exceptional case, of a city prepared to welcome and obey a renovator upon exalted principles.[18]

[17] Ælian (V. H. iii. 27) had read a story to the effect, that Plato, in consequence of poverty, was about to seek military service abroad, and was buying arms for the purpose, when he was induced to stay by the exhortation of Sokrates, who prevailed upon him to devote himself to philosophy at home.

If there be any truth in this story, it must refer to some time in the interval between the restoration of the democracy (403 B.C.) and the death of Sokrates (399 B.C.). The military service of Plato, prior to the battle of Ægospotami (405 B.C.), must have been obligatory, in defence of his country, not depending on his own free choice. It is possible also that Plato may have been for the time impoverished, like many other citizens, by the intestine troubles in Attica, and may have contemplated military service abroad, like Xenophon.

But I am inclined to think that the story is unfounded, and that it arises from some confusion between Plato and Xenophon.

[18] The above account of Plato’s proceedings, perfectly natural and interesting, but unfortunately brief, is to be found in his seventh Epistle, p. 325-326.

He retires from Athens after the death of Sokrates — his travels.

At Megara Plato passed some time with the Megarian Eukleides, his fellow-disciple in the society of Sokrates, and the founder of what is termed the Megaric school of philosophers. He next visited Kyrênê, where he is said to have become acquainted with the geometrician Theodôrus, and to have studied geometry under him. From Kyrênê he proceeded to Egypt, interesting himself much in the antiquities of the country as well as in the conversation of the priests. In or about 394 B.C. — if we may trust the statement of Aristoxenus about the military service of Plato at Corinth, he was again at Athens. He afterwards went to Italy and Sicily, seeking the society of the Pythagorean philosophers, Archytas, Echekrates, Timæus, &c., at Tarentum and Lokri, and visiting the volcanic manifestations of Ætna. It appears that his first visit to Sicily was made when he was about forty years of age, which would be 387 B.C. Here he made acquaintance with the youthful Dion, over whom he acquired great intellectual ascendancy. By Dion Plato was prevailed upon to visit the elder Dionysius at Syracuse:[19] but that despot, offended by the free spirit of his conversation and admonitions, dismissed him with displeasure, and even caused him to be sold into slavery at Ægina in his voyage home. Though really sold, however, Plato was speedily ransomed by friends. After farther incurring some risk of his life as an Athenian citizen, in consequence of the hostile feelings of the Æginetans, he was conveyed away safely to Athens, about 386 B.C.[20]

[19] Plato. Epistol. vii. p. 324 A, 327 A.

[20] Plut. Dion. c. 5: Corn. Nep., Dion, ii. 3; Diog. Laert. iii. 19-20; Aristides, Or. xlvi., Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 305-306, ed. Dindorf.

Cicero (De Fin. v. 29; Tusc. Disp. i. 17), and others, had contracted a lofty idea of Plato’s Travels, more than the reality seems to warrant. Val. Max. viii. 7, 3; Plin. Hist. Nat. xxx. 2.

The Sophist Himerius repeats the same general statements about Plato’s early education, and extensive subsequent travels, but without adding any new particulars (Orat. xiv. 21-25).

If we can trust a passage of Tzetzes, cited by Mr. Clinton (F. H. ad B.C. 366) and by Welcker (Trag. Gr. p. 1236), Dionysius the elder of Syracuse had composed (among his various dramas) a tragi-comedy directed against Plato.

His permanent establishment at Athens — 386 B.C.

It was at this period, about 386 B.C., that the continuous and formal public teaching of Plato, constituting as it does so great an epoch in philosophy, commenced. But I see no ground for believing, as many authors assume, that he was absent from Athens during the entire interval between 399-386 B.C. I regard such long-continued absence as extremely improbable. Plato had not been sentenced to banishment, nor was he under any compulsion to stay away from his native city. He was not born “of an oak-tree or a rock” (to use an Homeric phrase, strikingly applied by Sokrates in his Apology to the Dikasts[21]), but of a noble family at Athens, where he had brothers and other connections. A temporary retirement, immediately after the death of Sokrates, might be congenial to his feelings and interesting in many ways; but an absence of moderate length would suffice for such exigencies, and there were surely reasonable motives to induce him to revisit his friends at home. I conceive Plato as having visited Kyrênê, Egypt, and Italy during these thirteen years, yet as having also spent part of this long time at Athens. Had he been continuously absent from that city he would have been almost forgotten, and would scarcely have acquired reputation enough to set up with success as a teacher.[22]

[21] Plato, Apol. p. 34 D.

[22] Stallbaum insists upon it as “certum et indubium” that Plato was absent from Athens continuously, without ever returning to it, for the thirteen years immediately succeeding the death of Sokrates. But I see no good evidence of this, and I think it highly improbable. See Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Platon. Politicum, p. 38, 39. The statement of Strabo (xvii. 806), that Plato and Eudoxus passed thirteen years in Egypt, is not admissible.

Ueberweg examines and criticises the statements about Plato’s travels. He considers it probable that Plato passed some part of these thirteen years at Athens (Ueber die Aechtheit und Zeitfolge der Platon. Schrift. p. 126, 127). Mr Fynes Clinton thinks the same. F. H. B.C. 394; Append. c. 21, p. 366.

He commences his teaching at the Academy.

The spot selected by Plato for his lectures or teaching was a garden adjoining the precinct sacred to the Hero Hekadêmus or Akadêmus, distant from the gate of Athens called Dipylon somewhat less than a mile, on the road to Eleusis, towards the north. In this precinct there were both walks, shaded by trees, and a gymnasium for bodily exercise; close adjoining, Plato either inherited or acquired a small dwelling-house and garden, his own private property.[23] Here, under the name of the Academy, was founded the earliest of those schools of philosophy, which continued for centuries forward to guide and stimulate the speculative minds of Greece and Rome.

[23] Diog. Laert. iii. 7, 8; Cic. De Fin. v. 1; C. G. Zumpt, Ueber den Bestand der philosophischen Schulen in Athen, p. 8 (Berlin, 1843). The Academy was consecrated to Athênê; there was, however, a statue of Eros there, to whom sacrifice was offered, in conjunction with Athênê. Athenæus, xiii. 561.

At the time when Aristophanes assailed Sokrates in the comedy of the Nubes (423 B.C.), the Academy was known and familiar as a place for gymnastic exercise; and Aristophanes (Nub. 995) singles it out as the proper scene of action for the honest and muscular youth, who despises rhetoric and philosophy. Aristophanes did not anticipate that within a short time after the representation of his last comedy, the most illustrious disciple of Sokrates would select the Academy as the spot for his residence and philosophical lectures, and would confer upon the name a permanent intellectual meaning, as designating the earliest and most memorable of the Hellenic schools.

In 369 B.C., when the school of Plato was in existence, the Athenian hoplites, marching to aid the Lacedæmonians in Peloponnesus, were ordered by Iphikrates to make their evening meal in the Academy (Xen. Hell. vi. 5, 49).

The garden, afterwards established by Epikurus, was situated between the gate of Athens and the Academy: so that a person passed by it, when he walked forth from Athens to the Academy (Cic. De Fin. i. 1).

Plato as a teacher — pupils numerous and wealthy, from different cities.

We have scarce any particulars respecting the growth of the Academy from this time to the death of Plato, in 347 B.C. We only know generally that his fame as a lecturer became eminent and widely diffused: that among his numerous pupils were included Speusippus, Xenokrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Lykurgus, &c.: that he was admired and consulted by Perdikkas in Macedonia and Dionysius at Syracuse: that he was also visited by listeners and pupils from all parts of Greece. Among them was Eudoxus of Knidus, who afterwards became illustrious both in geometry and astronomy. At the age of twenty-three, and in poor circumstances, Eudoxus was tempted by the reputation of the Sokratic men, and enabled by the aid of friends, to visit Athens: where, however, he was coldly received by Plato. Besides preparing an octennial period or octaetêris, and a descriptive map of the Heavens, Eudoxus also devised the astronomical hypothesis of Concentric Spheres — the earliest theory proposed to show that the apparent irregularity in the motion of the Sun and the Planets might be explained, and proved to result from a multiplicity of co-operating spheres or agencies, each in itself regular.[24] This theory of Eudoxus is said to have originated in a challenge of Plato, who propounded to astronomers, in his oral discourse, the problem which they ought to try to solve.[25]

[24] For an account of Eudoxus himself, of his theory of concentric spheres, and the subsequent extensions of it, see the instructive volume of the late lamented Sir George Cornewall Lewis, — Historical Survey of the Ancient Astronomy, ch. iii. sect. 3, p. 146 seq.

M. Boeckh also (in his recent publication, Ueber die vierjährigen Sonnenkreise der Alten, vorzüglich den Eudoxischen, Berlin, 1863) has given an account of the life and career of Eudoxus, not with reference to his theory of concentric spheres, but to his Calendar and Lunisolar Cycles or Periods, quadrennial and octennial. I think Boeckh is right in placing the voyage of Eudoxus to Egypt at an earlier period of the life of Eudoxus; that is, about 378 B.C.; and not in 362 B.C., where it is placed by Letronne and others. Boeckh shows that the letters of recommendation from Agesilaus to Nektanebos, which Eudoxus took with him, do not necessarily coincide in time with the military expedition of Agesilaus to Egypt, but were more probably of earlier date. (Boeckh, p. 140-148.)

Eudoxus lived 53 years (406-353 B.C., about); being born when Plato was 21, and dying when Plato was 75. He was one of the most illustrious men of the age. He was born in poor circumstances; but so marked was his early promise, that some of the medical school at Knidus assisted him to prosecute his studies — to visit Athens and hear the Sophists, Plato among them — to visit Egypt, Tarentum (where he studied geometry with Archytas), and Sicily (where he studied τὰ ἰατρικὰ with Philistion). These facts depend upon the Πίνακες of Kallimachus, which are good authority. (Diog. L. viii. 86.)

After thus preparing himself by travelling and varied study, Eudoxus took up the profession of a Sophist, at Kyzikus and the neighbouring cities in the Propontis. He obtained great celebrity, and a large number of pupils. M. Boeckh says, “Dort lebte er als Sophist, sagt Sotion: das heisst, er lehrte, und hielt Vortrage. Dasselbe bezeugt Philostratos.”

I wish to call particular attention to the way in which M. Boeckh here describes a Sophist of the fourth century B.C. Nothing can be more correct. Every man who taught and gave lectures to audiences more or less numerous, was so called. The Platonic critics altogether darken the history of philosophy, by using the word Sophist with its modern associations (and the unmeaning abstract Sophistic which they derive from it), to represent a supposed school of speculative and deceptive corruptors.

Eudoxus, having been coldly received when young and poor by Plato, had satisfaction in revisiting Athens at the height of his reputation, accompanied by numerous pupils — and in showing himself again to Plato. The two then became friends. Menæchmus and Helikon, geometrical pupils of Eudoxus, received instruction from Plato also; and Helikon accompanied Plato on his third voyage to Sicily (Plato, Epist. xiii. p. 360 D; Plut. Dion, c. 19). Whether Eudoxus accompanied him there also, as Boeckh supposes, is doubtful: I think it improbable.

Eudoxus ultimately returned to his native city of Knidus, where he was received with every demonstration of honour: a public vote of esteem and recognition being passed to welcome him. He is said to have been solicited to give laws to the city, and to have actually done so: how far this may be true, we cannot say. He also visited the neighbouring prince Mausôlus of Karia, by whom he was much honoured.

We know from Aristotle, that Eudoxus was not only illustrious as an astronomer and geometer, but that he also proposed a theory of Ethics, similar in its general formula to that which was afterwards laid down by Epikurus. Aristotle dissents from the theory, but he bears express testimony, in a manner very unusual with him, to the distinguished personal merit and virtue of Eudoxus (Ethic. Nikom. x. 3, p. 1172, b. 16).

[25] Respecting Eudoxus, see Diog. L. viii. 86-91. As the life of Eudoxus probably extended from about 406-353 B.C., his first visit to Athens would be about 383 B.C., some three years after Plato commenced his school. Strabo (xvii. 806), when he visited Heliopolis in Egypt, was shown by the guides certain cells or chambers which were said to have been occupied by Plato and Eudoxus, and was assured that the two had passed thirteen years together in Egypt. This account deserves no credit. Plato and Eudoxus visited Egypt, but not together, and neither of them for so long as thirteen years. Eudoxus stayed there sixteen months (Diog. L. viii. 87). Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. De Cœlo, p. 497, 498, ed. Brandis, 498, a. 45. Καὶ πρῶτος τῶν Ἑλλήνων Εὔδοξος ὁ Κνίδιος. ὡς Εὔδημός τε ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῆς Ἀστρολογικῆς Ἰστορίας ἀπεμνημόνευσε καὶ Σωσιγένης παρὰ Εὐδήμου τοῦτο λαβὼν, ἅψασθαι λέγεται τῶν τοιούτων ὑποθέσεων· Πλάτωνος, ὡς φησι Σωσιγένης, πρόβλημα τοῦτο ποιησαμένου τοῖς περὶ ταῦτα ἐσπουδακόσι — τίνων ὑποτεθείσων ὁμαλῶν καὶ τεταγμένων κινήσεων διασωθῇ τὰ περὶ τὰς κινήσεις τῶν πλανωμένων φαινόμενα. The Scholion of Simplikius, which follows at great length, is exceedingly interesting and valuable, in regard to the astronomical theory of Eudoxus, with the modifications introduced into it by Kallippus, Aristotle, and others. All the share in it which is claimed for Plato, is, that he described in clear language the problem to be solved: and even that share depends simply upon the statement of the Alexandrine Sosigenes (contemporary of Julius Cæsar), not upon the statement of Eudemus. At least the language of Simplikius affirms, that Sosigenes copied from Eudemus the fact, that Eudoxus was the first Greek who proposed a systematic astronomical hypothesis to explain the motions of the planets — (παρ’ Εὐδήμου τοῦτο λαβών) not the circumstance, that Plato propounded the problem afterwards mentioned. From whom Sosigenes derived this last information, is not indicated. About his time, various fictions had gained credit in Egypt respecting the connection of Plato with Eudoxus, as we may see by the story of Strabo above cited. If Plato impressed upon others that which is here ascribed to him, he must have done so in conversation or oral discourse — for there is nothing in his written dialogues to that effect. Moreover, there is nothing in the dialogues to make us suppose that Plato adopted or approved the theory of Eudoxus. When Plato speaks of astronomy, either in the Republic, or in Leges, or in Epinomis, it is in a totally different spirit — not manifesting any care to save the astronomical phenomena. Both Aristotle himself (Metaphys. A. p. 1073 b.) and Simplikius, make it clear that Aristotle warmly espoused and enlarged the theory of Eudoxus. Theophrastus, successor of Aristotle, did the same. But we do not hear that either Speusippus or Xenokrates (successor of Plato) took any interest in the theory. This is one remarkable point of divergence between Plato and the Platonists on one side — Aristotle and the Aristotelians on the other — and much to the honour of the latter: for the theory of Eudoxus, though erroneous, was a great step towards improved scientific conceptions on astronomy, and a great provocative to farther observation of astronomical facts.

Though Plato demanded no money as a fee for admission of pupils, yet neither did he scruple to receive presents from rich men such as Dionysius, Dion, and others.[26] In the jests of Ephippus, Antiphanes, and other poets of the middle comedy, the pupils of Plato in the Academy are described as finely and delicately clad, nice in their persons even to affectation, with elegant caps and canes; which is the more to be noticed because the preceding comic poets derided Sokrates and his companions for qualities the very opposite — as prosing beggars, in mean attire and dirt.[27] Such students must have belonged to opulent families; and we may be sure that they requited their master by some valuable present, though no fee may have been formally demanded from them. Some conditions (though we do not know what) were doubtless required for admission. Moreover the example of Eudoxus shows that in some cases even ardent and promising pupils were practically repelled. At any rate, the teaching of Plato formed a marked contrast with that extreme and indiscriminate publicity which characterised the conversation of Sokrates, who passed his days in the market-place or in the public porticoes or palæstræ; while Plato both dwelt and discoursed in a quiet residence and garden a little way out of Athens. The title of Athens to be considered the training-city of Hellas (as Perikles had called her fifty years before), was fully sustained by the Athenian writers and teachers between 390-347; especially by Plato and Isokrates, the most celebrated and largely frequented. So many foreign pupils came to Isokrates that he affirms most of his pecuniary gains to have been derived from non-Athenians. Several of his pupils stayed with him three or four years. The like is doubtless true about the pupils of Plato.[28]

[26] Plato, Epistol. xiii. p. 361, 362. We learn from this epistle that Plato received pecuniary remittances not merely from Dionysius, but also from other friends (ἄλλων ἐπιτηδείων — 361 C); that he employed these not only for choregies and other costly functions of his own, but also to provide dowry for female relatives, and presents to friends (363 A).

[27] See Meineke, Hist. Crit. Comic. Græc. p. 288, 289 — and the extracts there given from Ephippus and Antiphanes — apud Athenæum, xi. 509, xii. 544. About the poverty and dirt which was reproached to Sokrates and his disciples, see the fragment of Ameipsias in Meineke, ibid. p. 203. Also Aristoph. Aves, 1555; Nubes, 827; and the Fragm. of Eupolis in Meineke, p. 552 — Μισῶ δ’ ἐγὼ καὶ Σωκράτην, τὸν πτωχὸν ἀδολέσχην.

Meineke thinks that Aristophanes, in the Ekklesiazusæ, 646, and in the Plutus, 313, intends to ridicule Plato under the name of Aristyllus: Plato’s name having been originally Aristokles. But I see no sufficient ground for this opinion.

[28] Perikles in the Funeral Oration (Thuc. ii. 41) calls Athens τῆς Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν: the same eulogium is repeated, with greater abundance of words, by Isokrates in his Panegyrical Oration (Or. iv. sect. 56, p. 51).

The declaration of Isokrates, that most of his money was acquired from foreign (non-Athenian) pupils, and the interesting fact that many of them not only stayed with him three or four years but were even then loth to depart, will be found in Orat. xv. De Permutatione, sect. 93-175. Plutarch (Vit. x. Orat. 838 E) goes so far as to say that Isokrates never required any pay from an Athenian pupil.

Nearly three centuries after Plato’s decease, Cicero sent his son Marcus to Athens, where the son spent a considerable time, frequenting the lectures of the Peripatetic philosopher Kratippus. Young Cicero, in an interesting letter addressed to Tiro (Cic. Epist. Fam. xvi. 23), describes in animated terms both his admiration for the person and abilities, and his delight in the private society, of Kratippus. Several of Plato’s pupils probably felt as much or more towards him.

Visit of Plato to the younger Dionysius at Syracuse, 367 B.C. Second visit to the same — mortifying failure.

It was in the year 367-366 that Plato was induced, by the earnest entreaties of Dion, to go from Athens to Syracuse, on a visit to the younger Dionysius, who had just become despot, succeeding to his father of the same name. Dionysius II., then very young, had manifested some dispositions towards philosophy, and prodigious admiration for Plato: who was encouraged by Dion to hope that he would have influence enough to bring about an amendment or thorough reform of the government at Syracuse. This ill-starred visit, with its momentous sequel, has been described in my ‘History of Greece’. It not only failed completely, but made matters worse rather than better: Dionysius became violently alienated from Dion, and sent him into exile. Though turning a deaf ear to Plato’s recommendations, he nevertheless liked his conversation, treated him with great respect, detained him for some time at Syracuse, and was prevailed upon, only by the philosopher’s earnest entreaties, to send him home. Yet in spite of such uncomfortable experience Plato was induced, after a certain interval, again to leave Athens and pay a second visit to Dionysius, mainly in hopes of procuring the restoration of Dion. In this hope too he was disappointed, and was glad to return, after a longer stay than he wished, to Athens.

Expedition of Dion against Dionysius — sympathies of Plato and the Academy.

Success, misconduct, and death of Dion.

It was in 359 B.C. that Dion, aided by friends in Peloponnesus, and encouraged by warm sympathy and co-operation from many of Plato’s pupils in the Academy,[29] equipped an armament against Dionysius. Notwithstanding the inadequacy of his force he had the good fortune to make himself master of Syracuse, being greatly favoured by the popular discontent of Syracusans against the reigning despot: but he did not know how to deal with the people, nor did he either satisfy their aspirations towards liberty, or realise his own engagements. Retaining in his hands a despotic power, similar in the main to that of Dionysius, he speedily became odious, and was assassinated by the treachery of Kallippus, his companion in arms as well as fellow-pupil of the Platonic Academy. The state of Syracuse, torn by the joint evils of anarchy and despotism, and partially recovered by Dionysius, became more unhappy than ever.

[29] Plutarch, Dion, c. 22.

Xenokrates as well as Speusippus accompanied Plato to Sicily (Diog. L. iv. 6).

To show the warm interest taken, not only by Plato himself but also by the Platonic pupils in the Academy in the conduct of Dion after he had become master of Syracuse, Plutarch quotes both from the letter of Plato to Dion (which now stands fourth among the Epistolæ Platonicæ, p. 320) and also from a letter which he had read, written by Speusippus to Dion; in which Speusippus exhorts Dion emphatically to bless Sicily with good laws and government, “in order that he may glorify the Academy” — ὅπως … εὐκλεᾶ θήσει τη Ἀκαδημίαν (Plutarch, De Adulator. et Amic. c. 29, p. 70 A).

Death of Plato, aged 80, 347 B.C.

The visits of Plato to Dionysius were much censured, and his motives[30] misrepresented by unfriendly critics; and these reproaches were still further embittered by the entire failure of his hopes. The closing years of his long life were saddened by the disastrous turn of events at Syracuse, aggravated by the discreditable abuse of power and violent death of his intimate friend Dion, which brought dishonour both upon himself and upon the Academy. Nevertheless he lived to the age of eighty, and died in 348-347 B.C., leaving a competent property, which he bequeathed by a will still extant.[31] But his foundation, the Academy, did not die with him. It passed to his nephew Speusippus, who succeeded him as teacher, conductor of the school, or Scholarch: and was himself succeeded after eight years by Xenokrates of Chalkêdon: while another pupil of the Academy, Aristotle, after an absence of some years from Athens, returned thither and established a school of his own at the Lykeum, at another extremity of the city.

[30] Themistius, Orat. xxiii. (Sophistes) p. 285 C; Aristeides, Orat. xlvi., Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 234-235; Apuleius, De Habit. Philos. Platon. p. 571.

[31] Diog. Laert. iii. 41-42. Seneca (Epist. 58) says that Plato died on the anniversary of his birth, in the month Thargelion.

Scholars of Plato — Aristotle.

The latter half of Plato’s life in his native city must have been one of dignity and consideration, though not of any of political activity. He is said to have addressed the Dikastery as an advocate for the accused general Chabrias: and we are told that he discharged the expensive and showy functions of Chorêgus, with funds supplied by Dion.[32] Out of Athens also his reputation was very great. When he went to the Olympic festival of B.C. 360, he was an object of conspicuous attention and respect: he was visited by hearers, young men of rank and ambition, from the most distant Hellenic cities; and his advice was respectfully invoked both by Perdikkas in Macedonia and by Dionysius II. at Syracuse. During his last visit to Syracuse, it is said that some of the students in the Academy, among whom Aristotle is mentioned, became dissatisfied with his absence, and tried to set up a new school; but were prevented by Iphikrates and Chabrias, the powerful friends of Plato at Athens. This story is connected with alleged ingratitude on the part of Aristotle towards Plato, and with alleged repugnance on the part of Plato towards Aristotle.[33] The fact itself — that during Plato’s absence in Sicily his students sought to provide for themselves instruction and discussion elsewhere — is neither surprising nor blameable. And as to Aristotle, there is ground for believing that he passed for an intimate friend and disciple of Plato, even during the last ten years of Plato’s life. For we read that Aristotle, following speculations and principles of teaching of his own, on the subject of rhetoric, found himself at variance with Isokrates and the Isokratean school. Aristotle attacked Isokrates and his mode of dealing with the subject: upon which Kephisodôrus (one of the disciples of Isokrates) retaliated by attacking Plato and the Platonic Ideas, considering Aristotle as one of Plato’s scholars and adherents.[34]

[32] Plut. Aristeides, c. 1; Diog. Laert. iii. 23-24. Diogenes says that no other Athenian except Plato dared to speak publicly in defence of Chabrias; but this can hardly be correct, since Aristotle mentions another συνήγοραος named Lykoleon (Rhet. iii. 10, p. 1411, b. 6). We may fairly presume that the trial of Chabrias alluded to by Aristotle is the same as that alluded to by Diogenes, that which arose out of the wrongful occupation of Orôpus by the Thebans. If Plato appeared at the trial, I doubt whether it could have occurred in 366 B.C., as Clinton supposes; Plato must have been absent during that year in Sicily.

The anecdote given by Diogenes, in relation to Plato’s appearance at this trial, deserves notice. Krobylus, one of the accusers, said to him, “Are you come to plead on behalf of another? Are not you aware that the hemlock of Sokrates is in store for you also?” Plato replied: “I affronted dangers formerly, when I went on military expedition, for my country, and I am prepared to affront them now in discharge of my duty to a friend” (iii. 24).

This anecdote is instructive, as it exhibits the continuance of the anti-philosophical antipathies at Athens among a considerable portion of the citizens, and as it goes to attest the military service rendered personally by Plato.

Diogenes (iii. 46) gives a long list of hearers; and Athenæus (xi. 506-509) enumerates several from different cities in Greece: Euphræus of Oreus (in Eubœa), who acquired through Plato’s recommendation great influence with Perdikkas, king of Macedonia, and who is said to have excluded from the society of that king every one ignorant of philosophy and geometry; Euagon of Lampsakus, Timæus of Kyzikus, Chæron of Pellênê, all of whom tried, and the last with success, to usurp the sceptre in their respective cities; Eudêmus of Cyprus; Kallippus the Athenian, fellow-learner with Dion in the Academy, afterwards his companion in his expedition to Sicily, ultimately his murderer; Herakleides and Python from Ænus in Thrace, Chion and Leonides, also Klearchus the despot from the Pontic Herakleia (Justin, xvi. 5).

Several of these examples seem to have been cited by the orator Democharês (nephew of Demosthenes) in his speech at Athens vindicating the law proposed by Sophokles for the expulsion of the philosophers from Athens (Athenæ. xi. 508 F), a speech delivered about 306 B.C. Plutarch compliments Plato for the active political liberators and tyrannicides who came forth from the Academy: he considers Plato as the real author and planner of the expedition of Dion against Dionysius, and expatiates on the delight which Plato must have derived from it — a supposition very incorrect (Plutarch, Non Posse Suav. p. 1097 B; adv. Kolôten, p. 1126 B-C).

[33] Aristokles, ap. Eusebium, Præp. Evang. xv. 2: Ælian, V. H. iii. 19: Aristeides, Or. 46, Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων vol. ii. p. 324-325. Dindorf.

The friendship and reciprocity of service between Plato and Chabrias is an interesting fact. Compare Stahr, Aristotelia, vol. i. p. 50 seqq.

Cicero affirms, on the authority of the Epistles of Demosthenes, that Demosthenes describes himself as an assiduous hearer as well as reader of Plato (Cic. Brut. 31, 121; Orat. 4, 15). I think this fact highly probable, but the epistles which Cicero read no longer exist. Among the five Epistles remaining, Plato is once mentioned with respect in the fifth (p. 1490), but this epistle is considered by most critics spurious.

[34] Numenius, ap. Euseb. Præp. Ev. xiv. 6, 9. οἰηθεὶς (Kephisodôrus) κατὰ Πλάτωνα τὸν Ἀριστοτέλην φιλοσοφεῖν, ἐπολέμει μὲν Ἀριστοτέλει, ἔβαλλε δὲ Πλάτωνα, &c. This must have happened in the latter years of Plato’s life, for Aristotle must have been at least twenty-five or twenty-six years of age when he engaged in such polemics. He was born in 384 B.C..

Little known about Plato’s personal history.

Such is the sum of our information respecting Plato. Scanty as it is, we have not even the advantage of contemporary authority for any portion of it. We have no description of Plato from any contemporary author, friendly or adverse. It will be seen that after the death of Sokrates we know nothing about Plato as a man and a citizen, except the little which can be learnt from his few Epistles, all written when he was very old, and relating almost entirely to his peculiar relations with Dion and Dionysius. His dialogues, when we try to interpret them collectively, and gather from them general results as to the character and purposes of the author, suggest valuable arguments and perplexing doubts, but yield few solutions. In no one of the dialogues does Plato address us in his own person. In the Apology alone (which is not a dialogue) is he alluded to even as present: in the Phædon he is mentioned as absent from illness. Each of the dialogues, direct or indirect, is conducted from beginning to end by the persons whom he introduces.[35] Not one of the dialogues affords any positive internal evidence showing the date of its composition. In a few there are allusions to prove that they must have been composed at a period later than others, or later than some given event of known date; but nothing more can be positively established. Nor is there any good extraneous testimony to determine the date of any one among them. For the remark ascribed to Sokrates about the dialogue called Lysis (which remark, if authentic, would prove the dialogue to have been composed during the life-time of Sokrates) appears altogether untrustworthy. And the statement of some critics, that the Phædrus was Plato’s earliest composition, is clearly nothing more than an inference (doubtful at best, and, in my judgment, erroneous) from its dithyrambic style and erotic subject.[36]

[35] On this point Aristotle, in the dialogues which he composed, did not follow Plato’s example. Aristotle introduced two or more persons debating a question, but he appeared in his own person to give the solution, or at least to wind up the debate. He sometimes also opened the debate by a proœm or prefatory address in his own person (Cic. ad Attic. iv. 16, 2, xiii. 19, 4). Cicero followed the manner of Aristotle, not that of Plato. His dialogues are rhetorical rather than dramatic.

All the dialogues of Aristotle are lost.

[36] Diog. L. iii. 38. Compare the Prolegomena τῆς Πλάτωνος Φιλοσοφίας, c. 24, in the Appendix Platonica of K. F. Hermann’s edition, p. 217.

CHAPTER VI.

PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

As we know little about Plato except from his works, the first question to be decided is, Which are his real works? Where are we to find a trustworthy Platonic Canon?

Platonic Canon — Ancient and modern discussions.

Down to the close of the last century this question was not much raised or discussed. The catalogue recognised by the rhetor Thrasyllus (contemporary with the Emperor Tiberius) was generally accepted as including none but genuine works of Plato; and was followed as such by editors and critics, who were indeed not very numerous.[1] But the discussions carried on during the present century have taken a different turn. While editors, critics, and translators have been greatly multiplied, some of the most distinguished among them, Schleiermacher at the head, have either professedly set aside, or in practice disregarded, the Thrasyllean catalogue, as if it carried no authority and very faint presumption. They have reasoned upon each dialogue as if its title to be considered genuine were now to be proved for the first time; either by external testimony (mentioned in Aristotle or others), or by internal evidences of style, handling, and thoughts:[2] as if, in other words, the onus probandi lay upon any one who believed the printed works of Plato to be genuine — not upon an opponent who disputes the authenticity of any one or more among them, and rejects it as spurious. Before I proceed to examine the conclusions, alike numerous and discordant, which these critics have proclaimed, I shall enquire how far the method which they have pursued is warrantable. Is there any presumption at all — and if so, what amount of presumption — in favour of the catalogue transmitted from antiquity by Thrasyllus, as a canon containing genuine works of Plato and no others?

[1] The following passage from Wyttenbach, written in 1776, will give an idea of the state of Platonic criticism down to the last quarter of the last century. To provide a new Canon for Plato seems not to have entered his thoughts.

Wyttenbach, Bibliotheca Critica, vol. i. p. 28. Review of Fischer’s edition of Plato’s Philêbus and Symposion. “Quæ Ciceroni obtigit interpretum et editorum felicitas, eâ adeo caruit Plato, ut non solum paucos nactus sit qui ejus scripta typis ederent — sed qui ejus orationi nitorem restitueret, eamque a corruptelarum labe purgaret, et sensus obscuros atque abditos ex interiore doctrinâ patefaceret, omnino repererit neminem. Et ex ipso hoc editionum parvo numero — nam sex omnino sunt — nulla est recentior anno superioris seculi secundo: ut mirandum sit, centum et septuaginta annorum spatio neminem ex tot viris doctis extitisse, qui ita suam crisin Platoni addiceret, ut intelligentiam ejus veræ eruditionis amantibus aperiret.

“Qui Platonem legant, pauci sunt: qui intelligant, paucissimi; qui vero, vel ex versionibus, vel ex jejuno historiæ philosophicæ compendio, de eo judicent et cum supercilio pronuncient, plurimi sunt.”

[2] To see that this is the general method of proceeding, we have only to look at the work of Ueberweg, one of the most recent and certainly one of the ablest among the Platonic critics. Untersuchungen über die Aechtheit und Zeitfolge der Platonischen Schriften, Wien, 1861, p. 130-131.

Canon established by Thrasyllus. Presumption in its favour.

Upon this question I hold an opinion opposite to that of the Platonic critics since Schleiermacher. The presumption appears to me particularly strong, instead of particularly weak: comparing the Platonic writings with those of other eminent writers, dramatists, orators, historians, of the same age and country.

Fixed residence and school at Athens — founded by Plato and transmitted to successors.

We have seen that Plato passed the last thirty-eight years of his life (except his two short visits to Syracuse) as a writer and lecturer at Athens; that he purchased and inhabited a fixed residence at the Academy, near the city. We know, moreover, that his principal pupils, especially (his nephew) Speusippus and Xenokrates, were constantly with him in this residence during his life; that after his death the residence became permanently appropriated as a philosophical school for lectures, study, conversation, and friendly meetings of studious men, in which capacity it served for more than two centuries;[3] that his nephew Speusippus succeeded him there as teacher, and taught there for eight years, being succeeded after his death first by Xenokrates (for twenty-five years), afterwards by Polemon, Krantor, Krates, Arkesilaus, and others in uninterrupted series; that the school always continued to be frequented, though enjoying greater or less celebrity according to the reputation of the Scholarch.

[3] The teaching and conversation of the Platonic School continued fixed in the spot known as the Academy until the siege of Athens by Sylla in 87 B.C. The teacher was then forced to confine himself to the interior of the city, where he gave lectures in the gymnasium called Ptolemæum. In that gymnasium Cicero heard the lectures of the Scholarch Antiochus, B.C. 79; walking out afterwards to visit the deserted but memorable site of the Academy (Cic. De Fin. v. 1; C. G. Zumpt, Ueber den Bestand der Philosophischen Schulen in Athen, p. 14, Berlin, 1843). The ground of the Academy, when once deserted, speedily became unhealthy, and continues to be so now, as Zumpt mentions that he himself experienced in 1835.

Importance of this foundation. Preservation of Plato’s manuscripts. School library.

By thus perpetuating the school which his own genius had originated, and by providing for it permanent support with a fixed domicile, Plato inaugurated a new epoch in the history of philosophy: this example was followed a few years afterwards by Aristotle, Zeno, and Epikurus. Moreover the proceeding was important in another way also, as it affected the preservation and authentication of his own manuscripts and compositions. It provided not only safe and lasting custody, such as no writer had ever enjoyed before, for Plato’s original manuscripts, but also a guarantee of some efficacy against any fraud or error which might seek to introduce other compositions into the list. That Plato himself was not indifferent on this head we may fairly believe, since we learn from Dionysius of Halikarnassus, that he was indefatigable in the work of correction: and his disciples, who took the great trouble of noting down themselves what he spoke in his lectures, would not be neglectful as to the simpler duty of preserving his manuscripts.[4] Now Speusippus and Xenokrates (also Aristotle, Hestiæus, the Opuntian Philippus, and the other Platonic pupils) must have had personal knowledge of all that Plato had written, whether finished dialogues, unfinished fragments, or preparatory sketches. They had perfect means of distinguishing his real compositions from forgeries passed off in his name: and they had every motive to expose such forgeries (if any were attempted) wherever they could, in order to uphold the reputation of their master. If any one composed a dialogue and circulated it under the name of Plato, the school was a known place, and its occupants were at hand to give information to all who enquired about the authenticity of the composition. The original MSS. of Plato (either in his own handwriting or in that of his secretary, if he employed one[5]) were doubtless treasured up in the school as sacred memorials of the great founder, and served as originals from which copies of unquestionable fidelity might be made, whenever the Scholarch granted permission. How long they continued to be so preserved we cannot say: nor do we know what was the condition of the MSS., or how long they were calculated to last. But probably many of the students frequenting the school would come for the express purpose of reading various works of Plato (either in the original MSS., or in faithful copies taken from them) with the exposition of the Scholarch; just as we know that the Roman M. Crassus (mentioned by Cicero), during his residence at Athens, studied the Platonic Gorgias with the aid of the Scholarch Charmadas.[6] The presidency of Speusippus and Xenokrates (taken jointly) lasted for thirty-three years; and even when they were replaced by successors who had enjoyed no personal intimacy with Plato, the motive to preserve the Platonic MSS. would still be operative, and the means of verifying what was really Platonic would still be possessed in the school. The original MSS. would be preserved, along with the treatises or dialogues which each successive Scholarch himself composed; thus forming a permanent and increasing school-library, probably enriched more or less by works acquired or purchased from others.

[4] Simplikius, Schol. Aristotel. Physic. f. 32, p. 334, b. 28, Brandis: λάβοι δ’ ἄν τις καὶ παρὰ Σπευσίππου καὶ παρὰ Ξενοκράτους, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οἳ παρεγένοντο ἐν τῇ περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἀκροάσει· πάντες γὰρ συνέγραψαν καὶ διεσώσαντο τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ. In another passage of the same Scholia (p. 362, a. 12) Simplikius mentions Herakleides (of Pontus), Hestiæus, and even Aristotle himself, as having taken notes of the same lectures.

Hermodôrus appears to have carried some of Plato’s dialogues to Sicily, and to have made money by selling them. See Cicero ad Atticum, xiii. 21: Suidas et Zenobius — λόγοισιν Ἑρμόδωρος ἐμπορεύεται. See Zeller, Dissert. De Hermodoro, p. 19. In the above-mentioned epistle Cicero compares his own relations with Atticus, to those of Plato with Hermodôrus. Hermodôrus had composed a treatise respecting Plato, from which some extracts were given by Derkyllides (the contemporary of Thrasyllus) as well as by Simplikius (Zeller, De Hermod. p. 20-21).

[5] We read in Cicero, (Academic. Priora, ii. 4, 11) that the handwriting of the Scholarch Philo, when his manuscript was brought from Athens to Alexandria, was recognised at once by his friends and pupils.

[6] Cicero, De Oratore, i. 11, 45-47: “florente Academiâ, quod eam Charmadas et Clitomachus et Æschines obtinebant … Platoni, cujus tum Athenis cum Charmadâ diligentius legi Gorgiam,” &c.

Security provided by the school for distinguishing what were Plato’s genuine writings.

It appears to me that the continuance of this school — founded by Plato himself at his own abode, permanently domiciliated, and including all the MSS. which he left in it — gives us an amount of assurance for the authenticity of the so-called Platonic compositions, such as does not belong to the works of other eminent contemporary authors, Aristippus, Antisthenes, Isokrates, Lysias, Demosthenes, Euripides, Aristophanes. After the decease of these last-mentioned authors, who can say what became of their MSS.? Where was any certain permanent custody provided for them? Isokrates had many pupils during his life, but left no school or μουσεῖον after his death. If any one composed a discourse, and tried to circulate it as the composition of Isokrates, among the bundles of judicial orations which were sold by the booksellers[7] as his (according to the testimony of Aristotle) — where was the person to be found, notorious and accessible, who could say: “I possess all the MSS. of Isokrates, and I can depose that this is not among them!” The chances of success for forgery or mistake were decidedly greater, in regard to the works of these authors, than they could be for those of Plato.

[7] Dionys. Halik. de Isocrate, p. 576 R. δεσμὰς πάνυ πολλὰς δικανικῶν λόγων Ἰσοκρατείων περιφέρεσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ τῶν βιβλιοπωλῶν Ἀριστοτέλης.

Unfinished fragments and preparatory sketches, preserved and published after Plato’s death.

Again, the existence of this school-library explains more easily how it is that unfinished, inferior, and fragmentary Platonic compositions have been preserved. That there must have existed such compositions I hold to be certain. How is it supposable that any author, even Plato could have brought to completion such masterpieces as Republic, Gorgias, Protagoras, Symposion, &c., without tentative and preparatory sketches, each of course in itself narrow, defective, perhaps of little value, but serving as material to be worked up or worked in? Most of these would be destroyed, but probably not all. If (as I believe) it be the fact, that all the Platonic MSS. were preserved as their author left them, some would probably be published (and some indeed are said to have been published) after his death; and among them would be included more or fewer of these unfinished performances, and sketches projected but abandoned. We can hardly suppose that Plato himself would have published fragments never finished, such as Kleitophon and Kritias[8] — the last ending in the middle of a sentence.

[8] Straton, the Peripatetic Scholarch who succeeded Theophrastus, B.C. 287, bequeathed to Lykon by his will both the succession to his school (διατριβὴν) and all his books, except what he had written himself (πλὴν ὧν αὐτοὶ γεγράφαμεν). What is to be done with these latter he does not say. Lykon, in his last will, says:—καὶ δύο μνᾶς αὐτῷ (Chares, a manumitted slave) δίδωμι καὶ τἀμὰ βίβλια τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα· τὰ δὲ ἀνέκδοτα Καλλίνῳ, ὅπως ἐπιμελῶς αὐτὰ ἐκδῷ. See Diog. L. v. 62, 73. Here Lykon directs expressly that Kallinus shall edit with care his (Lykon’s) unpublished works. Probably Straton may have given similar directions during his life, so that it was unnecessary to provide in the will. Τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα is equivalent to τὰ ἐκδεδομένα. Publication was constituted by reading the MSS. aloud before a chosen audience of friends or critics; which readings often led to such remarks as induced the author to take his work back, and to correct it for a second recitation. See the curious sentence extracted from the letter of Theophrastus to Phanias (Diog. L. v. 37). Boeckh and other critics agree that both the Kleitophon and the Kritias were transmitted from antiquity in the fragmentary state in which we now read them: that they were compositions never completed. Boeckh affirms this with assurance respecting the Kleitophon, though he thinks that it is not a genuine work of Plato; on which last point I dissent from him. He thinks that the Kritias is a real work of Plato, though uncompleted (Boeckh in Platonis Minoem, p. 11).

Compare the remarks of M. Littré respecting the unfinished sketches, treatises, and notes not intended for publication, included in the Collectio Hippocratica (Œuvres d’ Hippocrate, vol. x. p. liv. seq.)

Peripatetic school at the Lykeum — its composition and arrangement.

The second philosophical school, begun by Aristotle and perpetuated (after his death in 322 B.C.) at the Lykeum on the eastern side of Athens, was established on the model of that of Plato. That which formed the centre or consecrating point was a Museum or chapel of the Muses: with statues of those goddesses of place, and also a statue of the founder. Attached to this Museum were a portico, a hall with seats (one seat especially for the lecturing professor), a garden, and a walk, together with a residence, all permanently appropriated to the teacher and the process of instruction.[9] Theophrastus, the friend and immediate successor of Aristotle, presided over the school for thirty-five years; and his course, during part of that time at least, was prodigiously frequented by students.

[9] Respecting the domicile of the Platonic School, and that of the Aristotelian or Peripatetic school which followed it, the particulars given by Diogenes are nearly coincident: we know more in detail about the Peripatetic, from what he cites out of the will of Theophrastus. See iv. 1-6-19, v. 51-63.

The μουσεῖον at the Academy was established by Plato himself. Speusippus placed in it statues of the Charities or Graces. Theophrastus gives careful directions in his about repairing and putting in the best condition, the Peripatetic μουσεῖον, with its altar, its statues of the Goddesses, and its statue of the founder Aristotle. The στοὰ, ἐξέδρα, κῆπος, περίπατος, attached to both schools, are mentioned: the most zealous students provided for themselves lodgings close adjoining. Cicero, when he walked out from Athens to see the deserted Academy, was particularly affected by the sight of the exedra, in which Charmadas had lectured (De Fin. v. 2, 4).

There were periodical meetings, convivial and conversational, among the members both of the Academic and Peripatetic schools; and ξυμποτικοὶ νόμοι by Xenokrates and Aristotle to regulate them (Athenæus, v. 184).

Epikurus (in his interesting testament given by Diogen. Laert. x. 16-21) bequeaths to two Athenian citizens his garden and property, in trust for his principal disciple the Mitylenæan Hermarchus, καὶ τοῖς συμφιλοσοφοῦσιν αὐτῷ, καὶ οἷς ἂν Ἕρμαρχος καταλίπῃ διαδόχοις τῆς φιλοσοφίας, ἐνδιατρίβειν κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν. He at the same time directs all his books to be given to Hermarchus: they would form the school-library.

Peripatetic school library, its removal from Athens to Skêpsis — its ultimate restitution in a damaged state to Athens, then to Rome.

Moreover, the school-library at the Lykeum acquired large development and importance. It not only included all the MS. compositions, published or unpublished, of Aristotle and Theophrastus, each of them a voluminous writer — but also a numerous collection (numerous for that day) of other works besides; since both of them were opulent and fond of collecting books. The value of the school-library is shown by what happened after the decease of Theophrastus, when Straton succeeded him in the school (B.C. 287). Theophrastus — thinking himself entitled to treat the library not as belonging to the school but as belonging to himself — bequeathed it at his death to Neleus, a favourite scholar, and a native of Skêpsis (in the Troad), by whom it was carried away to Asia, and permanently separated from the Aristotelian school at Athens. The manuscripts composing it remained in the possession of Neleus and his heirs for more than a century and a half, long hidden in a damp cellar, neglected, and sustaining great damage — until about the year 100 B.C., when they were purchased by a rich Athenian named Apellikon, and brought back to Athens. Sylla, after he had captured Athens (86 B.C.), took for himself the library of Apellikon, and transported it to Rome, where it became open to learned men (Tyrannion, Andronikus, and others), but under deplorable disadvantage — in consequence of the illegible state of the MSS. and the unskilful conjectures and restitutions which had been applied, in the new copies made since it passed into the hands of Apellikon.[10]

[10] The will of Theophrastus, as given in Diogenes (v. 52), mentions the bequest of all his books to Neleus. But it is in Strabo that we read the fullest account of this displacement of the Peripatetic school-library, and the consequences which ensued from it (xiii. 608, 609). Νηλεὺς, ἀνὴρ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους ἠκροαμένος καὶ Θεοφράστου, διαδεδεγμένος δὲ τὴν βιβλιοθήκην τοῦ Θεοφράστου, ἐν ᾗ ἦν καὶ ἡ τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους. ὁ γοῦν Ἀριστοτέλης τὴν ἑαυτοῦ Θεοφράστῳ παρέδωκεν, ᾧπερ καὶ τὴν σχολὴν ἀπέλιπε, πρῶτος, ὧν ἴσμεν, συναγαγὼν βίβλια, καὶ διδάξας τοὺς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ βασιλέας βιβλιοθήκης σύνταξιν.

The kings of Pergamus, a few years after the death of Theophrastus, acquired possession of the town and territory of Skêpsis; so that the heirs of Neleus became numbered among their subjects. These kings (from about the year B.C. 280 downwards) manifested great eagerness to collect a library at Pergamus, in competition with that of the Ptolemies at Alexandria. The heirs of Neleus were afraid that these kings would strip them of their Aristotelian MSS., either for nothing or for a small price. They therefore concealed the MSS. in a cellar, until they found an opportunity of selling them to a stranger out of the country. (Strabo, l. c.)

This narrative of Strabo is one of the most interesting pieces of information remaining to us about literary antiquity. He had himself received instruction from Tyrannion (xii. 548): he had gone through a course of Aristotelian philosophy (xvi. 757), and he had good means of knowing the facts from the Aristotelian critics, including his master Tyrannion. Plutarch (Vit. Syllæ, c. 26) and Athenæus (i. 3) allude to the same story. Athenæus says that Ptolemy Philadelphus purchased the MSS. from the heirs of Neleus, which cannot be correct.

Some critics have understood the narrative of Strabo, as if he had meant to affirm, that the works of Aristotle had never got into circulation until the time of Apellikon. It is against this supposition that Stahr contends (very successfully) in his work “Aristotelia”. But Strabo does not affirm so much as this. He does not say anything to contradict the supposition that there were copies of various books of Aristotle in circulation, during the lives of Aristotle and Theophrastus.

Inconvenience to the Peripatetic school from the loss of its library.

If we knew the truth, it might probably appear that the transfer of the Aristotelian library, from the Peripatetic school at Athens to the distant and obscure town of Skêpsis, was the result of some jealousy on the part of Theophrastus; that he wished to secure to Neleus the honourable and lucrative post of becoming his successor in the school, and conceived that he was furthering that object by bequeathing the library to Neleus. If he entertained any such wish, it was disappointed. The succession devolved upon another pupil of the school, Straton of Lampsakus. But Straton and his successors were forced to get on as well as they could without their library. The Peripatetic school at Athens suffered severely by the loss. Its professors possessed only a few of the manuscripts of Aristotle, and those too the commonest and best known. If a student came with a view to read any of the other Aristotelian works (as Crassus went to read the Gorgias of Plato), the Scholarch was unable to assist him: as far as Aristotle was concerned, they could only expand and adorn, in the way of lecture, a few of his familiar doctrines.[11] We hear that the character of the school was materially altered. Straton deserted the track of Aristotle, and threw himself into speculations of his own (seemingly able and ingenious), chiefly on physical topics.[12] The critical study, arrangement, and exposition of Aristotle was postponed until the first century before the Christian era — the Ciceronian age, immediately preceding Strabo.

[11] Strabo, xiii. 609. συνέβη δὲ τοῖς ἐκ τῶν περιπάτων τοῖς μὲν πάλαι, τοῖς μετὰ Θεόφραστον, οὐκ ἔχουσιν ὅλως τὰ βίβλια πλὴν ὀλίγων, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν, μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν.

[12] The change in the Peripatetic school, after the death of Theophrastus, is pointed out by Cicero, Fin. v. 5, 18. Compare Academ. Poster. i. 9.

Advantage to the Platonic school from having preserved its MSS.

This history of the Aristotelian library illustrates forcibly, by way of contrast, the importance to the Platonic school of having preserved its MSS. from the beginning, without any similar interruption. What Plato left in manuscript we may presume to have never been removed: those who came to study his works had the means of doing so: those who wanted to know whether any composition was written by him, what works he had written altogether, or what was the correct reading in a case of obscurity or dispute — had always the means of informing themselves. Whereas the Peripatetic Scholarch, after the death of Theophrastus, could give no similar information as to the works of Aristotle.[13]

[13] An interesting citation by Simplikius (in his commentary on the Physica of Aristotle, fol. 216, a. 7, p. 404, b. 11, Schol. Brandis shows us that Theophrastus, while he was resident at Athens as Peripatetic Scholarch, had custody of the original MSS. of the works of Aristotle and that he was applied to by those who wished to procure correct copies. Eudêmus (of Rhodes) having only a defective copy of the Physica, wrote to request that Theophrastus would cause to be written out a certain portion of the fifth book, and send it to him, μαρτυροῦντος περὶ τῶν πρώτων καὶ Θεοφράστου, γράψαντος Εὐδήμῳ, περί τινος αὐτοῦ τῶν διημαρτημένων ἀντιγράφων· ὑπὲρ ὧν, φησιν (sc. Theophrastus) ἐπέστειλας, κελεύων με γράφειν καὶ ἀποστεῖλαι ἐκ τῶν Φυσικῶν, ἥτοι ἐγὼ οὐ συνίημι, ἢ μικρόν τι παντελῶς ἔχει τοῦ ἀνάμεσον τοῦ ὅπερ ἠρεμεῖν καλῶ τῶν ἀκινήτων μόνον, &c.

Conditions favourable, for preserving the genuine works of Plato.

We thus see that the circumstances, under which Plato left his compositions, were unusually favourable (speaking by comparison with ancient authors generally) in regard to the chance of preserving them all, and of keeping them apart from counterfeits. We have now to enquire what information exists as to their subsequent diffusion.

Historical facts as to their preservation.

The earliest event of which notice is preserved, is, the fact stated by Diogenes, that “Some persons, among whom is the Grammaticus Aristophanes, distribute the dialogues of Plato into Trilogies; placing as the first Trilogy — Republic, Timæus, Kritias. 2. Sophistes, Politicus, Kratylus. 3. Leges, Minos, Epinomis. 4. Theætêtus, Euthyphron, Apology. 5. Kriton, Phædon, Epistolæ. The other dialogues they place one by one, without any regular grouping.”[14]

[14] Diog. L. iii. 61-62: Ἔνιοι δέ, ὧν ἔστι καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ γραμματικός, εἰς τριλογίας ἕλκουσι τοὺς διαλόγους· καὶ πρώτην μὲν τιθέασιν ἧς ἡγεῖται Πολιτεία, Τίμαιος, Κριτίας· δευτέραν, Σοφιστής, Πολιτικός, Κράτυλος· τρίτην, Νόμοι, Μίνως, Ἐπινομίς· τετάρτην, Θεαίτητος, Εὐθύφρων, Ἀπολογία· πέμπτην, Κρίτων, Φαίδων, Ἐπιστολαί· τὰ δὲ ἄλλα καθ’ ἒν καὶ ἀτάκτως.

The word γραμματικὸς, unfortunately, has no single English word exactly corresponding to it.

Thrasyllus, when he afterwards applied the classification by Tetralogies to the works of Demokritus (as he did also to those of Plato) could only include a certain portion of the works in his Tetralogies, and was forced to enumerate the remainder as ἀσύντακτα (Diog. L. ix. 46, 47). It appears that he included all Plato’s works in his Platonic Tetralogies.

Arrangement of them into Trilogies, by Aristophanes.

The name of Aristophanes lends special interest to this arrangement of the Platonic compositions, and enables us to understand something of the date and the place to which it belongs. The literary and critical students (Grammatici) among whom he stood eminent, could scarcely be said to exist as a class the time when Plato died. Beginning with Aristotle, Herakleides of Pontus, Theophrastus, Demetrius Phalereus, &c., at Athens, during the half century immediately succeeding Plato’s decease — these laborious and useful erudites were first called into full efficiency along with the large collection of books formed by the Ptolemies at Alexandria during a period beginning rather before 300 B.C.: which collection served both as model and as stimulus to the libraries subsequently formed by the kings at Pergamus and elsewhere. In those libraries alone could materials be found for their indefatigable application.

Aristophanes, librarian at the Alexandrine library.

Of these learned men, who spent their lives in reading, criticising, arranging, and correcting, the MSS. accumulated in a great library, Aristophanes of Byzantium was the most distinguished representative, in the eyes of men like Varro, Cicero, and Plutarch.[15] His life was passed at Alexandria, and seems to have been comprised between 260-184 B.C.; as far as can be made out. During the latter portion of it he became chief librarian — an appointment which he had earned by long previous studies in the place, as well as by attested experience in the work of criticism and arrangement. He began his studious career at Alexandria at an early age: and he received instruction, as a boy from Zenodotus, as a young man from Kallimachus — both of whom were, in succession, librarians of the Alexandrine library.[16] We must observe that Diogenes does not expressly state the distribution of the Platonic works into trilogies to have been first proposed or originated by Aristophanes (as he states that the tetralogies were afterwards proposed by the rhetor Thrasyllus, of which presently): his language is rather more consistent with the supposition, that it was first proposed by some one earlier, and adopted or sanctioned by the eminent authority of Aristophanes. But at any rate, the distribution was proposed either by Aristophanes himself, or by some one before him and known to him.

[15] Varro, De Linguâ Latinâ, v. 9, ed. Müller. “Non solum ad Aristophanis lucernam, sed etiam ad Cleanthis, lucubravi.” Cicero, De Fin. v. 19, 50; Vitruvius, Præf. Lib. vii.; Plutarch, “Non posse suaviter vivi sec. Epicurum,” p. 1095 E.

Aristophanes composed Argumenta to many of the Attic tragedies and comedies: he also arranged in a certain order the songs of Alkæus and the odes of Pindar. Boeckh (Præfat. ad Scholia Pindari, p. x. xi.) remarks upon the mistake made by Quintilian as well as by others, in supposing that Pindar arranged his own odes. Respecting the wide range of erudition embraced by Aristophanes, see F. A. Wolf, Prolegg. in Homer, pp. 218-220, and Schneidewin, De Hypothes. Traged. Græc. Aristophani vindicandis, pp. 26, 27.

[16] Suidas, vv. Ἀριστοφάνης, Καλλίμαχος. Compare Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B.C. 256-200.

Plato’s works in the Alexandrine library, before the time of Aristophanes.

This fact is of material importance, because it enables us to infer with confidence, that the Platonic works were included in the Alexandrine library, certainly during the lifetime of Aristophanes, and probably before it. It is there only that Aristophanes could have known them; his whole life having been passed in Alexandria. The first formal appointment of a librarian to the Alexandrine Museum was made by Ptolemy Philadelphus, at some time after the commencement of his reign in 285 B.C., in the person of Zenodotus; whose successors were Kallimachus, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Aristophanes, comprising in all a period of a century.[17]

[17] See Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken, pp. 16-17, &c.; Nauck, De Aristophanis Vitâ et Scriptis, cap. i. p. 68 (Halle, 1848). “Aristophanis et Aristarchi opera, cum opibus Bibliothecæ Alexandrinæ digerendis et ad tabulas revocandis arctè conjuncta, in eo substitisse censenda est, ut scriptores, in quovis dicendi genere conspicuos, aut breviori indice comprehenderent, aut uberiore enarratione describerent,” &c.

When Zenodotus was appointed, the library had already attained considerable magnitude, so that the post and title of librarian was then conspicuous and dignified. But Demetrius Phalereus, who preceded Zenodotus, began his operations when there was no library at all, and gradually accumulated the number of books which Zenodotus found. Heyne observes justly: “Primo loco Demetrius Phalereus præfuisse dicitur, forte re verius quam nomine, tum Zenodotus Ephesius, hic quidem sub Ptolemæo Philadelpho,” &c. (Heyne, De Genio Sæculi Ptolemæorum in Opuscul. i. p. 129).

Kallimachus — predecessor of Aristophanes — his published Tables of authors whose works were in the library.

Kallimachus, born at Kyrênê, was a teacher of letters at Alexandria before he was appointed to the service and superintendence of the Alexandrine library or museum. His life seems to have terminated about 230 B.C.: he acquired reputation as a poet, by his hymns, epigrams, elegies, but less celebrity as a Grammaticus than Aristophanes: nevertheless the titles of his works still remaining indicate very great literary activity. We read as titles of his works:—

1. The Museum (a general description of the Alexandrine establishment).
2. Tables of the persons who have distinguished themselves in every branch of instruction, and of the works which they have composed — in 120 books.
3. Table and specification of the (Didaskalies) recorded dramatic representations and competitions; with dates assigned, and from the beginning.
4. Table of the peculiar phrases belonging to Demokritus, and of his works.
5. Table and specification of the rhetorical authors.[18]

[18] See Blomfleld’s edition of the Fragm. of Kallimachus, p. 220-221. Suidas, v. Καλλίμαχος, enumerates a large number of titles of poetical, literary, historical, compositions of Kallimachus; among them are —

Μουσεῖον. Πίνακες τῶν ἐν πάσῃ παιδείᾳ διαλαμψάντων, καὶ ὧν συνέγραψαν, ἐν βιβλίοις κ′ καὶ ρ′. Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν κατὰ χρόνους καὶ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς γενομένων διδασκαλιῶν. Πίναξ τῶν Δημοκρίτου γλωσσῶν καὶ συνταγμάτων. Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν ῥητορικῶν. See also Athenæus, xv. 669. It appears from Dionys. Hal. that besides the Tables of Kallimachus, enumerating and reviewing the authors whose works were contained in the Alexandrine library or museum, there existed also Περγαμηνοὶ Πίνακες, describing the contents of the library at Pergamus (Dion. H. de Adm. Vi Dic. in Demosthene, p. 994; De Dinarcho, pp. 630, 653, 661).

Compare Bernhardy, Grundriss der Griech. Litt. sect. 36, pp. 132-133 seq.

Large and rapid accumulation of the Alexandrine Library.

These tables of Kallimachus (of which one by itself, No. 2, reached to 120 books) must have been an encyclopædia, far more comprehensive than any previously compiled, of Greek authors and literature. Such tables indeed could not have been compiled before the existence of the Alexandrine Museum. They described what Kallimachus had before him in that museum, as we may see by the general title Μουσεῖον prefixed: moreover we may be sure that nowhere else could he have had access to the multitude of books required. Lastly, the tables also show how large a compass the Alexandrine Museum and library had attained at the time when Kallimachus put together his compilation: that is, either in the reign of Ptolemy II. Philadelphia (285-247 B.C.), or in the earlier portion of the reign of Ptolemy III., called Euergetes (247-222 B.C.). Nevertheless, large as the library then was, it continued to increase. A few years afterwards, Aristophanes published a work commenting upon the tables of Kallimachus, with additions and enlargements: of which work the title alone remains.[19]

[19] Athenæus, ix. 408. Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ γραμματικὸς ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς Καλλιμάχου πίνακας.

We see by another passage, Athenæ. viii. 336, that this work included an addition or supplement to the Tables of Kallimachus.

Compare Etymol. Magn. v. Πίναξ.

Plato’s works — in the library at the time of Kallimachus.

Now, I have already observed, that the works of Plato were certainly in the Alexandrine library, at the time when Aristophanes either originated or sanctioned the distribution of them into Trilogies. Were they not also in the library at the time when Kallimachus compiled his tables? I cannot but conclude that they were in it at that time also. When we are informed that the catalogue of enumerated authors filled so many books, we may be sure that it must have descended, and we know in fact that it did descend, to names far less important and distinguished than that of Plato.[20] The name of Plato himself can hardly have been omitted. Demokritus and his works, especially the peculiar and technical words (γλῶσσαι) in them, received special attention from Kallimachus: which proves that the latter was not disposed to pass over the philosophers. But Demokritus, though an eminent philosopher, was decidedly less eminent than Plato: moreover he left behind him no permanent successors, school, or μουσεῖον, at Athens, to preserve his MSS. or foster his celebrity. As the library was furnished at that time with a set of the works of Demokritus, so I infer that it could not have been without a set of the works of Plato. That Kallimachus was acquainted with Plato’s writings (if indeed such a fact requires proof), we know, not only from his epigram upon the Ambrakiot Kleombrotus (whom he affirms to have killed himself after reading the Phædon), but also from a curious intimation that he formally impugned Plato’s competence to judge or appreciate poets — alluding to the severe criticisms which we read in the Platonic Republic.[21]

[20] Thus the Tables of Kallimachus included a writer named Lysimachus, a disciple of Theodorus or Theophrastus, and his writings (Athenæ. vi. 252) — a rhetor and poet named Dionysius with the epithet of χαλκοῦς (Athenæ. xv. 669)) — and even the treatises of several authors on cakes and cookery (Athenæ. xiv. 643). The names of authors absolutely unknown to us were mentioned by him (Athenæ. ii. 70). Compare Dionys. Hal. de Dinarcho, 630, 653, 661.

[21] Kallimachus, Epigram. 23.

Proklus in Timæum, p. 28 C. p. 64. Schneid. μάτην οὖν φληναφοῦσι Καλλίμαχος καὶ Δοῦρις, ὡς Πλάτωνος οὐκ ὄντος ἱκανοῦ κρίνειν ποιητάς.

Eratosthenes, successor of Kallimachus as librarian at Alexandria, composed a work (now lost) entitled Πλατωνικὸν, as well as various treatises on philosophy and philosophers (Eratosthenica, Bernhardy, p. 168, 187, 197; Suidas, v. Ἐρατοσθένης). He had passed some time at Athens, had enjoyed the lessons and conversation of Zeno the Stoic, but expressed still warmer admiration of Arkesilaus and Ariston. He spoke in animated terms of Athens as the great centre of congregation for philosophers in his day. He had composed a treatise, Περὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν: but Strabo describes him as mixing up other subjects with philosophy (Strabo, i. p. 15).

It would indeed be most extraordinary if, among the hundreds of authors whose works must have been specified in the Tables of Kallimachus as constituting the treasures of the Alexandrine Museum,[22] the name of Plato had not been included. Moreover, the distribution of the Platonic compositions into Trilogies, pursuant to the analogy of the Didaskaliæ or dramatic records, may very probably have originated with Kallimachus; and may have been simply approved and continued, perhaps with some modifications, by Aristophanes. At least this seems more consonant to the language of Diogenes Laertius, than the supposition that Aristophanes was the first originator of it.

[22] About the number of books, or more properly of rolls (volumina), in the Alexandrine library, see the enquiries of Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Museum, p. 76-84. Various statements are made by ancient authors, some of them with very large numbers; and no certainty is attainable. Many rolls would go to form one book. Parthey considers the statement made by Epiphanius not improbable — 54,800 rolls in the library under Ptolemy Philadelphus (p. 83).

The magnitude of the library at Alexandria in the time of Eratosthenes, and the multitude of writings which he consulted in his valuable geographical works, was admitted by his opponent Hipparchus (Strabo, ii. 69).

First formation of the library — intended as a copy of the Platonic and Aristotelian Μουσεῖα at Athens.

If we look back to the first commencement of the Alexandrine Museum and library, we shall be still farther convinced that the works of Plato, complete as well as genuine, must have been introduced into it before the days of Kallimachus. Strabo expressly tells us that the first stimulus and example impelling the Ptolemies to found this museum and library, were furnished by the school of Aristotle and Theophrastus at Athens.[23] I believe this to be perfectly true; and it is farther confirmed by the fact that the institution at Alexandria comprised the same constituent parts and arrangements, described by the same titles, as those which are applied to the Aristotelian and Platonic schools at Athens.[24] Though the terms library, museum, and lecture-room, have now become familiar, both terms and meaning were at that time alike novel. Nowhere, as far as we know, did there exist a known and fixed domicile, consecrated in perpetuity to these purposes, and to literary men who took interest therein. A special stimulus was needed to suggest and enforce the project on Ptolemy Soter. That stimulus was supplied by the Aristotelian school at Athens, which the Alexandrine institution was intended to copy: Μουσεῖον (with ἐξέδρα and περίπατος, a covered portico with recesses and seats, and a walk adjacent), on a far larger scale and with more extensive attributions.[25] We must not however imagine that when this new museum was first begun, the founders entertained any idea of the vast magnitude to which it ultimately attained.

[23] Strabo, xiii. 608. ὁ γοῦν Ἀριστοτέλης τὴν ἑαυτοῦ (βιβλιοθήκην) Θεοφράστῳ παρέδωκεν, ᾧπερ καὶ τὴν σχολὴν ἀπέλιπε· πρῶτος, ὧν ἴσμεν, συναγαγὼν βίβλια, καὶ διδάξας τοὺς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ βασιλέας βιβλιοθήκης σύνταξιν.

[24] Strabo (xvii. 793-794) describes the Museum at Alexandria in the following terms — τῶν δὲ βασιλείων μέρος ἐστὶ καὶ τὸ Μουσεῖον, ἔχον περίπατον καὶ ἐξέδραν, καὶ οἶκον μέγαν ἐν ᾧ τὸ συσσίτιον τῶν μετεχόντων τοῦ Μουσείου φιλολόγων ἀνδρῶν, &c. Vitruvius, v. 11.

If we compare this with the language in Diogenes Laertius respecting the Academic and Peripatetic school residences at Athens, we shall find the same phrases employed — μουσεῖον, ἐξέδρα, &c. (D. L. iv. 19, v. 51-54). Respecting Speusippus, Diogenes tells us (iv, 1) — Χαρίτων τ’ ἀγάλματ’ ἀνέθηκεν ἐν τῷ μουσείῳ τῷ ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἐν Ἀκαδημίᾳ ἰδρυθέντι.

[25] We see from hence what there was peculiar in the Platonic and Aristotelian literary establishments. They included something consecrated, permanent, and intended more or less for public use. The collection of books was not like a private library, destined only for the proprietor and such friends as he might allow — nor was it like that of a bookseller, intended for sale and profit. I make this remark in regard to the Excursus of Bekker, in his Charikles, i. 206, 216, a very interesting note on the book-trade and libraries of ancient Athens. Bekker disputes the accuracy of Strabo’s statement that Aristotle was the first person at Athens who collected a library, and who taught the kings of Egypt to do the like. In the literal sense of the words Bekker is right. Other persons before Aristotle had collected books (though I think Bekker makes more of the passages which he cites than they strictly deserve); one example is the youthful Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2; and Bekker alludes justly to the remarkable passage in the Anabasis of Xenophon, about books exported to the Hellenic cities in the Euxine (Anabas. vii. 5, 14). There clearly existed in Athens regular professional booksellers; we see that the bookseller read aloud to his visitors a part of the books which he had to sell, in order to tempt them to buy, a feeble foreshadowing of the advertisements and reviews of the present day (Diogen. L. vii. 2). But there existed as yet nothing of the nature of the Platonic and Aristotelian μουσεῖον, whereof the collection of books, varied, permanent, and intended for the use of inmates and special visitors, was one important fraction. In this sense it served as a model for Demetrius Phalereus and Ptolemy Soter in regard to Alexandria.

Vitruvius (v. 11) describes the exhedræ as seats placed under a covered portico — “in quibus philosophi, rhetores, reliquique qui studiis delectantur, sedentes disputare possint”.

Favour of Ptolemy Soter towards the philosophers at Athens.

Ptolemy Soter was himself an author,[26] and himself knew and respected Aristotle, not only as a philosopher but also as the preceptor of his friend and commander Alexander. To Theophrastus also, the philosophical successor of Aristotle, Ptolemy showed peculiar honour; inviting him by special message to come and establish himself at Alexandria, which invitation however Theophrastus declined.[27] Moreover Ptolemy appointed Straton (afterwards Scholarch in succession to Theophrastus) preceptor to his youthful son Ptolemy Philadelphus, from whom Straton subsequently received a large present of money:[28] he welcomed at Alexandria the Megaric philosophers, Diodorus Kronus, and Stilpon, and found pleasure in their conversation; he not only befriended, but often confidentially consulted, the Kyrenaic philosopher Theodôrus.[29] Kolôtes, the friend of Epikurus, dedicated a work to Ptolemy Soter. Menander, the eminent comic writer, also received an invitation from him to Egypt.[30]

[26] Respecting Ptolemy as an author, and the fragments of his work on the exploits of Alexander, see R. Geier, Alexandri M. Histor. Scriptores, p. 4-26.

[27] Diog. L. v. 37. Probably this invitation was sent about 306 B.C., during the year in which Theophrastus was in banishment from Athens, in consequence of the restrictive law proposed by Sophokles against the schools of the philosophers, which law was repealed in the ensuing year.

[28] Diog. L. v. 58. Straton became Scholarch at the death of Theophrastus in 287 B.C. He must have been preceptor to Ptolemy Philadelphus before this time, during the youth of the latter; for he could not have been at the same time Scholarch at Athens, and preceptor of the king at Alexandria.

[29] Diog. L. ii. 102, 111, 115. Plutarch adv. Kolôten, p. 1107. The Ptolemy here mentioned by Plutarch may indeed be Philadelphus.

[30] Meineke, Menand. et Philem. Reliq. Præf. p. xxxii.

Demetrius Phalereus — his history and character.

These favourable dispositions, on the part of the first Ptolemy, towards philosophy and the philosophers at Athens, appear to have been mainly instigated and guided by the Phalerean Demetrius: an Athenian citizen of good station, who enjoyed for ten years at Athens (while that city was subject to Kassander) full political ascendancy, but who was expelled about 307 B.C., by the increased force of the popular party, seconded by the successful invasion of Demetrius Poliorkêtês. By these political events Demetrius Phalereus was driven into exile: a portion of which exile was spent at Thebes, but a much larger portion of it at Alexandria, where he acquired the full confidence of Ptolemy Soter, and retained it until the death of that prince in 285 B.C. While active in politics, and possessing rhetorical talent, elegant without being forcible — Demetrius Phalereus was yet more active in literature and philosophy. He employed his influence, during the time of his political power, to befriend and protect both Xenokrates the chief of the Platonic school, and Theophrastus the chief of the Aristotelian. In his literary and philosophical views he followed Theophrastus and the Peripatetic sect, and was himself among their most voluminous writers. The latter portion of his life was spent at Alexandria, in the service of Ptolemy Soter; after whose death, however, he soon incurred the displeasure of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and died, intentionally or accidentally, from the bite of an asp.[31]

[31] Diog. L. iv. 14, v. 39, 75, 80; Strabo, ix. 398; Plut., De Exil. p. 601; Apophth. p. 189; Cic., De Fin. v. 19; Pro Rab. 30.

Diogenes says about Demetrius Phalereus, (v. 80) Πλήθει δὲ βιβλίων καὶ ἀριθμῷ στίχων, σχεδὸν ἅπαντας παρελήλακε τοῦς κατ’ αὐτὸν Περιπατητικούς, εὐπαίδευτος ὢν καὶ πολύπειρος παρ’ ὁντινοῦν.

He was chief agent in the first establishment of the Alexandrine Library.

The Alexandrine Museum or library first acquired celebrity under the reign of Ptolemy (II.) Philadelphus, by whom moreover it was greatly enlarged and its treasures multiplied. Hence that prince is sometimes entitled the founder. But there can be no doubt that its first initiation and establishment is due to Ptolemy (I.) Soter.[32] Demetrius Phalereus was his adviser and auxiliary, the link of connection between him and the literary or philosophical world of Greece. We read that Julius Cæsar, when he conceived the scheme (which he did not live to execute) of establishing a large public library at Rome, fixed upon the learned Varro to regulate the selection and arrangement of the books.[33] None but an eminent literary man could carry such an enterprise into effect, even at Rome, when there existed the precedent of the Alexandrine library: much more when Ptolemy commenced his operations at Alexandria, and when there were only the two Μουσεῖα at Athens to serve as precedents. Demetrius, who combined an organising head and political experience, with an erudition not inferior to Varro, regard being had to the stock of learning accessible — was eminently qualified for the task. It procured for him great importance with Ptolemy, and compensated him for that loss of political ascendancy at Athens, which unfavourable fortune had brought about.

[32] Mr. Clinton says, Fast. Hell. App. 5, p. 380, 381:

“Athenæus distinctly ascribes the institution of the Μουσεῖον to Philadelphus in v. 203, where he is describing the acts of Philadelphus.” This is a mistake: the passage in Athenæus does not specify which of the two first Ptolemies was the founder: it is perfectly consistent with the supposition that Ptolemy Soter founded it. The same may be said about the passage cited by Mr. Clinton from Plutarch; that too does not determine between the two Ptolemies, which was the founder. Perizonius was in error (as Mr. Clinton points out) in affirming that the passage in Plutarch determined the foundation to the first Ptolemy: Mr. Clinton is in error by affirming that the passage in Athenæus determines it to the second. Mr. Clinton has also been misled by Vitruvius and Scaliger (p. 389), when he affirms that the library at Alexandria was not formed until after the library at Pergamus. Bernhardy (Grundriss der Griech. Litt., Part i. p. 359, 367, 369) has followed Mr. Clinton too implicitly in recognising Philadelphus as the founder: nevertheless he too admits (p. 366) that the foundations were laid by Ptolemy Soter, under the advice and assistance of Demetrius Phalereus.

The earliest declared king of the Attalid family at Pergamus acquired the throne in 241 B.C. The library at Pergamus could hardly have been commenced before his time: and it is his successor, Eumenes II. (whose reign began in 197 B.C.), who is mentioned as the great collector and adorner of the library at Pergamus. See Strabo, xiii. 624; Clinton, Fast. Hellen. App. 6, p. 401-403. It is plain that the library at Pergamus could hardly have been begun before the close of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt, by which time the library of Alexandria had already acquired great extension and renown.

[33] Sueton. Jul. Cæs. c. 44. Melissus, one of the Illustres Grammatici of Rome, undertook by order of Augustus, “curam ordinandarum bibliothecarum in Octaviæ porticu”. (Sueton. De Illustr. Grammat. c. 21.)

Cicero replies in the following terms to his brother Quintus, who had written to him, requesting advice and aid in getting together for his own use a collection of Greek and Latin books. “De bibliothecâ tuâ Græcâ supplendâ, libris commutandis, Latinis comparandis — valdé velim ista confici, præsertim cum ad meum quoque usum spectent. Sed ego, mihi ipsi ista per quem agam, non habeo. Neque enim venalia sunt, quæ quidem placeant: et confici nisi per hominem et peritum et diligentem non possunt. Chrysippo tamen imperabo, et cum Tyrannione loquar.” (Cic., Epist. ad Q. Fratr. iii. 4, 5.)

Now the circulation of books was greatly increased, and the book trade far more developed, at Rome when this letter was written (about three centuries after Plato’s decease) than it was at Athens during the time of Demetrius Phalereus (320-300 B.C.). Yet we see the difficulty which the two brothers Cicero had in collecting a mere private library for use of the owner simply. Good books, in a correct and satisfactory condition, were not to be had for money: it was necessary to get access to the best MSS., and to have special copies made, neatly and correctly: and this could not be done, except under the superintendence of a laborious literary man like Tyrannion, by well taught slaves subordinate to him.

We may understand, from this analogy, the far greater obstacles which the collectors of the Alexandrine museum and library must have had to overcome, when they began their work. No one could do it, except a practised literary man such as Demetrius Phalereus: nor even he, except by finding out the best MSS., and causing special copies to be made for the use of the library. Respecting the extent and facility of book-diffusion in the Roman world, information will be found in the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. p. 196, seqq.; also, in the fifth chapter of the work of Adolf Schmidt, Geschichte der Denk-und Glaubens-Freiheit im ersten Jahrhunderte der Kaiser-herrschaft, Berlin, 1847; lastly in a valuable review of Adolf Schmidt’s work by Sir George Lewis himself, in Fraser’s Magazine for April, 1862, pp. 432-439. Adolf Schmidt represents the multiplication and cheapness of books in that day as something hardly inferior to what it is now — citing many authorities for this opinion. Sir G. Lewis has shown, in my judgment most satisfactorily, that these authorities are insufficient, and that the opinion is incorrect: this might have been shown even more fully, if the review had been lengthened. I perfectly agree with Sir G. Lewis on the main question: yet I think he narrows the case on his own side too much, and that the number of copies of such authors as Virgil and Horace, in circulation at one time, cannot have been so small as he imagines.

Proceedings of Demetrius in beginning to collect the library.

We learn that the ardour of Demetrius Phalereus was unremitting, and that his researches were extended everywhere, to obtain for the new museum literary monuments from all countries within contemporary knowledge.[34] This is highly probable: such universality of literary interest was adapted to the mixed and cosmopolitan character of the Alexandrine population. But Demetrius was a Greek, born about the time of Plato’s death (347 B.C.), and identified with the political, rhetorical, dramatic, literary, and philosophical, activity of Athens, in which he had himself taken a prominent part. To collect the memorials of Greek literature would be his first object, more especially such as Aristotle and Theophrastus possessed in their libraries. Without doubt he would procure the works of Homer and the other distinguished poets, epic, lyric, and dramatic, as well as the rhetors, orators, &c. He probably would not leave out the works of the viri Sokratici (Antisthenes, Aristippus, Æschines, &c.) and the other philosophers (Demokritus, Anaxagoras, Parmenides, &c.). But there are two authors, whose compositions he would most certainly take pains to obtain — Plato and Aristotle. These were the two commanding names of Grecian philosophy in that day: the founders of the two schools existing in Athens, upon the model of which the Alexandrine Museum was to be constituted.

[34] Josephus, Antiquit. xii. 2, 1. Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεύς, ὃς ἦν ἐπὶ τῶν βιβλιοθηκῶν τοῦ βασιλέως, σπουδάζων εἰ δυνατὸν εἴη πάντα τὰ κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην συνάγειν βίβλια, καὶ συνωνούμενος εἴ τί που μόνον ἀκούσειε σπουδῆς ἄξιον ἢ ἡδύ, τῇ τοῦ βασιλέως προαιρέσει (μάλιστα γὰρ περὶ τὴν συλλογὴν τῶν βιβλίων εἶχε φιλοκάλως) συνηγωνίζετο.

What Josephus affirms here, I apprehend to be perfectly true; though he goes on to state much that is fabulous and apocryphal, respecting the incidents which preceded and accompanied the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Josephus is also mistaken in connecting Demetrius Phalereus with Ptolemy Philadelphus. Demetrius Phalereus was disgraced, and died shortly after that prince’s accession. His time of influence was under Ptolemy Soter.

Respecting the part taken by Demetrius Phalereus in the first getting up of the Alexandrine Museum, see Valckenaer, Dissertat. De Aristobulo Judaico, p. 52-57; Ritschl, Die Alexandrin. Biblioth. p. 17, 18; Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Museum, p. 70, 71 seq.

Certainty that the works of Plato and Aristotle were among the earliest acquisitions made by him for the library.

Among all the books which would pass over to Alexandria as the earliest stock of the new library, I know nothing upon which we can reckon more certainly than upon the works of Plato.[35] For they were acquisitions not only desirable, but also easily accessible. The writings of Aristippus or Demokritus — of Lysias or Isokrates — might require to be procured (or good MSS. thereof, fit to be specially copied) at different places and from different persons, without any security that the collection, when purchased, would be either complete or altogether genuine. But the manuscripts of Plato and of Aristotle were preserved in their respective schools at Athens, the Academic and Peripatetic:[36] a collection complete as well as verifiable. Demetrius could obtain permission, from Theophrastus in the Peripatetic school, from Polemon or Krantor in the Academic school, to have these MSS. copied for him by careful and expert hands. The cost of such copying must doubtless have been considerable; amounting to a sum which few private individuals would have been either able or willing to disburse. But the treasures of Ptolemy were amply sufficient for the purpose:[37] and when he once conceived the project of founding a museum in his new capital, a large outlay, incurred for transcribing from the best MSS. a complete and authentic collection of the works of illustrious authors, was not likely to deter him. We know from other anecdotes,[38] what vast sums the third Ptolemy spent, for the mere purpose of securing better and more authoritative MSS. of works which the Alexandrine library already possessed.

[35] Stahr, in the second part of his work “Aristotelia,” combats and refutes with much pains the erroneous supposition, that there was no sufficient publication of the works of Aristotle, until after the time when Apellikon purchased the MSS. from the heirs of Neleus — i.e. B.C. 100. Stahr shows evidence to prove, that the works, at least many of the works, of Aristotle were known and studied before the year 100 B.C.: that they were in the library at Alexandria, and that they were procured for that library by Demetrius Phalereus. Stahr says (Thl. ii. p. 59): “Is it indeed credible — is it even conceivable — that Demetrius, who recommended especially to his regal friend Ptolemy the study of the political works of the philosophers — that Demetrius, the friend both of the Aristotelian philosophy and of Theophrastus, should have left the works of the two greatest Peripatetic philosophers out of his consideration? May we not rather be sure that he would take care to secure their works, before all others, for his nascent library — if indeed he did not bring them with him when he came to Alexandria?” The question here put by Stahr (and farther insisted on by Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Introd. p. 14) is very pertinent: and I put the like question, with slight change of circumstances, respecting the works of Plato. Demetrius Phalereus was the friend and patron of Xenokrates, as well as of Theophrastus.

[36] In respect to the Peripatetic school, this is true only during the lifetime of Theophrastus, who died 287 B.C. I have already mentioned that after the death of Theophrastus, the MSS. were withdrawn from Athens. But all the operations of Demetrius Phalereus were carried on during the lifetime of Theophrastus; much of them, probably, in concert with Theophrastus, whose friend and pupil he was. The death of Theophrastus, the death of Ptolemy Soter, and the discredit and subsequent death of Demetrius are separated only by an interval of two or three years.

[37] We find interesting information, in the letters of Cicero, respecting the librarii or copyists whom he had in his service; and the still more numerous and effective band of librarii and anagnostæ: (slaves, mostly home-born) whom his friend Atticus possessed and trained (Corn. Nep., Vit. Attici, c. 13). See Epist. ad Attic. xii. 6; xiii. 21-44; v. 12 seq.

It appears that many of the compositions of Cicero were copied, prepared for publication, and published, by the librarii of Atticus: who, in the case of the Academica, incurred a loss, because Cicero — after having given out the work to be copied and published, and after progress had been made in doing this — thought fit to alter materially both the form and the speakers introduced (xiii. 13). In regard to the Oration pro Ligario, Atticus sold it well, and brought himself home (“Ligarianam præclaré vendidisti: posthac, quicquid scripsero, tibi præconium deferam,” xiii. 12). Cicero (xiii. 21) compares the relation of Atticus towards himself, with that of Hermodôrus towards Plato, as expressed in the Greek verse, λόγοισιν Ἑρμόδωρος [ἐμπορεύεται]. (Suidas, s, v. λόγοισιν Ἑρμ. ἐμπ.)

Private friends, such as Balbus and Cærellia (xiii. 21), considered it a privilege to be allowed to take copies of his compositions at their own cost, through librarii employed for the purpose. And we find Galen enumerating this among the noble and dignified ways for an opulent man to expend money, in a remarkable passage, βλέπω γὰρ σε οὐδὲ πρὸς τὰ καλὰ τῶν ἔργων δαπανῆσαι τολμῶντα, μηδ’ εἰς βιβλίων ὠνὴν καὶ κατασκευὴν καὶ τῶν γραφόντων ἄσκησιν, ἤτοι γε εἰς τάχος διὰ σημείων, ἢ εἰς καλῶν ἀκρίβειαν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων ὀρθῶς. (De Cognoscendis Curandisque Animi Morbis, t. v. p. 48, Kühn.)

[38] Galen, Comm. ad Hippokrat. Ἐπιδημίας, vol. xvii. p. 606, 607, ed. Kühn.

Lykurgus, the contemporary of Demosthenes as an orator, conspicuous for many years in the civil and financial administration of Athens, caused a law to be passed, enacting that an official MS. should be made of the plays of Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides. No permission was granted to represent any of these dramas at the Dionysiac festival, except upon condition that the applicant and the actors whom he employed, should compare the MS. on which they intended to proceed, with the official MS. in the hands of the authorised secretary. The purpose was to prevent arbitrary amendments or omissions in these plays, at the pleasure of ὑποκρίται.

Ptolemy Euergetes borrowed from the Athenians these public and official MSS. of Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides on the plea that he wished to have exact copies of them taken at Alexandria, and under engagement to restore them as soon as this was done. He deposited with them the prodigious sum of fifteen talents, as a guarantee for the faithful restitution. When he got the MSS. at Alexandria, he caused copies of them to be taken on the finest paper. He then sent these copies to Athens, keeping the originals for the Alexandrine library; desiring the Athenians to retain the deposit of fifteen talents for themselves. Ptolemy Euergetes here pays, not merely the cost of the finest copying, but fifteen talents besides, for the possession of official MSS. of the three great Athenian tragedians; whose works in other manuscripts must have been in the library long before.

Respecting these official MSS. of the three great tragedians, prepared during the administration and under the auspices of the rhetor Lykurgus, see Plutarch, Vit. X. Orator, p. 841, also Boeckh, Græcæ Tragœd. Principia, pp. 13-15. The time when Lykurgus caused this to be done, must have been nearly coincident with the decease of Plato, 347 B.C. See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, vol. i. p. 468, ii. p. 244; Welcker, Griech. Trag. iii. p. 908; Korn, De Publico Æschyli, &c., Exemplari, Lykurgo Auctore Confecto, p. 6-9, Bonn, 1863.

In the passage cited above from Galen, we are farther informed, that Ptolemy Euergetes caused inquiries to be made, from the masters of all vessels which came to Alexandria, whether there were any MSS. on board; if there were, the MSS. were brought to the library, carefully copied out, and the copies given to the owners; the original MSS. being retained in the library, and registered in a separate compartment, under the general head of Τὰ ἐκ πλοίων, and with the name of the person from whom the acquisition had been made, annexed. Compare Wolf, Prolegg. ad Homerum, p. clxxv. These statements tend to show the care taken by the Alexandrine librarians, not only to acquire the best MSS., but also to keep good MSS. apart from bad, and to record the person and the quarter from which each acquisition had been made.

Large expenses incurred by the Ptolemies for procuring good MSS.

We cannot doubt that Demetrius could obtain permission, if he asked it, from the Scholarchs, to have such copies made. To them the operation was at once complimentary and lucrative; while among the Athenian philosophers generally, the name of Demetrius was acceptable, from the favour which he had shown to them during his season of political power — and that of Ptolemy popular from his liberalities. Or if we even suppose that Demetrius, instead of obtaining copies of the Platonic MSS. from the school, purchased copies from private persons or book-sellers (as he must have purchased the works of Demokritus and others) — he could, at any rate, assure himself of the authenticity of what he purchased, by information from the Scholarch.

Catalogue of Platonic works, prepared by Aristophanes, is trustworthy.

My purpose, in thus calling attention to the Platonic school and the Alexandrine Museum, is to show that the chance for preservation of Plato’s works complete and genuine after his decease, was unusually favourable. I think that they existed complete and genuine in the Alexandrine Museum before the time of Kallimachus, and, of course, during that of Aristophanes. If there were in the Museum any other works obtained from private vendors and professing to be Platonic, Kallimachus and Aristophanes had the means of distinguishing these from such as the Platonic school had furnished and could authenticate, and motive enough for keeping them apart from the certified Platonic catalogue. Whether there existed any spurious works of this sort in the Museum, Diogenes Laertius does not tell us; nor, unfortunately, does he set forth the full list of those which Aristophanes, recognising as Platonic, distributed either in triplets or in units. Diogenes mentions only the principle of distribution adopted, and a select portion of the compositions distributed. But as far as his positive information goes, I hold it to be perfectly worthy of trust. I consider that all the compositions recognised by Aristophanes as works of Plato are unquestionably such; and that his testimony greatly strengthens our assurance for the received catalogue, in many of those items which have been most contested by critics, upon supposed internal grounds. Aristophanes authenticates, among others, not merely the Leges, but also the Epinomis, the Minos, and the Epistolæ.

No canonical or exclusive order of the Platonic dialogues, when arranged by Aristophanes.

There is another point also which I conceive to be proved by what we hear about Aristophanes. He (or Kallimachus before him) introduced a new order or distribution of his own — the Trilogies — founded on the analogy of the dramatic Didaskalies. This shows that the Platonic dialogues were not received into the library in any canonical or exclusive order of their own, or in any interdependence as first, second, third, &c., essential to render them intelligible as a system. Had there been any such order, Kallimachus and Aristophanes would no more have altered it, than they would have transposed the order of the books in the Republic and Leges. The importance of what is here observed will appear presently, when we touch upon the theory of Schleiermacher.

Other libraries and literary centres, besides Alexandria, in which spurious Platonic works might get footing.

The distributive arrangement, proposed or sanctioned by Aristophanes, applied (as I have already remarked) to the materials in the Alexandrine library only. But this library, though it was the most conspicuous portion, was not the whole, of the Grecian literary aggregate. There were other great regal libraries (such as those of the kings of Pergamus and the Seleukid kings[39]) commenced after the Alexandrine library had already attained importance, and intended to rival it: there was also an active literary and philosophising class, in various Grecian cities, of which Athens was the foremost, but in which Rhodes, Kyrênê, and several cities in Asia Minor, Kilikia, and Syria, were included: ultimately the cultivated classes at Rome, and the Western Hellenic city of Massalia, became comprised in the number. Among this widespread literary public, there were persons who neither knew nor examined the Platonic school or the Alexandrine library, nor investigated what title either of them had to furnish a certificate authenticating the genuine works of Plato. It is not certain that even the great library at Pergamus, begun nearly half a century after that of Alexandria, had any such initiatory agent as Demetrius Phalereus, able as well as willing to go to the fountain-head of Platonism at Athens: nor could the kings of Pergamus claim aid from Alexandria, with which they were in hostile rivalry, and from which they were even forbidden (so we hear) to purchase papyrus. Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that spurious Platonic writings, though they obtained no recognition in the Alexandrine library, might obtain more or less recognition elsewhere, and pass under the name of Plato. To a certain extent, such was the case. There existed some spurious dialogues at the time when Thrasyllus afterwards formed his arrangement.

[39] The library of Antiochus the Great or of his predecessor, is mentioned by Suidas, Εὐφορίων. Euphorion was librarian of it, seemingly about 230-220 B.C. See Clinton, Fast. Hell. B.C. 221.

Galen states (Comm. in Hippok. De Nat. Hom. vol. xv. p. 105, Kühn) that the forgeries of books, and the practice of tendering books for sale under the false names of celebrated authors, did not commence until the time when the competition between the kings of Egypt and the kings of Pergamus for their respective libraries became vehement. If this be admitted, there could have been no forgeries tendered at Alexandria until after the commencement of the reign of Euergetes (B.C. 247-222): for the competition from Pergamus could hardly have commenced earlier than 230 B.C. In the times of Soter and Philadelphus, there would be no such forgeries tendered. I do not doubt that such forgeries were sometimes successfully passed off: but I think Galen does not take sufficient account of the practice (mentioned by himself) at the Alexandrine library, to keep faithful record of the person and quarter from whence each book had been acquired.

Other critics, besides Aristophanes, proposed different arrangements of the Platonic dialogues.

Moreover the distribution made by Aristophanes of the Platonic dialogues into Trilogies, and the order of priority which he established among them was by no means universally accepted. Some rejected altogether the dramatic analogy of Trilogies as a principle of distribution. They arranged the dialogues into three classes:[40] 1. The Direct, or purely dramatic. 2. The Indirect, or narrative (diegematic). 3. The Mixed — partly one, partly the other. Respecting the order of priority, we read that while Aristophanes placed the Republic first, there were eight other arrangements, each recognising a different dialogue as first in order; these eight were, Alkibiades I., Theagês, Euthyphron, Kleitophon, Timæus, Phædrus, Theætêtus, Apology. More than one arrangement began with the Apology. Some even selected the Epistolæ as the proper commencement for studying Plato’s works.[41]

[40] Diog. L. iii. 49. Schöne, in his commentary on the Protagoras (pp. 8-12), lays particular stress on this division into the direct or dramatic, and indirect or diegematic. He thinks it probable, that Plato preferred one method to the other at different periods of life: that all of one sort, and all of the other sort, come near together in time.

[41] Diog. L. iii. 62. Albinus, Εἰσαγωγὴ, c. 4, in K. F. Hermann’s Appendix Platonica, p. 149.

Panætius, the Stoic — considered the Phædon to be spurious — earliest known example of a Platonic dialogue disallowed upon internal grounds.

We hear with surprise that the distinguished Stoic philosopher at Athens, Panætius, rejected the Phædon as not being the work of Plato.[42] It appears that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and that he profoundly admired Plato; accordingly, he thought it unworthy of so great a philosopher to waste so much logical subtlety, poetical metaphor, and fable, in support of such a conclusion. Probably he was also guided, in part, by one singularity in the Phædon: it is the only dialogue wherein Plato mentions himself in the third person.[43] If Panætius was predisposed, on other grounds, to consider the dialogue as unworthy of Plato, he might be induced to lay stress upon such a singularity, as showing that the author of the dialogue must be some person other than Plato. Panætius evidently took no pains to examine the external attestations of the dialogue, which he would have found to be attested both by Aristotle and by Kallimachus as the work of Plato. Moreover, whatever any one may think of the cogency of the reasoning — the beauty of Platonic handling and expression is manifest throughout the dialogue. This verdict of Panætius is the earliest example handed down to us of a Platonic dialogue disallowed on internal grounds that is, because it appeared to the critic unworthy of Plato: and it is certainly among the most unfortunate examples.

[42] See the Epigram out of the Anthology, and the extract from the Scholia on the Categories of Aristotle, cited by Wyttenbach in his note on the beginning of the Phædon. A more important passage (which he has not cited) from the Scholia on Aristotle, is, that of Asklepius on the Metaphysica, p. 991; Scholia, ed. Brandis, p. 576, a. 38. Ὅτι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐστιν ὁ Φαίδων, σαφῶς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης δηλοῖ — Παναίτιος γὰρ τις ἐτόλμησε νοθεῦσαι τὸν διάλογον. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἔλεγεν εἶναι θνητὴν τὴν ψυχήν, ἐβούλετο συγκατασπάσαι τὸν Πλάτωνα· ἐπεὶ οὖν ἐν τῷ Φαίδωνι σαφῶς ἀπαθανατίζει (Plato) τὴν λογικὴν ψυχήν, τούτου χάριν ἐνόθευσε τὸν διάλογον. Wyttenbach vainly endeavours to elude the force of the passages cited by himself, and to make out that the witnesses did not mean to assert that Panætius had declared the Phædon to be spurious. One of the reasons urged by Wyttenbach is — “Nec illud negligendum, quod dicitur ὑπὸ Παναιτίου τινὸς, à Panætio quodam neque per contemptum dici potuisse neque a Syriano neque ab hoc anonymo; quorum neuter eâ fuit doctrinæ inopia, ut Panætii laudes et præstantiam ignoraret.” But in the Scholion of Asklepius on the Metaphysica (which passage was not before Wyttenbach), we find the very same expression Παναίτιός τις, and plainly used per contemptum: for Asklepius probably considered it a manifestation of virtuous feeling to describe, in contemptuous language, a philosopher who did not believe in the immortality of the soul. We have only to read the still harsher and more contemptuous language which he employs towards the Manicheans, in another Scholion, p. 666, b. 5, Brandis.

Favorinus said (Diog. iii. 37) that when Plato read aloud the Phædon, Aristotle was the only person present who remained to the end: all the other hearers went away in the middle. I have no faith in this anecdote: I consider it, like so many others in Diogenes, as a myth: but the invention of it indicates, that there were many persons who had no sympathy with the Phædon, taking at the bottom the same view as Panætius.

[43] Plato, Phædon, p. 59. Plato is named also in the Apology: but this is a report, more or less exact, of the real defence of Sokrates.

Classification of Platonic works by the rhetor Thrasyllus — dramatic — philosophical.

But the most elaborate classification of the Platonic works was that made by Thrasyllus, in the days of Augustus or Tiberius, near to, or shortly after, the Christian era: a rhetor of much reputation, consulted and selected as travelling companion by the Emperor Augustus.[44]

[44] Diog. L. iii. 56; Themistius, Orat. viii. (Πεντετηρικὸς) p. 108 B.

It appears that this classification by Thrasyllus was approved, or jointly constructed, by his contemporary Derkyllides. (Albinus, Εἰσαγωγὴ, c. 4, p. 149, in K. F. Hermann’s Appendix Platonica.)

Thrasyllus adopted two different distributions of the Platonic works: one was dramatic, the other philosophical. The two were founded on perfectly distinct principles, and had no inherent connection with each other; but Thrasyllus combined them together, and noted, in regard to each dialogue, its place in the one classification as well as in the other.

Dramatic principle — Tetralogies.

One of these distributions was into Tetralogies, or groups of four each. This was in substitution for the Trilogies introduced by Aristophanes or by Kallimachus, and was founded upon the same dramatic analogy: the dramas, which contended for the prize at the Dionysiac festivals, having been sometimes exhibited in batches of three, or Trilogies, sometimes in batches of four, or Tetralogies — three tragedies, along with a satirical piece as accompaniment. Because the dramatic writer brought forth four pieces at a birth, it was assumed as likely that Plato would publish four dialogues all at once. Without departing from this dramatic analogy, which seems to have been consecrated by the authority of the Alexandrine Grammatici, Thrasyllus gained two advantages. First, he included ALL the Platonic compositions, whereas Aristophanes, in his Trilogies, had included only a part, and had left the rest not grouped. Thrasyllus included all the Platonic compositions, thirty-six in number, reckoning the Republic, the Leges, and the Epistolæ in bulk, each as one — in nine Tetralogies or groups of four each. Secondly, he constituted his first tetralogy in an impressive and appropriate manner — Euthyphron, Apology, Kriton, Phædon — four compositions really resembling a dramatic tetralogy, and bound together by their common bearing, on the last scenes of the life of a philosopher.[45] In Euthyphron, Sokrates appears as having been just indicted and as thinking on his defence; in the Apology, he makes his defence; in the Kriton, he appears as sentenced by the legal tribunal, yet refusing to evade the sentence by escaping from his prison; in the Phædon, we have the last dying scene and conversation. None of the other tetralogies present an equal bond of connection between their constituent items; but the first tetralogy was probably intended to recommend the rest, and to justify the system.

[45] Diog. L. iii. 57. πρώτην μὲν οὖν τετραλογίαν τίθησι τὴν κοινὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἔχουσαν· παραδεῖξαι γὰρ βούλεται ὅποιοις ἂν εἴη ὁ τοῦ φιλοσόφου βίος. Albinus, Introduct. ad Plat. c. 4, p. 149, in K. F. Hermann’s Append. Platon.

Thrasyllus appears to have considered the Republic as ten dialogues and the Leges as twelve, each book (of Republic and of Leges) constituting a separate dialogue, so that he made the Platonic works fifty-six in all. But for the purpose of his tetralogies he reckoned them only as thirty-six — nine groups.

The author of the Prolegomena τῆς Πλάτωνος Φιλοσοφίας in Hermann’s Append. Platon. pp. 218-219, gives the same account of the tetralogies, and of the connecting bond which united the four members of the first tetralogical group: but he condemns altogether the principle of the tetralogical division. He does not mention the name of Thrasyllus. He lived after Proklus (p. 218), that is, after 480 A.D.

The argument urged by Wyttenbach and others — that Varro must have considered the Phædon as fourth in the order of the Platonic compositions — an argument founded on a passage in Varro. L. L. vii. 37, which refers to the Phædon under the words Plato in quarto — this argument becomes inapplicable in the text as given by O. Müller — not Varro in quarto but Varro in quattuor fluminibus, &c. Mullach (Democriti Frag. p. 98) has tried unsuccessfully to impugn Müller’s text, and to uphold the word quarto with the inference resting upon it.

Philosophical principle — Dialogues of Search — Dialogues of Exposition.

In the other distribution made by Thrasyllus,[46] Plato was regarded not as a quasi-dramatist, but as a philosopher. The dialogues were classified with reference partly to their method and spirit, partly to their subject. His highest generic distinction was into:—1. Dialogues of Investigation or Search. 2. Dialogues of Exposition or Construction. The Dialogues of Investigation he subdivided into two classes:—1. Gymnastic. 2. Agonistic. These were again subdivided, each into two sub-classes; the Gymnastic, into 1. Obstetric. 2. Peirastic. The Agonistic, into 1. Probative. 2. Refutative. Again, the Dialogues of Exposition were divided into two classes: 1. Theoretical. 2. Practical. Each of these classes was divided into two sub-classes: the Theoretical into 1. Physical. 2. Logical. The Practical into 1. Ethical. 2. Political.

[46] The statement in Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Plato, is somewhat obscure and equivocal; but I think it certain that the classification which he gives in iii. 49, 50, 51, of the Platonic dialogues, was made by Thrasyllus. It is a portion of the same systematic arrangement as that given somewhat farther on (iii. 56-61), which is ascribed by name to Thrasyllus, enumerating the Tetralogies. Diogenes expressly states that Thrasyllus was the person who annexed to each dialogue its double denomination, which it has since borne in the published editions — Εὐθύφρων — περὶ ὁσίου — πειραστικός. In the Dialogues of examination or Search, one of these names is derived from the subject, the other from the method, as in the instance of Euthyphron just cited: in the Dialogues of Exposition both names are derived from the subject, first the special, next the general. Φαίδων, ἢ περὶ ψυχῆς, ἠθικός. Παρμενίδης, ἢ περὶ ἰδεῶν, λογικός.

Schleiermacher (in the Einleitung prefixed to his translation of Plato, p. 24) speaks somewhat loosely about “the well-known dialectical distributions of the Platonic dialogues, which Diogenes has preserved without giving the name of the author”. Diogenes gives only one such dialectical (or logical) distribution; and though he does not mention the name of Thrasyllus in direct or immediate connection with it, we may clearly see that he is copying Thrasyllus. This is well pointed out in an acute commentary on Schleiermacher, by Yxem, Logos Protreptikos, Berlin, 1841, p. 12-13.

Diogenes remarks (iii. 50) that the distribution of the dialogues into narrative, dramatic, and mixed, is made τραγικῶς μᾶλλον ἢ φιλοσόφως. This remark would seem to apply more precisely to the arrangement of the dialogues into trilogies and tetralogies. His word φιλοσόφως belongs very justly to the logical distribution of Thrasyllus, apart from the tetralogies.

Porphyry tells us that Plotinus did not bestow any titles upon his own discourses. The titles were bestowed by his disciples; who did not always agree, but gave different titles to the same discourse (Porphyry, Vit. Plotin. 4).

The following table exhibits this philosophical classification of Thrasyllus:—

Table I.

PHILOSOPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORKS OF PLATO BY THRASYLLUS.
I. Dialogues of Investigation.	II. Dialogues of Exposition.
Searching Dialogues.	Guiding Dialogues
Ζητητικοί.	Ὑφηγητικοί.

I. Dialogues of investigation.
Gymnastic.		Agonistic.
Μαιευτικοί.	Πειραστικοί.	Ἐνδεικτικοί.	Ἀνατρεπτικποί.
Obstetric.	Peirastic.	Probative.	Refutative.
—	—	—	—
Alkibiadês I.	Charmidês.	Protagoras.	Euthydêmus.
Alkibiadês II.	Menon.		Gorgias.
Theagês.	Ion.		Hippias I.
Lachês.	Euthyphron.		Hippias II.
Lysis.

II. Dialogues of Exposition.
Theoretical.		Practical.
Φυσικοί.	Λογικοί.	Ἠθικοί.	Πολιτικοί.
Physical.	Logical.	Ethical.	Political.
—	—	—	—
Timæus.	Kratylus.	Apology.	Republic.
	Sophistês.	Kriton.	Kritias.
	Politikus.	Phædon.	Minos.
	Parmenidês.	Phædrus.	Leges.
	Theætêtus.	Symposion.	Epinomis.
		Menexenus.
		Kleitophon.
		Epistolæ.
		Philêbus.
		Hipparchus.
		Rivales.

I now subjoin a second Table, containing the Dramatic Distribution of the Platonic Dialogues, with the Philosophical Distribution combined or attached to it.

Table II.

DRAMATIC DISTRIBUTION. PLATONIC DIALOGUES, AS ARRANGED IN TETRALOGIES BY THRASYLLUS.
Tetralogy 1.
1. Euthyphron	On Holiness	Peirastic or Testing.
2. Apology of Sokrates	Ethical	Ethical.
3. Kriton	On Duty in Action	Ethical.
4. Phædon	On the Soul	Ethical.
2.
1. Kratylus	On Rectitude in Naming	Logical.
2. Theætêtus	On Knowledge	Logical.
3. Sophistês	On Ens or the Existent	Logical.
4. Politikus	On the Art of Governing	Logical.
3.
1. Parmenidês	On Ideas	Logical.
2. Philêbus	On Pleasure	Ethical.
3. Symposion	On Good	Ethical.
4. Phædrus	On Love	Ethical.
4.
1. Alkibiadês I	On the Nature of Man	Obstetric or Evolving.
2. Alkibiadês II	On Prayer	Obstetric.
3. Hipparchus	On the Love of Gain.	Ethical.
4. Erastæ	On Philosophy	Ethical.
5.
1. Theagês	On Philosophy	Obstetric.
2. Charmidês	On Temperance	Peirastic.
3. Lachês	On Courage	Obstetric.
4. Lysis	On Friendship	Obstetric.
6.
1. Euthydêmus	The Disputatious Man	Refutative.
2. Protagoras	The Sophists	Probative.
3. Gorgias	On Rhetoric	Refutative.
4. Menon	On Virtue	Peirastic.
7.
1. Hippias I	On the Beautiful	Refutative.
2. Hippias II	On Falsehood	Refutative.
3. Ion	On the Iliad	Peirastic.
4. Menexenus	The Funeral Oration	Ethical.
8.
1. Kleitophon	The Impulsive	Ethical.
2. Republic	On Justice	Political.
3. Timæus	On Nature	Physical.
4. Kritias	The Atlantid	Ethical.
9.
1. Minos	On Law	Political.
2. Leges	On Legislation	Political.
3. Epinomis	The Night-Assembly, or the Philosopher	Political.
4. Epistolæ XIII		Ethical.

The second Table, as it here stands, is given by Diogenes Laertius, and is extracted by him probably from the work of Thrasyllus, or from the edition of Plato as published by Thrasyllus. The reader will see that each Platonic composition has a place assigned to it in two classifications — 1. The dramatic — 2. The philosophical — each in itself distinct and independent of the other, but here blended together.

Incongruity and repugnance of the two classifications.

We may indeed say more. The two classifications are not only independent, but incongruous and even repugnant. The better of the two is only obscurely and imperfectly apprehended, because it is presented as an appendage to the worse. The dramatic classification, which stands in the foreground, rests upon a purely fanciful analogy, determining preference for the number four. If indeed this objection were urged against Thrasyllus, he might probably have replied that the group of four volumes together was in itself convenient, neither too large nor too small, for an elementary subdivision; and that the fanciful analogy was an artifice for recommending it to the feelings, better (after all) than selection of another number by haphazard. Be that as it may, however, the fiction was one which Thrasyllus inherited from Aristophanes: and it does some honour to his ability, that he has built, upon so inconvenient a fiction, one tetralogy (the first), really plausible and impressive.[47] But it does more honour to his ability that he should have originated the philosophical classification; distinguishing the dialogues by important attributes truly belonging to each, and conducting the Platonic student to points of view which ought to be made known to him. This classification forms a marked improvement upon every thing (so far as we know) which preceded it.

[47] It is probable that Aristophanes, in distributing Plato into trilogies, was really influenced by the dramatic form of the compositions to put them in a class with real dramas. But Thrasyllus does not seem to have been influenced by such a consideration. He took the number four on its own merits, and adopted, as a way of recommending it, the traditional analogy sanctioned by the Alexandrine librarians.

That such was the case, we may infer pretty clearly when we learn, that Thrasyllus applied the same distribution (into tetralogies) to the works of Demokritus, which were not dramatic in form. (Diog. L. ix. 45; Mullach, Democ. Frag. p. 100-107, who attempts to restore the Thrasyllean tetralogies.)

The compositions of Demokritus were not merely numerous, but related to the greatest diversity of subjects. To them Thrasyllus could not apply the same logical or philosophical distribution which he applied to Plato. He published, along with the works of Demokritus, a preface, which he entitled Τὰ πρὸ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως τῶν Δημοκρίτου βιβλίων (Diog. L. ix. 41).

Porphyry tells us, that when he undertook, as literary executor, the arrangement and publication of the works of his deceased master Plotinus, he found fifty-four discourses: which he arranged into six Enneads or groups of nine each. He was induced to prefer this distribution, by regard to the perfection of the number six (τελειότητι). He placed in each Ennead discourses akin to each other, or on analogous subjects (Porphyry, Vit. Plotin. 24).

Dramatic principle of classification — was inherited by Thrasyllus from Aristophanes.

Authority of the Alexandrine library — editions of Plato published, with the Alexandrine critical marks.

That Thrasyllus followed Aristophanes in the principle of his classification, is manifest: that he adopted the dramatic ground and principle of classification (while amending its details), not because he was himself guided by it, but because he found it already in use and sanctioned by the high authority of the Alexandrines — is also manifest, because he himself constructed and tacked to it a better classification, founded upon principles new and incongruous with the dramatic. In all this we trace the established ascendancy of the Alexandrine library and its eminent literati. Of which ascendancy a farther illustration appears, when we read in Diogenes Laertius that editions of Plato were published, carrying along with the text the special marks of annotation applied by the Alexandrines to Homer and other poets: the obelus to indicate a spurious passage, the obelus with two dots to denote a passage which had been improperly declared spurious, the X to signify peculiar locutions, the double line or Diplê to mark important or characteristic opinions of Plato — and others in like manner. A special price was paid for manuscripts of Plato with these illustrative appendages:[48] which must have been applied either by Alexandrines themselves, or by others trained in their school. When Thrasyllus set himself to edit and re-distribute the Platonic works, we may be sure that he must have consulted one or more public libraries, either at Alexandria, Athens, Rome, Tarsus, or elsewhere. Nowhere else could he find all the works together. Now the proceedings ascribed to him show that he attached himself to the Alexandrine library, and to the authority of its most eminent critics.

[48] Diog. L. iii. 65, 66. Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ σημεῖά τινα τοῖς βιβλίοις αὐτοῦ παρατίθεται, φέρε καὶ περὶ τούτων τι εἴπωμεν, &c. He then proceeds to enumerate the σημεῖα.

It is important to note that Diogenes cites this statement (respecting the peculiar critical marks appended to manuscripts of the Platonic works) from Antigonus of Karystus in his Life of Zeno the Stoic. Now the date of Antigonus is placed by Mr. Fynes Clinton in B.C. 225, before the death of Ptolemy III. Euergetes (see Fasti Hellen. B.C. 225, also Appendix, 12, 80). Antigonus must thus have been contemporary both with Kallimachus and with Aristophanes of Byzantium: he notices the marked manuscripts of Plato as something newly edited — νεωστὶ ἐκδοθέντα): and we may thus see that the work of critical marking must have been performed either by Kallimachus and Aristophanes themselves (one or both) or by some of their contemporaries. Among the titles of the lost treatises of Kallimachus, one is — about the γλῶσσαι or peculiar phrases of Demokritus. It is therefore noway improbable that Kallimachus should have bestowed attention upon the peculiarities of the Platonic text, and the inaccuracies of manuscripts. The library had probably acquired several different manuscripts of the Platonic compositions, as it had of the Iliad and Odyssey, and of the Attic tragedies.

Thrasyllus followed the Alexandrine library and Aristophanes, as to genuine Platonic works.

Probably it was this same authority that Thrasyllus followed in determining which were the real works of Plato, and in setting aside pretended works. He accepted the collection of Platonic compositions sanctioned by Aristophanes and recognised as such in the Alexandrine library. As far as our positive knowledge goes, it fully bears out what is here stated: all the compositions recognised by Aristophanes (unfortunately Diogenes does not give a complete enumeration of those which he recognised) are to be found in the catalogue of Thrasyllus. And the evidentiary value of this fact is so much the greater, because the most questionable compositions (I mean, those which modern critics reject or even despise) are expressly included in the recognition of Aristophanes, and passed from him to Thrasyllus — Leges, Epinomis, Minos, Epistolæ, Sophistês, Politikus. Exactly on those points on which the authority of Thrasyllus requires to be fortified against modern objectors, it receives all the support which coincidence with Aristophanes can impart. When we know that Thrasyllus adhered to Aristophanes on so many disputable points of the catalogue, we may infer pretty certainly that he adhered to him in the remainder. In regard to the question, Which were Plato’s genuine works? it was perfectly natural that Thrasyllus should accept the recognition of the greatest library then existing: a library, the written records of which could be traced back to Demetrius Phalereus. He followed this external authority: he did not take each dialogue to pieces, to try whether it conformed to a certain internal standard — a “platonisches Gefühl” — of his own.

Ten spurious dialogues, rejected by all other critics as well as by Thrasyllus — evidence that these critics followed the common authority of the Alexandrine library.

That the question between genuine and spurious Platonic dialogues was tried in the days of Thrasyllus, by external authority and not by internal feeling — we may see farther by the way in which Diogenes Laertius speaks of the spurious dialogues. “The following dialogues (he says) are declared to be spurious by common consent: 1. Eryxias or Erasistratus. 2. Akephali or Sisyphus. 3. Demodokus. 4. Axiochus. 5. Halkyon. 6. Midon or Hippotrophus. 7. Phæakes. 8. Chelidon. 9. Hebdomê. 10. Epimenides.”[49] There was, then, unanimity, so far as the knowledge of Diogenes Laertius reached, as to genuine and spurious. All the critics whom he valued, Thrasyllus among them, pronounced the above ten dialogues to be spurious: all of them agreed also in accepting the dialogues in the list of Thrasyllus as genuine.[50] Of course the ten spurious dialogues must have been talked of by some persons, or must have got footing in some editions or libraries, as real works of Plato: otherwise there could have been no trial had or sentence passed upon them. But what Diogenes affirms is, that Thrasyllus and all the critics whose opinion he esteemed, concurred in rejecting them. We may surely presume that this unanimity among the critics, both as to all that they accepted and all that they rejected, arose from common acquiescence in the authority of the Alexandrine library.[51] The ten rejected dialogues were not in the Alexandrine library — or at least not among the rolls therein recognised as Platonic.

[49] Diog. L. iii. 62: νοθεύονται δὲ τῶν διαλόγων ὁμολογουμένως.

Compare Prolegomena τῆς Πλάτωνος Φιλοσοφίας, in Hermann’s Appendix Platonica, p. 219.

[50] It has been contended by some modern critics, that Thrasyllus himself doubted whether the Hipparchus was Plato’s work. When I consider that [dialogue], I shall show that there is no adequate ground for believing that Thrasyllus doubted its genuineness.

[51] Diogenes (ix. 49) uses the same phrase in regard to the spurious works ascribed to Demokritus, τὰ δ’ ὁμολογουμένως ἐστὶν ἀλλότρια. And I believe that he means the same thing by it: that the works alluded to were not recognised in the Alexandrine library as belonging to Demokritus, and were accordingly excluded from the tetralogies (of Demokritus) prepared by Thrasyllus.

Thrasyllus did not follow an internal sentiment of his own in rejecting dialogues as spurious.

If Thrasyllus and the others did not proceed upon this evidence in rejecting the ten dialogues, and did not find in them any marks of time such as to exclude the supposition of Platonic authorship — they decided upon what is called internal evidence: a critical sentiment, which satisfied them that these dialogues did not possess the Platonic character, style, manner, doctrines, merits, &c. Now I think it highly improbable that Thrasyllus could have proceeded upon any such sentiment. For when we survey the catalogue of works which he recognised as genuine, we see that it includes the widest diversity of style, manner, doctrine, purpose, and merits: that the disparate epithets, which he justly applies to discriminate the various dialogues, cannot be generalised so as to leave any intelligible “Platonic character” common to all. Now since Thrasyllus reckoned among the genuine works of Plato, compositions so unlike, and so unequal in merit, as the Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Lysis, Parmenidês, Symposion, Philêbus, Menexenus, Leges, Epinomis, Hipparchus, Minos, Theagês, Epistolæ, &c., not to mention a composition obviously unfinished, such as the Kritias — he could have little scruple in believing that Plato also composed the Eryxias, Sisyphus, Demodokus, and Halkyon. These last-mentioned dialogues still exist, and can be appreciated.[52] Allowing, for the sake of argument, that we are entitled to assume our own sense of worth as a test of what is really Plato’s composition, it is impossible to deny, that if these dialogues are not worthy of the author of Republic and Protagoras, they are at least worthy of the author of the Leges, Epinomis, Hipparchus, Minos, &c. Accordingly, if the internal sentiment of Thrasyllus did not lead him to reject these last four, neither would it lead him to reject the Eryxias, Sisyphus, and Halkyon. I conclude therefore that if he, and all the other critics whom Diogenes esteemed, agreed in rejecting the ten dialogues as spurious — their verdict depended not upon any internal sentiment, but upon the authority of the Alexandrine library.[53]

[52] The Axiochus, Eryxias, Sisyphus, and Demodokus, are printed as Apocrypha annexed to most editions of Plato, together with two other dialogues entitled De Justo and De Virtute. The Halkyon has generally appeared among the works of Lucian, but K. F. Hermann has recently printed it in his edition of Plato among the Platonic Apocrypha.

The Axiochus contains a mark of time (the mention of Ἀκαδημία and Λυκεῖον, p. 367), as F. A. Wolf has observed, proving that it was not composed until the Platonic and Peripatetic schools were both of them in full establishment at Athens — that is, certainly after the death of Plato, and probably after the death of Aristotle. It is possible that Thrasyllus may have proceeded upon this evidence of time, at least as collateral proof, in pronouncing the dialogue not to be the work of Plato. The other four dialogues contain no similar evidence of date.

Favorinus affirmed that Halkyon was the work of an author named Leon.

Some said (Diog. L. iii. 37) that Philippus of Opus, one of the disciples of Plato, transcribed the Leges, which were on waxen tablets (ἐν κηρῷ), and that the Epinomis was his work (τούτου δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἐπινομίδα φασὶν εἶναι). It was probably the work of Philippus only in the sense in which the Leges were his work — that he made a fair and durable copy of parts of it from the wax. Thrasyllus admitted it with the rest as Platonic.

[53] Mullach (Democr. Fragm. p. 100) accuses Thrasyllus of an entire want of critical sentiment, and pronounces his catalogue to be altogether without value as an evidence of genuine Platonic works — because Thrasyllus admits many dialogues, “quos doctorum nostri sæculi virorum acumen è librorum Platonicorum numero exemit”.

This observation exactly illustrates the conclusion which I desire to bring out. I admit that Thrasyllus had a critical sentiment different from that of the modern Platonic commentators; but I believe that in the present case he proceeded upon other evidence — recognition by the Alexandrine library. My difference with Mullach is, that I consider this recognition (in a question of genuine or spurious) as more trustworthy evidence than the critical sentiment of modern literati.

Results as to the trustworthiness of the Thrasyllean Canon.

On this question, then, of the Canon of Plato’s works (as compared with the works of other contemporary authors) recognised by Thrasyllus — I consider that its claim to trustworthiness is very high, as including all the genuine works, and none but the genuine works, of Plato: the following facts being either proved, or fairly presumable.

1. The Canon rests on the authority of the Alexandrine library and its erudite librarians;[54] whose written records went back to the days of Ptolemy Soter, and Demetrius Phalereus, within a generation after the death of Plato.

2. The manuscripts of Plato at his death were preserved in the school which he founded; where they continued for more than thirty years under the care of Speusippus and Xenokrates, who possessed personal knowledge of all that Plato had really written. After Xenokrates, they came under the care of Polemon and the succeeding Scholarchs, from whom Demetrius Phalereus probably obtained permission to take copies of them for the nascent museum or library at Alexandria or through whom at least (if he purchased from booksellers) he could easily ascertain which were Plato’s works, and which, if any, were spurious.

3. They were received into that library without any known canonical order, prescribed system, or interdependence essential to their being properly understood. Kallimachus or Aristophanes devised an order of arrangement for themselves, such as they thought suitable.

[54] Suckow adopts and defends the opinion here stated — that Thrasyllus, in determining which were the genuine works of Plato and which were not genuine, was guided mainly by the authority of the Alexandrine library and librarians (G. F. W. Suckow, Form der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 170-175). Ueberweg admits this opinion as just (Untersuchungen, p. 195).

Suckow farther considers (p. 175) that the catalogue of works of esteemed authors, deposited in the Alexandrine library, may be regarded as dating from the Πίνακες of Kallimachus.

This goes far to make out the presumption which I have endeavoured to establish in favour of the Canon recognised by Thrasyllus, which, however, these two authors do not fully admit.

K. F. Hermann, too (see Gesch. und Syst. der Platon. Philos. p. 44), argues sometimes strongly in favour of this presumption, though elsewhere he entirely departs from it.

CHAPTER VII.

PLATONIC CANON AS APPRECIATED AND MODIFIED BY MODERN CRITICS.

The Canon of Thrasyllus continued to be generally acknowledged, by the Neo-Platonists, as well as by Ficinus and the succeeding critics after the revival of learning.

The Platonic Canon established by Thrasyllus maintained its authority until the close of the last century, in regard to the distinction between what was genuine and spurious. The distribution indeed did not continue to be approved: the Tetralogies were neglected, and the order of the dialogues varied: moreover, doubts were intimated about Kleitophon and Epinomis. But nothing was positively removed from, or positively added to, the total recognised by Thrasyllus. The Neo-Platonists (from the close of the second century B.C., down to the beginning of the sixth A.D.) introduced a new, mystic, and theological interpretation, which often totally changed and falsified Plato’s meaning. Their principles of interpretation would have been strange and unintelligible to the rhetors Thrasyllus and Dionysius of Halikarnassus — or to the Platonic philosopher Charmadas, who expounded Plato to Marcus Crassus at Athens. But they still continued to look for Plato in the nine Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, in each and all of them. So also continued Ficinus, who, during the last half of the fifteenth century, did so much to revive in the modern world the study of Plato. He revived along with it the neo-platonic interpretation. The Argumenta, prefixed to the different dialogues by Ficinus, are remarkable, as showing what an ingenious student, interpreting in that spirit, discovered in them.

But the scholars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, speaking generally — though not neglecting these neo-platonic refinements, were disposed to seek out, wherever they could find it, a more literal interpretation of the Platonic text, correctly presented and improved. The next great edition of the works of Plato was published by Serranus and Stephens, in the latter portion of the sixteenth century.

Serranus — his six Syzygies — left the aggregate Canon unchanged, Tennemann — importance assigned to the Phædrus.

Serranus distributed the dialogues of Plato into six groups which he called Syzygies. In his first Syzygy were comprised Euthyphron, Apologia, Kriton, Phædon (coinciding with the first Tetralogy of Thrasyllus), as setting forth the defence of Sokrates and of his doctrine. The second Syzygy included the dialogues introductory to philosophy generally, and impugning the Sophists — Theagês, Erastæ, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Euthydêmus, Protagoras, Hippias II. In the third Syzygy were three dialogues considered as bearing on Logic — Kratylus, Gorgias, Ion. The fourth Syzygy contained the dialogues on Ethics generally — Philêbus, Menon, Alkibiadês I.; on special points of Ethics — Alkibiadês II., Charmidês, Lysis, Hipparchus; and on Politics — Menexenus, Politikus, Minos, Republic, Leges, Epinomis. The fifth Syzygy included the dialogues on Physics, and Metaphysics (or Theology) — Timæus, Kritias, Parmenidês, Symposion, Phædrus, Hippias I. In the sixth Syzygy were ranged the thirteen Epistles, the various dialogues which Serranus considered spurious (Kleitophon among them, which he regarded as doubtful), and the Definitions.

Serranus, while modifying the distribution of the Platonic works, left the entire Canon very much as he found it. So it remained throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the scholars who devoted themselves to Plato were content with improvement of the text, philological illustration, and citations from the ancient commentators. But the powerful impulse, given by Kant to the speculative mind of Europe during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, materially affected the point of view from which Plato was regarded. Tennemann, both in his System of the Platonic Philosophy, and in dealing with Plato as a portion of his general history of philosophy, applied the doctrines of Kant largely and even excessively to the exposition of ancient doctrines. Much of his comment is instructive, greatly surpassing his predecessors. Without altering the Platonic Canon, he took a new view of the general purposes of Plato, and especially he brought forward the dialogue Phædrus into a prominence which had never before belonged to it, as an index or key-note (ἐνδόσιμον) to the whole Platonic series. Shortly after Tennemann, came Schleiermacher, who introduced a theory of his own, ingenious as well as original, which has given a new turn to all the subsequent Platonic criticism.

Schleiermacher — new theory about the purposes of Plato. One philosophical scheme, conceived by Plato from the beginning — essential order and interdependence of the dialogues, as contributing to the full execution of this scheme. Some dialogues not constituent items in the series, but lying alongside of it. Order of arrangement.

Schleiermacher begins by assuming two fundamental postulates, both altogether new. 1. A systematic unity of philosophic theme and purpose, conceived by Plato in his youth, at first obscurely — afterwards worked out through successive dialogues; each dialogue disclosing the same purpose, but the later disclosing it more clearly and fully, until his old age. 2. A peremptory, exclusive, and intentional order by Plato of the dialogues, composed by Plato with a view to the completion of this philosophical scheme. Schleiermacher undertakes to demonstrate what this order was, and to point out the contribution brought by each successive dialogue to the accomplishment of Plato’s premeditated scheme.

To those who understand Plato, the dialogues themselves reveal (so Schleiermacher affirms) their own essential order of sequence — their own mutual relations of antecedent and consequent. Each presupposes those which go before: each prepares for those which follow. Accordingly, Schleiermacher distributes the Platonic dialogues into three groups: the first, or elementary, beginning with Phædrus, followed by Lysis, Protagoras, Lachês, Charmidês, Euthyphron, Parmenidês: the second, or preparatory, comprising Gorgias, Theætêtus, Menon, Euthydêmus, Kratylus, Sophistês, Politikus, Symposion, Phædon, Philêbus: the third, or constructive, including Republic, Timæus, and Kritias. These groups or files are all supposed to be marshalled under Platonic authority: both the entire files as first, second, third and the dialogues composing each file, carrying their own place in the order, imprinted in visible characters. But to each file, there is attached what Schleiermacher terms an Appendix, containing one or more dialogues, each a composition by itself, and lying not in the series, but alongside of it (Nebenwerke). The Appendix to the first file includes Apologia, Kriton, Ion, Hippias II., Hipparchus, Minos, Alkibiadês II. The Appendix to the second file consists of Theagês, Erastæ, Alkibiadês I., Menexenus, Hippias I., Kleitophon. That of the third file consists of the Leges. The Appendix is not supposed to imply any common positive character in the dialogues which it includes, but simply the negative attribute of not belonging to the main philosophical column, besides a greater harmony with the file to which it is attached than with the other two files. Some dialogues assigned to the Appendixes are considered by Schleiermacher as spurious; some however he treats as compositions on special occasions, or adjuncts to the regular series. To this latter category belong the Apologia, Kriton, and Leges. Schleiermacher considers the Charmidês to have been composed during the time of the Anarchy, B.C. 404: the Phædrus (earliest of all), in Olymp. 93 (B.C. 406), two years before:[1] the Lysis, Protagoras, and Lachês, to lie between them in respect of date.

[1] Schleierm. vol. i. p. 72; vol. ii. p. 8.

Theory of Ast — he denies the reality of any preconceived scheme — considers the dialogues as distinct philosophical dramas.

Such is the general theory of Schleiermacher, which presents to us Plato in the character of a Demiurgus, contemplating from the first an Idea of philosophy, and constructing a series of dialogues (like a Kosmos of Schleiermacher), with the express purpose of giving embodiment to it as far as practicable. We next come to Ast, who denies this theory altogether. According to Ast, there never was any philosophical system, to the exposition and communication of which each successive dialogue was deliberately intended to contribute: there is no scientific or intentional connection between the dialogues, — no progressive arrangement of first and second, of foundation and superstructure: there is no other unity or connecting principle between them than that which they involve as all emanating from the same age, country, and author, and the same general view of the world (Welt-Ansicht) or critical estimate of man and nature.[2] The dialogues are dramatic (Ast affirms), not merely in their external form, but in their internal character: each is in truth a philosophical drama.[3] Their purpose is very diverse and many-sided: we mistake if we imagine the philosophical purpose to stand alone. If that were so (Ast argues), how can we explain the fact, that in most of the dialogues there is no philosophical result at all? Nothing but a discussion without definite end, which leaves every point unsettled.[4] Plato is poet, artist, philosopher, blended in one. He does not profess to lay down positive opinions. Still less does he proclaim his own opinions as exclusive orthodoxy, to be poured ready-prepared into the minds of recipient pupils. He seeks to urge the pupils to think and investigate for themselves. He employs the form of dialogue, as indispensable to generate in their minds this impulse of active research, and to arm them with the power of pursuing it effectively.[5] But each Platonic dialogue is a separate composition in itself, and each of the greater dialogues is a finished and symmetrical whole, like a living organism.[6]

[2] Ast, Leben und Schriften Platon’s, p. 40.

[3] Ast, ib. p. 46.

[4] Ast, ibid. p. 89.

[5] Ast, ib. p. 42.

[6] The general view here taken by Ast — dwelling upon the separate individuality as well as upon the dramatic character of each dialogue — calling attention to the purpose of intellectual stimulation, and of reasoning out different aspects of ethical and dialectical questions, as distinguished from endoctrinating purpose — this general view coincides more nearly with my own than that of any other critic. But Ast does not follow it out consistently. If he were consistent with it, he ought to be more catholic than other critics, in admitting a large and undefinable diversity in the separate Platonic manifestations: instead of which, he is the most sweeping of all repudiators, on internal grounds. He is not even satisfied with the Parmenides as it now stands; he insists that what is now the termination was not the real and original termination; but that Plato must have appended to the dialogue an explanation of its ἀπορίαι, puzzles, and antinomies; which explanation is now lost.

His order of arrangement. He admits only fourteen dialogues as genuine, rejecting all the rest.

Though Ast differs thus pointedly from Schleiermacher in the enunciation of his general principle, yet he approximates to him more nearly when he comes to detail: for he recognises three classes of dialogues, succeeding each other in a chronological order verifiable (as he thinks) by the dialogues themselves. His first class (in which he declares the poetical and dramatic element to be predominant) consists of Protagoras, Phædrus, Gorgias, Phædon. His second class, distinguished by the dialectic element, includes Theætêtus, Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês, Kratylus. His third class, wherein the poetical and dialectic element are found both combined, embraces Philêbus, Symposion, Republic, Timæus, Kritias. These fourteen dialogues, in Ast’s view, constitute the whole of the genuine Platonic works. All the rest he pronounces to be spurious. He rejects Leges, Epinomis, Menon, Euthydêmus, Lachês, Charmidês, Lysis, Alkibiades I. and II., Hippias I. and II., Ion, Erastæ, Theages, Kleitophon, Apologia, Kriton, Minos, Epistolæ — together with all the other dialogues which were rejected in antiquity by Thrasyllus. Lastly, Ast considers the Protagoras to have been composed in 408 B.C., when Plato was not more than 21 years of age — the Phædrus in 407 B.C. — the Gorgias in 404 B.C.[7]

[7] Ast, Leben und Schriften Platon’s, p. 376.

Socher agrees with Ast in denying preconceived scheme — his arrangement of the dialogues, differing from both Ast and Schleiermacher — he rejects as spurious Parmenidês, Sophistês, Politikus, Kritias, with many others.

Socher agrees with Ast in rejecting the fundamental hypothesis of Schleiermacher — that of a preconceived scheme systematically worked out by Plato. But on many points he differs from Ast no less than from Schleiermacher. He assigns the earliest Platonic composition (which he supposes to be Theagês), to a date preceding the battle of Arginusæ, in 406 B.C., when Plato was about 22-23 years of age.[8] Assuming it is certain that Plato composed dialogues during the lifetime of Sokrates, he conceives that the earliest of them would naturally be the most purely Sokratic in respect of theme, as well as the least copious, comprehensive, and ideal, in manner of handling. During the six and a half years between the battle of Arginusæ and the death of Sokrates, Socher registers the following succession of Platonic compositions: Theagês, Lachês, Hippias II., Alkibiadês I., Dialogus de Virtute (usually printed with the spurious, but supposed by Socher to be a sort of preparatory sketch for the Menon), Menon, Kratylus, Euthyphron. These three last he supposes to precede very shortly the death of Sokrates. After that event, and very shortly after, were composed the Apologia, Kriton, and Phædon.

[8] Socher, Ueber Platon’s Schriften, p. 102. These critics adopt 429 B.C. as the year of Plato’s birth: I think 427 B.C. is the true year.

These eleven dialogues fill up what Socher regards as the first period of Plato’s life, ending when he was somewhat more than thirty years of age. The second period extends to the commencement of his teaching at the Academy, when about 41 or 42 years old (B.C. 386). In this second period were composed Ion, Euthydêmus, Hippias I, Protagoras, Theætêtus, Gorgias, Philêbus — in the order here set forth. During the third period of Plato’s life, continuing until he was 65 or more, he composed Phædrus, Menexenus, Symposion, Republic, Timæus. To the fourth and last period, that of extreme old age, belongs the composition of the Leges.[9]

[9] Socher, Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 301-459-460.

Socher rejects as spurious Hipparchus, Minos, Kleitophon, Alkibiadês II., Erastæ, Epinomis, Epistolæ, Parmenidês, Sophistês, Politikus, Kritias: also Charmidês, and Lysis, these two last however not quite so decisively.

Schleiermacher and Ast both consider Phædrus and Protagoras as early compositions — Socher puts Protagoras into the second period, Phædrus into the third.

Both Ast and Schleiermacher consider Phædrus and Protagoras as among the earliest compositions of Plato. Herein Socher dissents from them. He puts Protagoras into the second period, and Phædrus into the third. But the most peculiar feature in his theory is, that he rejects as spurious Parmenidês, Sophistês, Politikus, Kritias.

K. F. Hermann — Stallbaum — both of them consider the Phædrus as a late dialogue — both of them deny preconceived order and system — their arrangements of the dialogues — they admit new and varying philosophical points of view.

From Schleiermacher, Ast, and Socher, we pass to K. F. Hermann[10] — and to Stallbaum, who has prefixed Prolegomena to his edition of each dialogue. Both these critics protest against Socher’s rejection of the four dialogues last indicated: but they agree with Socher and Ast in denying the reality of any preconceived system, present to Plato’s mind in his first dialogue, and advanced by regular steps throughout each of the succeeding dialogues. The polemical tone of K. F. Hermann against this theory, and against Schleiermacher, its author, is strenuous and even unwarrantably bitter.[11] Especially the position laid down by Schleiermacher — that Phædrus is the earliest of Plato’s dialogues, written when he was 22 or 23 years of age, and that the general system presiding over all the future dialogues is indicated therein as even then present to his mind, afterwards to be worked out — is controverted by Hermann and Stallbaum no less than by Ast and Socher. All three concur in the tripartite distribution of the life of Plato. But Hermann thinks that Plato acquired gradually and successively, new points of view, with enlarged philosophical development: and that the dialogues as successively composed are expressions of these varying phases. Moreover, Hermann thinks that such variations in Plato’s philosophy may be accounted for by external circumstances. He reckons Plato’s first period as ending with the death of Sokrates, or rather at an epoch not long after the death of Sokrates: the second as ending with the commencement of Plato’s teaching at the Academy, after his return from Sicily — about 385 B.C.: the third, as extending from thence to his old age. To the first, or Sokratic stadium, Hermann assigns the smaller dialogues: the earliest of which he declares to be — Hippias II., Ion, Alkibiadês I., Lysis, Charmidês, Lachês: after which come Protagoras and Euthydêmus, wherein the batteries are opened against the Sophists, shortly before the death of Sokrates. Immediately after the last mentioned event, come a series of dialogues reflecting the strong and fresh impression left by it upon Plato’s mind — Apologia, Kriton, Gorgias, Euthyphron, Menon, Hippias I. — occupying a sort of transition stage between the first and the second period. We now enter upon the second or dialectic period; passed by Plato greatly at Megara, and influenced by the philosophical intercourse which he there enjoyed, and characterised by the composition of Theætêtus, Kratylus, Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês.[12] To the third, or constructive period, greatly determined by the influence of the Pythagorean philosophy, belong Phædrus, Menexenus, Symposion, Phædon, Philêbus, Republic, Timæus, Kritias: a series composed during Plato’s teaching at the Academy, and commencing with Phædrus, which last Hermann considers to be a sort of (Antritts-Programme) inauguratory composition for the opening of his school of oral discourse or colloquy. Lastly, during the final years of the philosopher, after all the three periods, come the Leges or treatise de Legibus: placed by itself as the composition of his old age.

[10] K. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie, p. 368, seq. Stallbaum, Disputatio de Platonis Vitâ et Scriptis, prefixed to his edition of Plato’s Works, p. xxxii., seq.

[11] Ueberweg (Untersuchungen, pp. 50-52) has collected several citations from K. F. Hermann, in which the latter treats Schleiermacher “wie einen Sophisten, der sich in absichtlicher Unwahrhaftigkeit gefalle, mitunter fast als einen Mann der innerlich wohl wisse, wie die Sache stehe (nämlich, dass sie so sei, wie Hermann lehrt), der sich aber, etwa aus Lust, seine überlegene Dialektik zu beweisen, Mühe gebe, sie in einem anderen Lichte erscheinen zu lassen; also — το ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν — recht in rhetorisch sophistischer Manier.”

We know well, from other and independent evidence, what Schleiermacher really was, that he was not only one of the most accomplished scholars, but one of the most liberal and estimable men of his age. But how different would be our appreciation if we had no other evidence to judge by except the dicta of opponents, and even distinguished opponents, like Hermann! If there be any point clear in the history of philosophy, it is the uncertainty of all judgments, respecting writers and thinkers, founded upon the mere allegations of opponents. Yet the Athenian Sophists, respecting whom we have no independent evidence (except the general fact that they had a number of approvers and admirers), are depicted confidently by the Platonic critics in the darkest colours, upon the evidence of their bitter opponent Plato — and in colours darker than even his evidence warrants. The often-repeated calumny, charged against almost all debaters — τὸ τὸν ἥττο λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν — by Hermann against Schleiermacher, by Melêtus against Sokrates, by Plato against the Sophists — is believed only against these last.

[12] K. F. Hermann, Gesch. u. Syst. d. Plat. Phil., p. 496, seq. Stallbaum (p. xxxiii.) places the Kratylus during the lifetime of Sokrates, a little earlier than Euthydêmus and Protagoras, all three of which he assigns to Olymp. 94, 402-400 B.C. See also his Proleg. to Kratylus, tom. v. p. 26.

Moreover, Stallbaum places the Menon and Ion about the same time — a few months or weeks before the trial of Sokrates (Proleg. ad Menonem, tom. vi. pp. 20, 21; Proleg. ad Ionem, tom. iv. p. 289). He considers the Euthyphron to have been actually composed at the moment to which it professes to refer (viz., after Melêtus had preferred indictment against Sokrates), and with a view of defending Sokrates against the charge of impiety (Proleg. ad Euthyphron. tom. vi. pp. 138-139-142). He places the composition of the Charmidês about six years before the death of Sokrates (Proleg. ad Charm. p. 86). He seems to consider, indeed, that the Menon and Euthydêmus were both written for the purpose of defending Sokrates: thus implying that they too were written after the indictment was preferred (Proleg. ad Euthyphron. p. 145).

In regard to the date of the Euthyphron, Schleiermacher also had declared, prior to Stallbaum, that it was unquestionably (unstreitig) composed at a period between the indictment and the trial of Sokrates (Einl. zum Euthyphron, vol. ii. p. 53, of his transl. of Plato).

They reject several dialogues.

Hermann and Stallbaum reject (besides the dialogues already rejected by Thrasyllus) Alkibiadês II., Theagês, Erastæ, Hipparchus, Minos, Epinomis: Stallbaum rejects the Kleitophon: Hermann hesitates, and is somewhat inclined to admit it, as he also admits, to a considerable extent, the Epistles.[13]

[13] Stallbaum, p. xxxiv. Hermann, pp. 424, 425.

Steinhart — agrees in rejecting Schleiermacher’s fundamental postulate — his arrangement of the dialogues — considers the Phædrus as late in order — rejects several.

Steinhart, in his notes and prefaces to H. Müller’s translation of the Platonic dialogues, agrees in the main with K. F. Hermann, both in denying the fundamental postulate of Schleiermacher, and in settling the general order of the dialogues, though with some difference as to individual dialogues. He considers Ion as the earliest, followed by Hippias I, Hippias II., Alkibiadês I., Lysis, Charmidês, Lachês, Protagoras. These constitute what Steinhart calls the ethico-Sokratical series of Plato’s compositions, having the common attributes — That they do not step materially beyond the philosophical range of Sokrates himself — That there is a preponderance of the mimic and plastic element — That they end, to all appearance, with unsolved doubts and unanswered questions.[14] He supposes the Charmidês to have been composed during the time of the Thirty, the Lachês shortly afterwards, and the Protagoras about two years before the death of Sokrates. He lays it down as incontestable that the Protagoras was not composed after the death of Sokrates.[15] Immediately prior to this last-mentioned event, and posterior to the Protagoras, he places the Euthydêmus, Menon, Euthyphron, Apologia, Kriton, Gorgias, Kratylus: preparatory to the dialectic series consisting of Parmenidês, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Politikus, the result of Plato’s stay at Megara, and contact with the Eleatic and Megaric philosophers. The third series of dialogues, the mature and finished productions of Plato at the Academy, opens with Phædrus. Steinhart rejects as spurious Alkibiadês II., Erastæ, Theagês, &c.

[14] See Steinhart’s Proleg. to the Protag. vol. i. p. 430. of Müller’s transl. of Plato.

[15] Steinhart, Prolegg. to Charmidês, p. 295.

Susemihl — coincides to a great degree with K. F. Hermann his order of arrangement.

Another author, also, Susemihl, coincides in the main with the principles of arrangement adopted by K. F. Hermann for the Platonic dialogues. First in the order of chronological composition he places the shorter dialogues — the exclusively ethical, least systematic; and he ranges them in a series, indicating the progressive development of Plato’s mind, with approach towards his final systematic conceptions.[16] Susemihl begins this early series with Hippias II., followed by Lysis, Charmidês, Lachês, Protagoras, Menon, Apologia, Kriton, Gorgias, Euthyphron. The seven first, ending with the Menon, he conceives to have been published successively during the lifetime of Sokrates: the Menon itself, during the interval between his indictment and his death;[17] the Apologia and Kriton, very shortly after his death; followed, at no long interval, by Gorgias and Euthyphron.[18] The Ion and Alkibiadês I. are placed by Susemihl among the earliest of the Platonic compositions, but as not belonging to the regular series. He supposes them to have been called forth by some special situation, like Apologia and Kriton, if indeed they be Platonic at all, of which he does not feel assured.[19]

[16] F. Susemihl, Die Genetische Entwickelung der Platonischen Philosophie, Leipsic, 1865, p. 9.

[17] Susemihl, ibid. pp. 40-61-89.

[18] Susemihl, ib. pp. 113-125.

[19] Susemihl, ib. p. 9.

Immediately after Euthyphron, Susemihl places Euthydêmus, which he treats as the commencement of a second series of dialogues: the first series, or ethical, being now followed by the dialectic, in which the principles, process, and certainty of cognition are discussed, though in an indirect and preparatory way. This second series consists of Euthydêmus, Kratylus, Theætêtus, Phædrus, Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês, Symposion, Phædon. Through all these dialogues Susemihl professes to trace a thread of connection, each successively unfolding and determining more of the general subject: but all in an indirect, negative, round-about manner. Allowing for this manner, Susemihl contends that the dialectical counter-demonstrations or Antinomies, occupying the last half of the Parmenidês, include the solution of those difficulties, which have come forward in various forms from the Euthydêmus up to the Sophistês, against Plato’s theory of Ideas.[20] The Phædon closes the series of dialectic compositions, and opens the way to the constructive dialogues following, partly ethical, partly physical — Philêbus, Republic, Timæus, Kritias.[21] The Leges come last of all.

[20] Susemihl, ib. p. 355, seq.

[21] Susemihl, pp. 466-470. The first volume of Susemihl’s work ends with the Phædon.

Edward Munk — adopts a different principle of arrangement, founded upon the different period which each dialogue exhibits of the life, philosophical growth, and old age, of Sokrates — his arrangement, founded on this principle. He distinguishes the chronological order of composition from the place allotted to each dialogue in the systematic plan.

A more recent critic, Dr. Edward Munk, has broached a new and very different theory as to the natural order of the Platonic dialogues. Upon his theory, they were intended by Plato[22] to depict the life and working of a philosopher, in successive dramatic exhibitions, from youth to old age. The different moments in the life of Sokrates, indicated in each dialogue, mark the the place which Plato intended it to occupy in the series. The Parmenidês is the first, wherein Sokrates is introduced as a young man, initiated into philosophy by the ancient Parmenidês: the Phædon is last, describing as it does the closing scene of Sokrates. Plato meant his dialogues to be looked at partly in artistic sequence, as a succession of historical dramas — partly in philosophical sequence, as a record of the progressive development of his own doctrine: the two principles are made to harmonize in the main, though sometimes the artistic sequence is obscured for the purpose of bringing out the philosophical, sometimes the latter is partially sacrificed to the former.[23] Taken in the aggregate, the dialogues from Parmenidês to Phædon form a Sokratic cycle, analogous to the historical plays of Shakespeare, from King John to Henry VIII.[24] But Munk at the same time contends that this natural order of the dialogues — or the order in which Plato intended them to be viewed — is not to be confounded with the chronological order of their composition.[25] The Parmenidês, though constituting the opening Prologue of the whole cycle, was not composed first: nor the Phædon last. All of them were probably composed after Plato had attained the full maturity of his philosophy: that is, probably after the opening of his school at the Academy in 386 B.C. But in composing each, he had always two objects jointly in view: he adapted the tone of each to the age and situation in which he wished to depict Sokrates:[26] he commemorated, in each, one of the past phases of his own philosophising mind.

[22] Dr. Edward Munk. Die natürliche Ordnung der Platonischen Schriften, Berlin, 1857. His scheme of arrangement is explained generally, pp. 25-48, &c.

[23] Munk, ib. p. 29.

[24] Munk, ib. p. 27.

[25] Munk, ibid. p. 27.

[26] Munk, ib. p. 54; Preface, p. viii.

The Cycle taken in its intentional or natural order, is distributed by Munk into three groups, after the Parmenidês as general prologue.[27]

1. Sokratic or Indirect Dialogues. — Protagoras, Charmidês, Lachês, Gorgias, Ion, Hippias I., Kratylus, Euthydêmus, Symposion.

2. Direct or Constructive Dialogues. — Phædrus, Philêbus, Republic, Timæus, Kritias.

3. Dialectic and Apologetic Dialogues. — Menon, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Politikus, Euthyphron, Apologia, Kriton, Phædon.

The Leges and Menexenus stand apart from the Cycle, as compositions on special occasion. Alkibiadês I., Hippias II., Lysis, are also placed apart from the Cycle, as compositions of Plato’s earlier years, before he had conceived the general scheme of it.[28]

[27] Munk, ib. p. 50.

[28] Munk, ib. pp. 25-34.

The first of the three groups depicts Sokrates in the full vigour of life, about 35 years of age: the second represents him an elderly man, about 60: the third, immediately prior to his death.[29] In the first group he is represented as a combatant for truth: in the second as a teacher of truth: in the third, as a martyr for truth.[30]

[29] Munk, ib. p. 26.

[30] Munk, ib. p. 31.

Views of Ueberweg — attempt to reconcile Schleiermacher and Hermann — admits the preconceived purpose for the later dialogues, composed after the foundation of the school, but not for the earlier.

Lastly, we have another German author still more recent, Frederick Ueberweg, who has again investigated the order and authenticity of the Platonic dialogues, in a work of great care and ability: reviewing the theories of his predecessors, as well as proposing various modifications of his own.[31] Ueberweg compares the different opinions of Schleiermacher and K. F. Hermann, and admits both of them to a certain extent, each concurrent with and limiting the other.[32] The theory of a preconceived system and methodical series, proposed by Schleiermacher, takes its departure from the Phædrus, and postulates as an essential condition that that dialogue shall be recognised as the earliest composition.[33] This condition Ueberweg does not admit. He agrees with Hermann, Stallbaum, and others, in referring the Phædrus to a later date (about 386 B.C.), shortly after Plato had established his school in Athens, when he was rather above forty years of age. At this period (Ueberweg thinks) Plato may be considered as having acquired methodical views which had not been present to him before; and the dialogues composed after the Phædrus follow out, to a certain extent, these methodical views. In the Phædrus, the Platonic Sokrates delivers the opinion that writing is unavailing as a means of imparting philosophy: that the only way in which philosophy can be imparted is, through oral colloquy adapted by the teacher to the mental necessities, and varying stages of progress, of each individual learner: and that writing can only serve, after such oral instruction has been imparted, to revive it if forgotten, in the memory both of the teacher and of the learner who has been orally taught. For the dialogues composed after the opening of the school, and after the Phædrus, Ueberweg recognises the influence of a preconceived method and of a constant bearing on the oral teaching of the school: for those anterior to that date, he admits no such influence: he refers them (with Hermann) to successive enlargements, suggestions, inspirations, either arising in Plato’s own mind, or communicated from without. Ueberweg does not indeed altogether exclude the influence of this non-methodical cause, even for the later dialogues: he allows its operation to a certain extent, in conjunction with the methodical: what he excludes is, the influence of any methodical or preconceived scheme for the earlier dialogues.[34] He thinks that Plato composed the later portion of his dialogues (i.e., those subsequent to the Phædrus and to the opening of his school), not for the instruction of the general reader, but as reminders to his disciples of that which they had already learnt from oral teaching: and he cites the analogy of Paul and the apostles, who wrote epistles not to convert the heathen, but to admonish or confirm converts already made by preaching.[35]

[31] Ueberweg, Untersuchungen.

[32] Ueberweg, p. 111.

[33] Ueberweg, pp. 23-26.

[34] Ueberweg, pp. 107-110-111. “Sind beide Gesichtspunkte, der einer methodischen Absicht und der einer Selbst-Entwicklung Platon’s durchweg mit einander zu verbinden, so liegt es auch in der Natur der Sache und wird auch von einigen seiner Nachfolger (insbesondere nachdrücklich von Susemihl) anerkannt, dass der erste Gesichtspunkt vorzugsweise für die späteren Schriften von der Gründung der Schule an — der andere vorzugsweise für die früheren — gilt.”

[35] Ueberweg, pp. 80-86, “Ist unsere obige Deutung richtig, wonach Platon nicht für Fremde zur Belehrung, sondern wesentlich für seine Schüler zur Erinnerung an den mündlichen Unterricht, schrieb (wie die Apostel nicht für Fremde zur Bekehrung, sondern für die christlichen Gemeinden zur Stärke und Läuterung, nachdem denselben der Glaube aus der Predigt gekommen war) — so folgt, dass jede Argumentation, die auf den Phaedrus gegründet wird, nur für die Zeit gelten kann, in welcher bereits die Platonische Schule bestand.”

His opinions as to authenticity and chronology of the dialogues, He rejects Hippias Major, Erastæ, Theagês, Kleitophon, Parmenidês: he is inclined to reject Euthyphron and Menexenus.

Ueberweg investigates the means which we possess, either from external testimony (especially that of Aristotle) or from internal evidence, of determining the authenticity as well as the chronological order of the dialogues. He remarks that though, in contrasting the expository dialogues with those which are simply enquiring and debating, we may presume the expository to belong to Plato’s full maturity of life, and to have been preceded by some of the enquiring and debating — yet we cannot safely presume all these latter to be of his early composition. Plato may have continued to inclined to compose dialogues of mere search, even after the time when he began to compose expository dialogues.[36] Ueberweg considers that the earliest of Plato’s dialogues are, Lysis, Hippias Minor, Lachês, Charmidês, Protagoras, composed during the lifetime of Sokrates: next the Apologia, and Kriton, not long after his death. All these (even the Protagoras) he reckons among the “lesser Platonic writings”.[37] None of them allude to the Platonic Ideas or Objective Concepts. The Gorgias comes next, probably soon after the death of Sokrates, at least at some time earlier than the opening of the school in 386 B.C.[38] The Menon and Ion may be placed about the same general period.[39] The Phædrus (as has been already observed) is considered by Ueberweg to be nearly contemporary with the opening of the school: shortly afterwards Symposion and Euthydêmus:[40] at some subsequent time, Republic, Timæus, Kritias, and Leges. In regard to the four last, Ueberweg does not materially differ from Schleiermacher, Hermann, and other critics: but on another point he differs from them materially, viz.: that instead of placing the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Politikus, in the Megaric period or prior to the opening of the school, he assigns them (as well as the Phædon and Philêbus) to the last twenty years of Plato’s life. He places Phædon later than Timæus, and Politikus later than Phædon: he considers that Sophistês, Politikus, and Philêbus are among the latest compositions of Plato.[41] He rejects Hippias Major, Erastæ, Theagês, Kleitophon, and Parmenidês: he is inclined to reject Euthyphron. He scarcely recognises Menexenus, in spite of the direct attestation of Aristotle, which attestation he tries (in my judgment very unsuccessfully) to invalidate.[42] He recognises the Kratylus, but without determining its date. He determines nothing about Alkibiadês I. and II.

[36] Ueberweg, p. 81.

[37] Ueberweg, pp. 100-105-296. “Eine Anzahl kleinerer Platonischer Schriften.”

[38] Ueberweg, pp. 249-267-296.

[39] Ueberweg, pp. 226, 227.

[40] Ueberweg, p. 265.

[41] Ueberweg, pp. 204-292.

[42] Ueberweg, pp. 143-176-222-250.

Other Platonic critics — great dissensions about scheme and order of the dialogues.

The works above enumerated are those chiefly deserving of notice, though there are various others also useful, amidst the abundance of recent Platonic criticism. All these writers, Schleiermacher, Ast, Socher, K. F. Hermann, Stallbaum, Steinhart, Susemihl, Munk, Ueberweg, have not merely laid down general schemes of arrangement for the Platonic dialogues, but have gone through the dialogues seriatim, each endeavouring to show that his own scheme fits them well, and each raising objections against the schemes earlier than his own. It is indeed truly remarkable to follow the differences of opinion among these learned men, all careful students of the Platonic writings. And the number of dissents would be indefinitely multiplied, if we took into the account the various historians of philosophy during the last few years. Ritter and Brandis accept, in the main, the theory of Schleiermacher: Zeller also, to a certain extent. But each of these authors has had a point of view more or less belonging to himself respecting the general scheme and purpose of Plato, and respecting the authenticity, sequence, and reciprocal illustration of the dialogues.[43]

[43] Socher remarks (Ueber, Platon. p. 225) (after enumerating twenty-two dialogues of the Thrasyllean canon, which he considers the earliest) that of these twenty-two, there are only two which have not been declared spurious by some one or more critics. He then proceeds to examine the remainder, among which are Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês. He (Socher) declares these three last to be spurious, which no critic had declared before.

Contrast of different points of view instructive — but no solution has been obtained.

By such criticisms much light has been thrown on the dialogues in detail. It is always interesting to read the different views taken by many scholars, all careful students of Plato, respecting the order and relations of the dialogues: especially as the views are not merely different but contradictory, so that the weak points of each are put before us as well as the strong. But as to the large problem which these critics have undertaken to solve — though several solutions have been proposed, in favour of which something may be urged, yet we look in vain for any solution at once sufficient as to proof and defensible against objectors.

The problem incapable of solution. Extent and novelty of the theory propounded by Schleiermacher — slenderness of his proofs.

It appears to me that the problem itself is one which admits of no solution. Schleiermacher was the first who proposed it with the large pretensions which it has since embraced, and which have been present more or less to the minds of subsequent critics, even when they differ from him. He tells us himself that he comes forward as Restitutor Platonis, in a character which no one had ever undertaken before.[44] And he might fairly have claimed that title, if he had furnished proofs at all commensurate to his professions. As his theory is confessedly novel as well as comprehensive, it required greater support in the way of evidence. But when I read the Introductions (the general as well as the special) in which such evidence ought to be found, I am amazed to find that there is little else but easy and confident assumption. His hypothesis is announced as if the simple announcement were sufficient to recommend it[45] — as if no other supposition were consistent with the recognised grandeur of Plato as a philosopher — as if any one, dissenting from it, only proved thereby that he did not understand Plato. Yet so far from being of this self-recommending character, the hypothesis is really loaded with the heaviest antecedent improbability. That in 406 B.C., and at the age of 23, in an age when schemes of philosophy elaborated in detail were unknown — Plato should conceive a vast scheme of philosophy, to be worked out underground without ever being proclaimed, through numerous Sokratic dialogues one after the other, each ushering in that which follows and each resting upon that which precedes: that he should have persisted throughout a long life in working out this scheme, adapting the sequence of his dialogues to the successive stages which he had attained, so that none of them could be properly understood unless when studied immediately after its predecessors and immediately before its successors — and yet that he should have taken no pains to impress this one peremptory arrangement on the minds of readers, and that Schleiermacher should be the first to detect it — all this appears to me as improbable as any of the mystic interpretations of Iamblichus or Proklus. Like other improbabilities, it may be proved by evidence, if evidence can be produced: but here nothing of the kind is producible. We are called upon to grant the general hypothesis without proof, and to follow Schleiermacher in applying it to the separate dialogues.

[44] Schleiermacher, Einleitung, pp. 22-29. “Diese natürliche Folge (der Platonischen Gespräche) wieder herzustellen, diess ist, wie jedermann sieht, eine Absicht, welche sich sehr weit entfernt von allen bisherigen Versuchen zur Anordnung der Platonischen Werke,” &c.

[45] What I say about Schleiermacher here will be assented to by any one who reads his Einleitung, pp. 10, 11, seq.

Schleiermacher’s hypothesis includes a preconceived scheme, and a peremptory order of interdependence among the dialogues.

Schleiermacher’s hypothesis includes two parts. 1. A premeditated philosophical scheme, worked out continuously from the first dialogue to the last. 2. A peremptory canonical order, essential to this scheme, and determined thereby. Now as to the scheme, though on the one hand it cannot be proved, yet on the other hand it cannot be disproved. But as to the canonical order, I think it may be disproved. We know that no such order was recognised in the days of Aristophanes, and Schleiermacher himself admits that before those days it had been lost.[46] But I contend that if it was lost within a century after the decease of Plato, we may fairly presume that it never existed at all, as peremptory and indispensable to the understanding of what Plato meant. A great philosopher such as Plato (so Schleiermacher argues) must be supposed to have composed all his dialogues with some preconceived comprehensive scheme: but a great philosopher (we may add), if he does work upon a preconceived scheme, must surely be supposed to take some reasonable precautions to protect the order essential to that scheme from dropping out of sight. Moreover, Schleiermacher himself admits that there are various dialogues which lie apart from the canonical order and form no part of the grand premeditated scheme. The distinction here made between these outlying compositions (Nebenwerke) and the members of the regular series, is indeed altogether arbitrary: but the admission of it tends still farther to invalidate the fundamental postulate of a grand Demiurgic universe of dialogues, each dovetailed and fitted into its special place among the whole. The universe is admitted to have breaks: so that the hypothesis does not possess the only merit which can belong to gratuitous hypothesis — that of introducing, if granted, complete symmetry throughout the phenomena.

[46] Schleiermacher, Einleitung, p. 24.

Assumptions of Schleiermacher respecting the Phædrus inadmissible.

To these various improbabilities we may add another — that Schleiermacher’s hypothesis requires us to admit that the Phædrus is Plato’s earliest dialogue, composed about 406 B.C., when he was 21 years of age, on my computation, and certainly not more than 23: that it is the first outburst of the inspiration which Sokrates had imparted to him,[47] and that it embodies, though in a dim and poetical form, the lineaments of that philosophical system which he worked out during the ensuing half century. That Plato at this early age should have conceived so vast a system — that he should have imbibed it from Sokrates, who enunciated no system, and abounded in the anti-systematic negative — that he should have been inspired to write the Phædrus (with its abundant veins, dithyrambic,[48] erotic, and transcendental) by the conversation of Sokrates, which exhibited acute dialectic combined with practical sagacity, but neither poetic fervour nor transcendental fancy, — in all this hypothesis of Schleiermacher, there is nothing but an aggravation of improbabilities.

[47] See Schleiermacher’s Einleitung to the Phædrus: “Der Phaidros, der erste Ausbruch seiner Begeisterung vom Sokrates”.

[48] If we read Dionysius of Halikarnassus (De Admirab. Vi Dic. in Demosth. pp. 968-971, Reiske), we shall find that rhetor pointing out the Phædrus as a signal example of Plato’s departure from the manner and character of Sokrates, and as a specimen of misplaced poetical exaggeration. Dikæarchus formed the same opinion about the Phædrus (Diog. L. iii. 38).

Neither Schleiermacher, nor any other critic, has as yet produced any tolerable proof for an internal theory of the Platonic dialogues.

Against such improbabilities (partly external partly internal) Schleiermacher has nothing to set except internal reasons: that is, when he shall have arranged the dialogues and explained the interdependence as well as the special place of each, the arrangement will impress itself upon all as being the intentional work of Plato himself.[49] But these “internal reasons” (innere Gründe), which are to serve as constructive evidence (in the absence of positive declarations) of Plato’s purpose, fail to produce upon other minds the effect which Schleiermacher demands. If we follow them as stated in his Introductions (prefixed to the successive Platonic dialogues), we find a number of approximations and comparisons, often just and ingenious, but always inconclusive for his point: proving, at the very best, what Plato’s intention may possibly have been — yet subject to be countervailed by other “internal reasons” equally specious, tending to different conclusions. And the various opponents of Schleiermacher prove just as much and no more, each on behalf of his own mode of arrangement, by the like constructive evidence — appeal to “internal reasons”. But the insufficient character of these “internal reasons” is more fatal to Schleiermacher than to any of his opponents: because his fundamental hypothesis — while it is the most ambitious of all and would be the most important, if it could be proved — is at the same time burdened with the strongest antecedent improbability, and requires the amplest proof to make it at all admissible.

[49] See the general Einleitung, p. 11.

Munk’s theory is the most ambitious, and the most gratuitous, next to Schleiermacher’s.

Dr. Munk undertakes the same large problem as Schleiermacher. He assumes the Platonic dialogues to have been composed upon a preconceived system, beginning when Plato opened his school, about 41 years of age. This has somewhat less antecedent improbability than the supposition that Plato conceived his system at 21 or 23 years of age. But it is just as much destitute of positive support. That Plato intended his dialogues to form a fixed series, exhibiting the successive gradations of his philosophical system — that he farther intended this series to coincide with a string of artistic portraits, representing Sokrates in the ascending march from youth to old age, so that the characteristic feature which marks the place and time of each dialogue, is to be found in the age which it assigns to Sokrates — these are positions for the proof of which we are referred to “internal reasons”; but which the dialogues do not even suggest, much less sanction.

The age assigned to Sokrates in any dialogue is a circumstance of little moment.

In many dialogues, the age assigned to Sokrates is a circumstance neither distinctly brought out, nor telling on the debate. It is true that in the Parmenidês he is noted as young, and is made to conduct himself with the deference of youth, receiving hints and admonitions from the respected veteran of Elea. So too in the Protagoras, he is characterised as young, but chiefly in contrast with the extreme and pronounced old age of the Sophist Protagoras: he does not conduct himself like a youth, nor exhibit any of that really youthful or deferential spirit which we find in the Parmenidês; on the contrary, he stands forward as the rival, cross-examiner, and conqueror of the ancient Sophist. On the contrary, in the Euthydêmus,[50] Sokrates is announced as old; though that dialogue is indisputably very analogous to the Protagoras, both of them being placed by Munk in the earliest of his three groups. Moreover in the Lysis also, Sokrates appears as old; — here Munk escapes from the difficulty by setting aside the dialogue as a youthful composition, not included in the consecutive Sokratic Cycle.[51] What is there to justify the belief, that the Sokrates depicted in the Phædrus (which dialogue has been affirmed by Schieiermacher and Ast, besides some ancient critics, to exhibit decided marks of juvenility) is older than the Sokrates of the Symposion? or that Sokrates in the Philêbus and Republic is older than in the Kratylus or Gorgias? It is true that the dialogues Theætêtus and Euthyphron are both represented as held a little before the death of Sokrates, after the indictment of Melêtus against him had already been preferred. This is a part of the hypothetical situation, in which the dialogists are brought into company. But there is nothing in the two dialogues themselves (or in the Menon, which Munk places in the same category) to betoken that Sokrates is old. Holiness, in the Euthyphron — Knowledge, in the Theætêtus — is canvassed and debated just as Temperance and Courage are debated in the Charmidês and Lachês. Munk lays it down that Sokrates appears as a Martyr for Truth in the Euthyphron, Menon, and Theætêtus and as a Combatant for Truth in the Lachês, Charmidês, Euthydêmus, &c. But the two groups of dialogues, when compared with each other, will not be found to warrant this distinctive appellation. In the Apologia, Kriton, and Phædon, it may be said with propriety that Sokrates is represented as a martyr for truth: in all three he appears not merely as a talker, but as a personal agent: but this is not true of the other dialogues which Munk places in his third group.

[50] Euthydêmus, c. 4, p. 272.

[51] Lysis, p. 223, ad fin. Καταγέλαστοι γεγόναμεν ἐγώ τε, γέρων ἀνήρ, καὶ ὑμεῖς. See Munk, p. 25.

No intentional sequence or interdependence of the dialogues can be made out.

I cannot therefore accede to this “natural arrangement of the Platonic dialogues,” assumed to have been intended by Plato, and founded upon the progress of Sokrates as he stands exhibited in each, from youth to age — which Munk has proposed in his recent ingenious volume. It is interesting to be made acquainted with that order of the Platonic dialogues which any critical student conceives to be the “natural order”. But in respect to Munk as well as to Schleiermacher, I must remark that if Plato had conceived and predetermined the dialogues, so as to be read in one natural peremptory order, he would never have left that order so dubious and imperceptible, as to be first divined by critics of the nineteenth century, and understood by them too in several different ways. If there were any peremptory and intentional sequence, we may reasonably presume that Plato would have made it as clearly understood as he has determined the sequence of the ten books of his Republic.

Principle of arrangement adopted by Hermann is reasonable — successive changes in Plato’s point of view: but we cannot explain either the order or the causes of these changes.

The principle of arrangement proposed by K. F. Hermann (approved also by Steinhart and Susemihl) is not open to the same antecedent objection. Not admitting any preconceived, methodical, intentional, system, nor the maintenance of one and the same successive philosophical point of view throughout — Hermann supposes that the dialogues as successively composed represent successive phases of Plato’s philosophical development and variations in his point of view. Hermann farther considers that these variations may be assigned and accounted for: first pure Sokratism, next the modifications experienced from Plato’s intercourse with the Megaric philosophers, — then the influence derived from Kyrênê and Egypt — subsequently that from the Pythagoreans in Italy — and so forth. The first portion of this hypothesis, taken generally, is very reasonable and probable. But when, after assuming that there must have been determining changes in Plato’s own mind, we proceed to inquire what these were, and whence they arose, we find a sad lack of evidence for the answer to the question. We neither know the order in which the dialogues were composed, — nor the date when Plato first began to compose, — nor the primitive philosophical mind which his earliest dialogues represented, — nor the order of those subsequent modifications which his views underwent. We are informed, indeed, that Plato went from Athens to visit Megara, Kyrênê, Egypt, Italy; but the extent or kind of influence which he experienced in each, we do not know at all.[52] I think it a reasonable presumption that the points which Plato had in common with Sokrates were most preponderant in the mind of Plato immediately after the death of his master: and that other trains of thought gradually became more and more intermingled as the recollection of his master became more distant. There is also a presumption that the longer, more elaborate, and more transcendental dialogues (among which must be ranked the Phædrus), were composed in the full maturity of Plato’s age and intellect: the shorter and less finished may have been composed either then or earlier in his life. Here are two presumptions, plausible enough when stated generally, yet too vague to justify any special inferences: the rather, if we may believe the statement of Dionysius, that Plato continued to “comb and curl his dialogues until he was eighty years of age”.[53]

[52] Bonitz (in his instructive volume, Platonische Studien, Wien, 1858, p. 5) points out how little we know about the real circumstances of Plato’s intellectual and philosophical development: a matter which most of the Platonic critics are apt to forget.

I confess that I agree with Strümpell, that it is impossible to determine chronologically, from Plato’s writings, and from the other scanty evidence accessible to us, by what successive steps his mind departed from the original views and doctrines held and communicated by Sokrates (Strümpell, Gesch. der Griechen, p. 294, Leipsic, 1861).

[53] Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verbor. p. 208; Diog. L. iii. 37; Quintilian, viii. 6.

F. A. Wolf, in a valuable note upon the διασκευασταὶ (Proleg. ad Homer. p. clii.) declares, upon this ground, that it is impossible to determine the time when Plato composed his best dialogues. “Ex his collatis apparet διασκευάζειν a veteribus magistris adscitum esse in potestatem verbi ἐπιδιασκευάζειν: ut in Scenicis propé idem esset quod ἀναδιδάσκειν — h. e. repetito committere fabulam, sed mutando, addendo, detrahendo, emendatam, refictam, et secundis curis elaboratam. Id enim facere solebant illi poetæ sæpissimé: mox etiam alii, ut Apollonius Rhodius. Neque aliter Plato fecit in optimis dialogis suis: quam ob causam exquirere non licet, quando quisque compositus sit; quum in scenicis fabulis saltem ex didascaliis plerumque notum sit tempus, quo editæ sunt.”

Preller has a like remark (Hist. Phil. ex Font. Loc. Context., sect. 250).

In regard to the habit of correcting compositions, the contrast between Plato and Plotinus was remarkable. Porphyry tells us that Plotinus, when once he had written any matter, could hardly bear even to read it over — much less to review and improve it (Porph. Vit. Plotini, 8).

Hermann’s view more tenable than Schleiermacher’s.

If we compare K. F. Hermann with Schleiermacher, we see that Hermann has amended his position by abandoning Schleiermacher’s gratuitous hypothesis, of a preconceived Platonic system with a canonical order of the dialogues adapted to that system — and by admitting only a chronological order of composition, each dialogue being generated by the state of Plato’s mind at the time when it was composed. This, taken generally, is indisputable. If we perfectly knew Plato’s biography and the circumstances around him, we should be able to determine which dialogues were first, second, and third, &c., and what circumstances or mental dispositions occasioned the successive composition of those which followed. But can we do this with our present scanty information? I think not. Hermann, while abandoning the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, has still accepted the large conditions of the problem first drawn up by Schleiermacher, and has undertaken to decide the real order of the dialogues, together with the special occasion and the phase of Platonic development corresponding to each. Herein, I think, he has failed.

Small number of certainties, or even reasonable presumptions, as to date or order of the dialogues.

It is, indeed, natural that critics should form some impression as to earlier and later in the dialogues. But though there are some peculiar cases in which such impression acquires much force, I conceive that in almost all cases it is to a high degree uncertain. Several dialogues proclaim themselves as subsequent to the death of Sokrates. We know from internal allusions that the Theætêtus must have been composed after 394 B.C., the Menexenus after 387 B.C., and the Symposion after 385 B.C. We are sure, by Aristotle’s testimony, that the Leges were written at a later period than the Republic; Plutarch also states that the Leges were composed during the old age of Plato, and this statement, accepted by most modern critics, appears to me trustworthy.[54] The Sophistês proclaims itself as a second meeting, by mutual agreement, of the same persons who had conversed in the Theætêtus, with the addition of a new companion, the Eleatic stranger. But we must remark that the subject of the Theætêtus, though left unsettled at the close of that dialogue, is not resumed in the Sophistês: in which last, moreover, Sokrates acts only a subordinate part, while the Eleatic stranger, who did not appear in the Theætêtus, is here put forward as the prominent questioner or expositor. So too, the Politikus offers itself as a third of the same triplet: with this difference, that while the Eleatic stranger continues as the questioner, a new respondent appears in the person of Sokrates Junior. The Politikus is not a resumption of the same subject as the Sophistês, but a second application of the same method (the method of logical division and subdivision) to a different subject. Plato speaks also as if he contemplated a third application of the same method — the Philosophus: which, so far as we know, was never realised. Again, the Timæus presents itself as a sequel to the Republic, and the Kritias as a sequel to the Timæus: a fourth, the Hermokrates, being apparently announced, as about to follow — but not having been composed.

[54] Plutarch, Isid. et Osirid. c. 48, p. 370.

Trilogies indicated by Plato himself.

Here then are two groups of three each (we might call them Trilogies, and if the intended fourth had been realised, Tetralogies), indicated by Plato himself. A certain relative chronological order is here doubtless evident: the Sophistês must have been composed after the Theætêtus and before the Politikus, the Timæus after the Republic and before the Kritias. But this is all that we can infer: for it does not follow that the sequence must have been immediate in point of time: there may have been a considerable interval between the three forming the so-called Trilogy.[55] We may add, that neither in the Theætêtus nor in the Republic, do we find indication that either of them is intended as the first of a Trilogy: the marks proving an intended Trilogy are only found in the second and third of the series.

[55] It may seem singular that Schleiermacher is among those who adopt this opinion. He maintains that the Sophistes does not follow immediately upon the Theætêtus; that Plato, though intending when he finished the Theætêtus to proceed onward to the Sophistês, altered his intention, and took up other views instead: that the Menon (and the Euthydêmus) come in between them, in immediate sequel to the Theætêtus (Einleitung zum Menon, vol. iii. p. 326).

Here Schleiermacher introduces a new element of uncertainty, which invalidates yet more seriously the grounds for his hypothesis of a preconceived sequence throughout all the dialogues. In a case where Plato directly intimates an intentional sequence, we are called upon to believe, on “internal grounds” alone, that he altered his intention, and introduced other dialogues. He may have done this: but how are we to prove it? How much does it attenuate the value of his intentions, as proofs of an internal philosophical sequence? We become involved more and more in unsupported hypothesis. I think that K. F. Hermann’s objections against Schleiermacher, on the above ground, have much force; and that Ueberweg’s reply to them is unsatisfactory. (Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. der Platon. Phil. p. 350. Ueberweg, Untersuchungen, p. 82, seq.)

Positive dates of all the dialogues — unknown.

While even the relative chronology of the dialogues is thus faintly marked in the case of a few, and left to fallible conjecture in the remainder — the positive chronology, or the exact year of composition, is not directly marked in the case of any one. Moreover, at the very outset of the enquiry, we have to ask, At what period of life did Plato begin to publish his dialogues? Did he publish any of them during the lifetime of Sokrates? and if so, which? Or does the earliest of them date from a time after the death of Sokrates?

When did Plato begin to compose? Not till after the death of Sokrates.

Amidst the many dissentient views of the Platonic critics, it is remarkable that they are nearly unanimous in their mode of answering this question.[56] Most of them declare without hesitation, that Plato published several before the death of Sokrates — that is, before he was 28 years of age — though they do not all agree in determining which these dialogues were. I do not perceive that they produce any external proofs of the least value. Most of them disbelieve (though Stallbaum and Hermann believe) the anecdote about Sokrates and his criticism on the dialogue Lysis.[57] In spite of their unanimity, I cannot but adopt the opposite conclusion. It appears to me that Plato composed no Sokratic dialogues during the lifetime of Sokrates.

[56] Valentine Rose (De Aristotelis Librorum ordine, p. 25, Berlin, 1854), Mullach (Democriti Fragm. p. 99), and R. Schöne (in his Commentary on the Platonic Protagoras), are among the critics known to me, who intimate their belief that Plato published no Sokratic dialogues during the lifetime of Sokrates. In discussing the matter, Schöne adverts to two of the three lines of argument brought forward in my text:—1. The too early and too copious “productivity” which the received supposition would imply in Plato. 2. The improbability that the name of Sokrates would be employed in written dialogues, as spokesman, by any of his scholars during his lifetime.

Schöne does not touch upon the improbability of the hypothesis, arising out of the early position and aspirations of Plato himself (Schöne, Ueber Platon’s Protagoras, p. 64, Leipsic, 1862).

[57] Diog. Laert. iii. 85; Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Plat. Lys. p. 90; K. F. Hermann, Gesch. u. Syst. der Plat. Phil. p. 370. Schleiermacher (Einl. zum Lysis, i. p. 175) treats the anecdote about the Lysis as unworthy of credence. Diogenes (iii. 38) mentions that some considered the Phædrus as Plato’s earliest dialogue; the reason being that the subject of it was something puerile: λόγος δὲ πρῶτον γράψαι αὐτὸν τὸν Φαῖδρον· καὶ γὰρ ἔχει μειρακιῶδες τι τὸ πρόβλημα. Δικαίαρχος δὲ καὶ τὸν τρόπον τῆς γραφῆς ὅλον ἐπιμέμφεται ὡς φορτικόν. Olympiodorus also in his life of Plato mentions the same report, that the Phædrus was Plato’s earliest composition, and gives the same ground of belief, “its dithyrambic character”. Even if the assertion were granted, that the Phædrus is the earliest Platonic composition, we could not infer that it was composed during the life-time of Sokrates. But that assertion cannot be granted. The two statements, above cited, give it only as a report, suggested to those who believed it by the character and subject-matter of the dialogue. I am surprised that Dr. Volquardsen, who in a learned volume, recently published, has undertaken the defence of the theory of Schleiermacher about the Phædrus (Phädros, Erste Schrift Platon’s, Kiel, 1862), can represent this as a “feste historische Ueberlieferung” — the rather as he admits that Schleiermacher himself placed no confidence in it, and relied upon other reasons (pp. 90-92-93). Comp. Schleiermacher, Einl. zum Phaidros, p. 76.

Whoever will read the Epistle of Dionysius of Halikarnassus, addressed to Cneius Pompeius (pp. 751-765, Reiske), will be persuaded that Dionysius can neither have known, nor even believed, that the Phædrus was the first composition, and a youthful composition, of Plato. If Dionysius had believed this, it would have furnished him with the precise excuse which his letter required. For the purpose of his letter is to mollify the displeasure of Cn. Pompey, who had written to blame him for some unfavourable criticisms on the style of Plato. Dionysius justifies his criticisms by allusions to the Phædrus. If he had been able to add, that the Phædrus was a first composition, and that Plato’s later dialogues were comparatively free from the like faults — this would have been the most effective way of conciliating Cn. Pompey.

Reasons for this opinion. Labour of the composition — does not consist with youth of the author.

All the information (scanty as it is) which we obtain from the rhetor Dionysius and others respecting the composition of the Platonic dialogues, announces them to have cost much time and labour to their author: a statement illustrated by the great number of inversions of words which he is said to have introduced successively in the first sentence of the Republic, before he was satisfied to let the sentence stand. This corresponds, too, with all that we read respecting the patient assiduity both of Isokrates and Demosthenes.[58] A first-rate Greek composition was understood not to be purchasable at lower cost. I confess therefore to great surprise, when I read in Ast the affirmation that the Protagoras was composed when Plato was only 22 years old — and when I find Schleiermacher asserting, as if it were a matter beyond dispute, that Protagoras, Phædrus, and Parmenidês, all bear evident marks of Plato’s youthful age (Jugendlichkeit). In regard to the Phædrus and Parmenidês, indeed, Hermann and other critics contest the view of Schleiermacher; and detect, in those two dialogues, not only no marks of “juvenility,” but what they consider plain proofs of maturity and even of late age. But in regard to the Protagoras, most of them agree with Schleiermacher and Ast, in declaring it to be a work of Plato’s youth, some time before the death of Sokrates. Now on this point I dissent from them: and since the decision turns upon “internal grounds,” each must judge for himself. The Protagoras appears to me one of the most finished and elaborate of all the dialogues: in complication of scenic arrangements, dramatic vivacity, and in the amount of theory worked out, it is surpassed by none — hardly even by the Republic.[59] Its merits as a composition are indeed extolled by all the critics; who clap their hands, especially, at the humiliation which they believe to be brought upon the great Sophist by Sokrates. But the more striking the composition is acknowledged to be, the stronger is the presumption that its author was more than 22 or 24 years of age. Nothing short of good positive testimony would induce me to believe that such a dialogue as the Protagoras could have been composed, even by Plato, before he attained the plenitude of his powers. No such testimony is produced or producible. I extend a similar presumption, even to the Lysis, Lachês, Charmidês, and other dialogues: though with a less degree of confidence, because they are shorter and less artistic, not equal to the Protagoras. All of them, in my judgment, exhibit a richness of ideas and a variety of expression, which suggest something very different from a young novice as the author.

[58] Timæus said that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire in less time than Isokrates required for the composition of his panegyrical oration (Longinus, De Sublim. c. 4).

[59] “Als aesthetisches Kunstwerk ist der Dialog Protagoras das meisterhafteste unter den Werken Platon’s.” (Socher, Ueber Platon, p. 226.)

But over and above this presumption, there are other reasons which induce me to believe, that none of the Platonic dialogues were published during the lifetime of Sokrates. My reasons are partly connected with Sokrates, partly with Plato.

Reasons founded on the personality of Sokrates, and his relations with Plato.

First, in reference to Sokrates — we may reasonably doubt whether any written reports of his actual conversations were published during his lifetime. He was the most constant, public, and indiscriminate of all talkers: always in some frequented place, and desiring nothing so much as a respondent with an audience. Every one who chose to hear him, might do so without payment and with the utmost facility. Why then should any one wish to read written reports of his conversations? especially when we know that the strong interest which they excited in the hearers depended much upon the spontaneity of his inspirations, and hardly less upon the singularity of his manner and physiognomy. Any written report of what he said must appear comparatively tame. Again, as to fictitious dialogues (like the Platonic) employing the name of Sokrates as spokesman — such might doubtless be published during his lifetime by derisory dramatists for the purpose of raising a laugh, but not surely by a respectful disciple and admirer for the purpose of giving utterance to doctrines of his own. The greater was the respect felt by Plato for Sokrates, the less would he be likely to take the liberty of making Sokrates responsible before the public for what Sokrates had never said.[60] There is a story in Diogenes — to the effect that Sokrates, when he first heard the Platonic dialogue called Lysis, exclaimed — “What a heap of falsehoods does the young man utter about me!”[61] This story merits no credence as a fact: but it expresses the displeasure which Sokrates would be likely to feel, on hearing that one of his youthful companions had dramatised him as he appears in the Lysis. Xenophon tells us, and it is very probable, that inaccurate oral reports of the real colloquies of Sokrates may have got into circulation. But that the friends and disciples of Sokrates, during his lifetime, should deliberately publish fictitious dialogues, putting their own sentiments into his mouth, and thus contribute to mislead the public — is not easily credible. Still less credible is it that Plato, during the lifetime of Sokrates, should have published such a dialogue as the Phædrus, wherein we find ascribed to Sokrates, poetical and dithyrambic effusions utterly at variance with the real manifestations which Athenians might hear every day from Sokrates in the market-place.[62] Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, complains of the comic poet Aristophanes for misrepresenting him. Had the Platonic Phædrus been then in circulation, or any other Platonic dialogues, he might with equally good reason have warned the Dikasts against judging of him, a real citizen on trial, from the titular Sokrates whom even disciples did not scruple to employ as spokesman for their own transcendental doctrine, and their own controversial sarcasms.

[60] Valentine Rose observes, in regard to a dialogue composed by some one else, wherein Plato was introduced as one of the interlocutors, that it could not have been composed until after Plato’s death, and that the dialogues of Plato were not composed until after the death of Sokrates. “Platonis autem sermones antequam mortuus fuerit, scripto neminem tradidisse, neque magistri viventis personâ in dialogis abusos fuisse (non magis quam vivum Socratem induxerunt Xenophon, Plato, cæteri Socratici), hoc veterum mori et religioni quivis facile concedet,” &c. (V. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 57, 74, Leipsic, 1863.) — Val. Rose expresses the same opinion (that none of the Sokratic dialogues, either by Plato or the other companions of Sokrates, were written until after the death of Sokrates) in his earlier work, De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine et Auctoritate, p. 25.

[61] Diog. L. iii. 35.

[62] In regard to the theory (elaborated by Schleiermacher, recently again defended by Volquardsen), that the Phædrus is the earliest among the Platonic dialogues, composed about 406 B.C., it appears to me inconsistent also with what we know about Lysias. In the Platonic Phædrus, Lysias is presented as a λογογράφος of the highest reputation and eminence (p. 228 A, 257 C, and indeed throughout the whole dialogue). Now this is quite inconsistent with what we read from Lysias himself in the indictment which he preferred against Eratosthenes, not long after the restoration of the democracy, 403 B.C. He protests therein strenuously that he had never had judicial affairs of his own, nor meddled with those of others; and he expresses the greatest apprehension from his own ἀπειρία (sects. 4-6). I cannot believe that this would be said by a person whom Phædrus terms δεινότατος ὣν τῶν νῦν γράφειν. Moreover, Lysias, in that same discourse, describes his own position at Athens, anterior to the Thirty: he belonged to a rich metic family, and was engaged along with his brother Polemarchus in a large manufactory of shields, employing 120 slaves (s. 20). A person thus rich and occupied was not likely to become a professed and notorious λογογράφος, though he may have been a clever and accomplished man. Lysias was plundered and impoverished by the Thirty; and he is said to have incurred much expense in aiding the efforts of Thrasybulus. It was after this change of circumstances that he took to rhetoric as a profession; and it is to some one of these later years that the Platonic Phædrus refers.

Reasons, founded on the early life, character, and position of Plato.

Secondly, in regard to Plato, the reasons leading to the same conclusion are yet stronger. Unfortunately, we know little of the life of Plato before he attained the age of 28, that is, before the death of Sokrates: but our best means of appreciating it are derived from three sources. 1. Our knowledge of the history of Athens from 409-399 B.C., communicated by Thucydides, Xenophon, &c. 2. The seventh Epistle of Plato himself, written four or five years before his death (about 352 B.C.). 3. A few hints from the Memorabilia of Xenophon.

Plato’s early life — active by necessity, and to some extent ambitious.

To these evidences about the life of Plato, it has not been customary to pay much attention. The Platonic critics seem to regard Plato so entirely as a spiritual person (“like a blessed spirit, visiting earth for a short time,” to cite a poetical phrase applied to him by Göthe), that they disdain to take account of his relations with the material world, or with society around him. Because his mature life was consecrated to philosophy, they presume that his youth must have been so likewise. But this is a hasty assumption. You cannot thus abstract any man from the social medium by which, he is surrounded. The historical circumstances of Athens from Plato’s nineteenth year to his twenty-sixth (409-403 B.C.) were something totally different from what they afterwards became. They were so grave and absorbing, that had he been ever so much inclined to philosophy, he would have been compelled against his will to undertake active and heavy duty as a citizen. Within those years (as I have observed in a preceding [chapter]) fell the closing struggles of the Peloponnesian war; in which (to repeat words already cited from Thucydides) Athens became more a military post than a city — every citizen being almost habitually under arms: then the long blockade, starvation, and capture of the city, followed by the violences of the Thirty, the armed struggle under Thrasybulus, and the perilous, though fortunately successful and equitable, renovation of the democracy. These were not times for a young citizen, of good family and robust frame, to devote himself exclusively to philosophy and composition. I confess myself surprised at the assertion of Schleiermacher and Steinhart, that Plato composed the Charmidês and other dialogues under the Anarchy.[63] Amidst such disquietude and perils he could not have renounced active duty for philosophy, even if he had been disposed to do so.

[63] Steinhart, Einl. zum Laches, vol. i. p. 358, where he says that Plato composed the Charmidês, Lachês, and Protagoras, all in 404 B.C. under the Thirty. Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Charmides, vol. ii. p. 8.

The lines of Lucretius (i. 41) bear emphatically upon this trying season:

Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo Possumus æquo animo nec Memmi clara propago Talibus in rebus communi desse saluti.

But, to make the case stronger, we learn from Plato’s own testimony, in his seventh Epistle, that he was not at that time disposed to renounce active political life. He tells us himself, that as a young man he was exceedingly eager, like others of the same age, to meddle and distinguish himself in active politics.[64] How natural such eagerness was, to a young citizen of his family and condition, may be seen by the analogy of his younger brother Glaukon, who was prematurely impatient to come forward: as well as by that of his cousin Charmides, who had the same inclination, but was restrained by exaggerated diffidence of character. Now we know that the real Sokrates (very different from the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias) did not seek to deter young men of rank from politics, and to consign them to inactive speculation. Sokrates gives[65] earnest encouragement to Charmides; and he does not discourage Glaukon, but only presses him to adjourn his pretensions until the suitable stock of preliminary information has been acquired. We may thus see that assuming the young Plato to be animated with political aspirations, he would certainly not be dissuaded, — nay, he would probably be encouraged — by Sokrates.

[64] Plato, Epist. vii. p. 324 C. Νέος ἐγώ ποτε ὢν πολλοῖς δὴ ταὐτὸν ἔπαθον· ᾠήθην, εἰ θᾶττον ἐμαυτοῦ γενοίμην κύριος, ἐπὶ τὰ κοινὰ τῆς πόλεως εὐθὺς ἰέναι. Again, 325 E: ὥστε με, τὸ πρῶτον πολλῆς μεστὸν ὄντα ὁρμῆς ἐπὶ τὸ πράττειν τὰ κοινά, &c.

[65] See the two interesting colloquies of Sokrates, with Glaukon and Charmides (Xenoph. Mem. iii. 6, 7).

Charmides was killed along with Kritias during the eight months called The Anarchy, at the battle fought with Thrasybulus and the democrats (Xen. Hell. ii. 4, 19). The colloquy of Sokrates with Charmides, recorded by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, must have taken place at some time before the battle of Ægospotami; perhaps about 407 or 406 B.C.

Plato farther tells us that when (after the final capitulation of Athens) the democracy was put down and the government of the Thirty established, he embarked in it actively under the auspices of his relatives (Kritias, Charmides, &c., then in the ascendant), with the ardent hopes of youth[66] that he should witness and promote the accomplishment of valuable reforms. Experience showed him that he was mistaken. He became disgusted with the enormities of the Thirty, especially with their treatment of Sokrates; and he then ceased to co-operate with them. Again, after the year called the Anarchy, the democracy was restored, and Plato’s political aspirations revived along with it. He again put himself forward for active public life, though with less ardent hopes.[67] But he became dissatisfied with the march of affairs, and his relationship with the deceased Kritias was now a formidable obstacle to popularity. At length, four years after the restoration of the democracy, came the trial and condemnation of Sokrates. It was that event which finally shocked and disgusted Plato, converting his previous dissatisfaction into an utter despair of obtaining any good results from existing governments. From thenceforward, he turned away from practice and threw himself into speculation.[68]

[66] Plato, Epist. vii. 324 D. Καὶ ἐγὼ θαυμαστὸν οὐδὲν ἔπαθον ὑπὸ νεότητος, &c.

[67] Plato, Epist. vii. 325 A. Πάλιν δέ, βραδύτερον μὲν, εἶλκε δέ με ὅμως ἡ περὶ τὸ πράττειν τὰ κοινὰ καὶ πολιτικὰ ἐπιθυμία.

[68] Plato, Epist. vii. 325 C: Σκοποῦντι δή μοι ταῦτα τε καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς πράττοντας τὰ πολιτικά, &c. 325 E: Καὶ τοῦ μὲν σκοπεῖν μὴ ἀποστῆναι, πῆ ποτὲ ἄμεινον ἂν γίγνοιτο περί τε αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ δὴ καὶ περὶ τὴν πᾶσαν πολιτείαν, τοῦ δὲ πράττειν αὖ περιμένειν αἰεὶ καιρούς, τελευτῶντα δὲ νοῆσαι περὶ πασῶν τῶν νῦν πόλεων ὅτι κακῶς ξύμπασαι πολιτεύονται.

I have already stated in the 84th chapter of my History, describing the visit of Plato to Dionysius in Sicily, that I believe the Epistles of Plato to be genuine, and that the seventh Epistle especially contains valuable information. Some critics undoubtedly are of a different opinion, and consider them as spurious. But even among these critics, several consider that the author of the Epistles, though not Plato himself, was a contemporary and well informed: so that his evidence is trustworthy. See K. F. Hermann, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp. 282-283. The question has been again discussed recently by Ueberweg (Untersuch. über d. Aechth. u. Zeitf. d. Plat. Schriften, pp. 120-123-125-129), who gives his own opinion that the letters are not by Plato, and produces various arguments to the point. His arguments are noway convincing to me: for the mysticism and pedantry of the Epistles appear to me in full harmony with the Timæus and Leges, and with the Pythagorean bias of Plato’s later years, though not in harmony with the Protagoras, and various other dialogues. Yet Ueberweg also declares his full belief that the seventh Epistle is the composition of a well-informed contemporary, and perfectly worthy of credit as to the facts and K. F. Hermann declares the same. This is enough for my present purpose.

The statement, trusted by all the critics, that Plato’s first visit to Syracuse was made when he was about 40 years of age, depends altogether on the assertion of the seventh Epistle. How numerous are the assertions made by Platonic critics respecting Plato, upon evidence far slighter than that of these Epistles! Boeckh considers the seventh Epistle as the genuine work of Plato. Valentine Rose also pronounces it to be genuine, though he does not consider the other Epistles to be so (De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine, p. 25, p. 114, Berlin, 1854). Tennemann admits the Epistles generally to be genuine (System der Platon. Philos. i. p. 106).

It is undeniable that these Epistles of Plato were recognised as genuine and trusted by all the critics of antiquity from Aristophanes downwards. Cicero, Plutarch, Aristeides, &c., assert facts upon the authority of the Epistles. Those who declare the Epistles to be spurious and worthless, ought in consistency to reject the statements which Plutarch makes on the authority of the Epistles: they will find themselves compelled to discredit some of the best parts of his life of Dion. Compare Aristeides, Περὶ Ῥητορικῆς Or. 45, pp. 90-106, Dindorf.

Plato did not retire from political life until after the restoration of the democracy, nor devote himself to philosophy until after the death of Sokrates.

This very natural recital, wherein Plato (at the age of 75) describes his own youth between 21 and 28 — taken in conjunction with the other reasons just enumerated — impresses upon me the persuasion, that Plato did not devote himself to philosophy, nor publish any of his dialogues, before the death of Sokrates: though he may probably have composed dramas, and the beautiful epigrams which Diogenes has preserved. He at first frequented the society of Sokrates, as many other aspiring young men frequented it (likewise that of Kratylus, and perhaps that of various Sophists[69]), from love of ethical debate, admiration of dialectic power, and desire to acquire a facility of the same kind in his own speech: not with any view to take up philosophy as a profession, or to undertake the task either of demolishing or constructing in the region of speculation. No such resolution was adopted until after he had tried political life and had been disappointed:—nor until such disappointment had been still more bitterly aggravated by the condemnation of Sokrates. It was under this feeling that Plato first consecrated himself to that work of philosophical meditation and authorship, — of inquisitive travel and converse with philosophers abroad, — and ultimately of teaching in the Academy, — which filled up the remaining fifty years of his life. The death of Sokrates left that venerated name open to be employed as spokesman in his dialogues: and there was nothing in the political condition of Athens after 399 B.C., analogous to the severe and perilous struggle which tasked all the energies of her citizens from 409 B.C. down to the close of the war.

[69] Compare Plat. Protag. 312 A-B, 315 A, where the distinction is pointedly drawn between one who visited Protagoras ἐπὶ τέχνῃ, ὡς δημιουργὸς ἐσόμενος, and others who came simply ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ, ὡς τὸν ἰδιώτην καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον πρέπει.

All Plato’s dialogues were composed during the fifty-one years after the death of Sokrates.

I believe, on these grounds, that Plato did not publish any dialogues during the life of Sokrates. An interval of fifty-one years separates the death of Sokrates from that of Plato. Such an interval is more than sufficient for all the existing dialogues of Plato, without the necessity of going back to a more youthful period of his age. As to distribution of the dialogues, earlier or later, among these fifty-one years, we have little or no means of judging. Plato has kept out of sight — with a degree of completeness which is really surprising — not merely his own personality, but also the marks of special date and the determining circumstances in which each dialogue was composed. Twice only does he mention his own name, and that simply in passing, as if it were the name of a third person.[70] As to the point of time to which he himself assigns each dialogue, much discussion has been held how far Plato has departed from chronological or historical possibility; how far he has brought persons together in Athens who never could have been there together, or has made them allude to events posterior to their own decease. A speaker in Athenæus[71] dwells, with needless acrimony, on the anachronisms of Plato, as if they were gross faults. Whether they are faults or not, may fairly be doubted: but the fact of such anachronisms cannot be doubted, when we have before us the Menexenus and the Symposion. It cannot be supposed, in the face of such evidence, that Plato took much pains to keep clear of anachronisms: and whether they be rather more or rather less numerous, is a question of no great moment.

[70] In the Apologia, c. 28, p. 38, Sokrates alludes to Plato as present in court, and as offering to become guarantee, along with others, for his fine. In the Phædon, Plato is mentioned as being sick; to explain why he was not present at the last scene of Sokrates (Phædon, p. 59 B). Diog. L. iii. 37.

The pathos as well as the detail of the narrative in the Phædon makes one imagine that Plato really was present at the scene. But being obliged, by the uniform scheme of his compositions, to provide another narrator, he could not suffer it to be supposed that he was himself present.

I have already remarked that this mention of Plato in the third person (Πλάτων δέ, οἶμαι, ἠσθένει) was probably one of the reasons which induced Panætius to declare the Phædon not to be the work of Plato.

[71] Athenæus, v. pp. 220, 221. Didymus also attacked Plato as departing from historical truth — ἐπιφυόμενος τῷ Πλάτωνι ὡς παριστοροῦντι — against which the scholiast (ad Leges, i. p. 630) defends him. Grœn van Prinsterer, Prosopogr. Plat. p. 16. The rhetor Aristeides has some remarks of the same kind, though less acrimonious (Orat. xlvii. p. 435, Dind.) than the speaker in Athenæus.

The Thrasyllean Canon is more worthy of trust than the modern critical theories by which it has been condemned.

I now conclude my enquiry respecting the Platonic Canon. The presumption in favour of that Canon, as laid down by Thrasyllus, is stronger (as I showed in the preceding [chapter]) than it is in regard to ancient authors generally of the same age: being traceable, in the last resort, through the Alexandrine Museum, to authenticating manuscripts in the Platonic school, and to members of that school who had known and cherished Plato himself.[72] I have reviewed the doctrines of several recent critics who discard this Canon as unworthy of trust, and who set up for themselves a type of what Plato must have been, derived from a certain number of items in the Canon — rejecting the remaining items as unconformable to their hypothetical type. The different theories which they have laid down respecting general and systematic purposes of Plato (apart from the purpose of each separate composition), appear to me uncertified and gratuitous. The “internal reasons,” upon which they justify rejection of various dialogues, are only another phrase for expressing their own different theories respecting Plato as a philosopher and as a writer. For my part I decline to discard any item of the Thrasyllean Canon, upon such evidence as they produce: I think it a safer and more philosophical proceeding to accept the entire Canon, and to accommodate my general theory of Plato (in so far as I am able to frame one) to each and all of its contents.

[72] I find this position distinctly asserted, and the authority of the Thrasyllean catalogue, as certifying the genuine works of Plato, vindicated, by Yxem, in his able dissertation on the Kleitophon of Plato (pp. 1-3, Berlin, 1846). But Yxem does not set forth the grounds of this opinion so fully as the present state of the question demands. Moreover, he combines it with another opinion, upon which he insists even at greater length, and from which I altogether dissent — that the tetralogies of Thrasyllus exhibit the genuine order established by Plato himself among the Dialogues.

Unsafe grounds upon which those theories proceed.

Considering that Plato’s period of philosophical composition extended over fifty years, and that the circumstances of his life are most imperfectly known to us — it is surely hazardous to limit the range of his varieties, on the faith of a critical repugnance, not merely subjective and fallible, but withal entirely of modern growth: to assume, as basis of reasoning, the admiration raised by a few of the finest dialogues — and then to argue that no composition inferior to this admired type, or unlike to it in doctrine or handling, can possibly be the work of Plato. “The Minos, Theagês, Epistolæ, Epinomis, &c., are unworthy of Plato: nothing so inferior in excellence can have been composed by him. No dialogue can be admitted as genuine which contradicts another dialogue, or which advocates any low or incorrect or un-Platonic doctrine. No dialogue can pass which is adverse to the general purpose of Plato as an improver of morality, and a teacher of the doctrine of Ideas.” On such grounds as these we are called upon to reject various dialogues: and there is nothing upon which, generally speaking, so much stress is laid as upon inferior excellence. For my part, I cannot recognise any of them as sufficient grounds of exception. I have no difficulty in believing, not merely that Plato (like Aristophanes) produced many successive novelties, “not at all similar one to the other, and all clever”[73] — but also that among these novelties, there were inferior dialogues as well as superior: that in different dialogues he worked out different, even contradictory, points of view — and among them some which critics declare to be low and objectionable: that we have among his works unfinished fragments and abandoned sketches, published without order, and perhaps only after his death.

[73] Aristophan. Nubes, 547-8.

Ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ καινὰς ἰδέας εἰσφέρων σοφίζομαι, Οὐδὲν ἀλλήλαισιν ὁμοίας, καὶ πάσας δεξιάς.

Opinions of Schleiermacher, tending to show this.

It may appear strange, but it is true, that Schleiermacher, the leading champion of Plato’s central purpose and systematic unity from the beginning, lays down a doctrine to the same effect. He says, “Truly, nothing can be more preposterous, than when people demand that all the works even of a great master shall be of equal perfection — or that such as are not equal, shall be regarded as not composed by him”. Zeller expresses himself in the same manner, and with as little reserve.[74] These eminent critics here proclaim a general rule which neither they nor others follow out.

[74] Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Menon, vol. iii. p. 337. “Und wahrlich, nichts ist wohl wunderlicher, als wenn man verlangt, dass alle Werke auch eines grossen Meisters von gleicher Volkommenheit seyn sollten — oder die es nicht sind, soll er nicht verfertigt haben.”

Compare Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., vol. ii. p. 322, ed. 2nd.

It is to be remembered that this opinion of Schleiermacher refers only to completed works of the same master. You are not authorised in rejecting any completed work as spurious, on the ground that it is not equal in merit to some other. Still less, then, are you authorised in rejecting, on the like ground, an uncompleted work — a professed fragment, or a preliminary sketch. Of this nature are several of the minor items in the Thrasyllean canon.

M. Boeckh, in his Commentary on the dialogue called Minos, has assigned the reasons which induce him to throw out that dialogue, together with the Hipparchus, from the genuine works of Plato (and farther to consider both of them, and the pseudo-Platonic dialogues De Justo and De Virtute, as works of Σίμων ὁ σκυτεύς: with this latter hypothesis I have here no concern). He admits fully that the Minos is of the Platonic age and irreproachable in style — “veteris esse et Attici scriptoris, probus sermo, antiqui mores totus denique character, spondent” (p. 32). Next, he not only admits that it is like Plato, but urges the too great likeness to Plato as one of the points of his case. He says that it is a bad, stupid, and unskilful imitation of different Platonic dialogues: “Pergamus ad alteram partem nostræ argumentationis, eamque etiam firmiorem, de nimiâ similitudine Platonicorum aliquot locorum. Nam de hoc quidem conveniet inter omnes doctos et indoctos, Platonem se ipsum haud posse imitari: ni forté quis dubitet de sanâ ejus mente” (p. 23). In the sense which Boeckh intends, I agree that Plato did not imitate himself: in another sense, I think that he did. I mean that his consummate compositions were preceded by shorter, partial, incomplete sketches, which he afterwards worked up, improved, and re-modelled. I do not understand how Plato could have composed such works as Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposion, Phædrus, Phædon, &c., without having before him many of these preparatory sketches. That some of these sketches should have been preserved is what we might naturally expect; and I believe Minos and Hipparchus to be among them. I do not wonder that they are of inferior merit. One point on which Boeckh (pp. 7, 8) contends that Hipparchus and Minos are unlike to Plato is, that the collocutor with Sokrates is anonymous. But we find anonymous talkers in the Protagoras, Sophistês, Politikus, and Leges.

I find elsewhere in Schleiermacher, another opinion, not less important, in reference to disallowance of dialogues, on purely internal grounds. Take the Gorgias and the Protagoras: both these two dialogues are among the most renowned of the catalogue: both have escaped all suspicion as to legitimacy, even from Ast and Socher, the two boldest of all disfranchising critics. In the Protagoras, Sokrates maintains an elaborate argument to prove, against the unwilling Protagoras, that the Good is identical with the Pleasurable, and the Evil identical with the Painful — in the Gorgias, Sokrates holds an argument equally elaborate, to show that Good is essentially different from Pleasurable, Evil from Painful. What the one affirms, the other denies. Moreover, Schleiermacher himself characterises the thesis vindicated by Sokrates in the Protagoras, as “entirely un-Sokratic and un-Platonic”.[75] If internal grounds of repudiation are held to be available against the Thrasyllean canon, how can such grounds exist in greater force than those which are here admitted to bear against the Protagoras — That it exhibits Sokrates as contradicting the Sokrates of the Gorgias — That it exhibits him farther as advancing and proving, at great length, a thesis “entirely un-Sokratic and un-Platonic”? Since the critics all concur in disregarding these internal objections, as insufficient to raise even a suspicion against the Protagoras, I cannot concur with them when they urge the like objections as valid and irresistible against other dialogues.

[75] Schleiermacher, Einl. zum Protag. vol. i. p. 232. “Jene ganz unsokratische und unplatonische Ansicht, dass das Gute nichts anderes ist als das Angenehme.”

So also, in the Parmenides, we find a host of unsolved objections against the doctrine of Ideas; upon which in other dialogues Plato so emphatically insists. Accordingly, Socher, resting upon this discrepancy as an “internal ground,” declares the Parmenides not to be the work of Plato. But the other critics refuse to go along with this inference. I think they are right in so refusing. But this only shows how little such internal grounds are to be trusted, as evidence to prove spuriousness.

I may add, as farther illustrating this point, that there are few dialogues in the list against which stronger objections on internal grounds can be brought, than Leges and Menexenus. Yet both of them stand authenticated, beyond all reasonable dispute, as genuine works of Plato, not merely by the Canon of Thrasyllus, but also by the testimony of Aristotle.[76]

[76] See Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 384: and still more, Zeller, Plat. Studien, pp. 1-131, Tübingen, 1839. In that treatise, where Zeller has set forth powerfully the grounds for denying the genuineness of the Leges, he relied so much upon the strength of this negative case, as to discredit the direct testimony of Aristotle affirming the Leges to be genuine. In his Phil. d. Griech. Zeller altered this opinion, and admitted the Leges to be genuine. But Strümpell adheres to the earlier opinion given by Zeller, and maintains that the partial recantation is noway justified. (Gesch. d. Prakt. Phil. d. Griech. p. 457.)

Suckow mentions (Form der Plat. Schriften, 1855, p. 135) that Zeller has in a subsequent work reverted to his former opinion, denying the genuineness of the Leges. Suckow himself denies it also; relying not merely on the internal objections against it, but also on a passage of Isokrates (ad Philippum, p. 84), which he considers to sanction his opinion, but which (in my judgment) entirely fails to bear him out.

Suckow attempts to show (p. 55), and Ueberweg partly countenances the same opinion, that the two passages in which Aristotle alludes to the Menexenus (Rhet. i. 9, 30; iii. 14, 11) do not prove that he (Aristotle) considered it as a work of Plato, because he mentions the name of Sokrates only, and not that of Plato. But this is to require from a witness such precise specification as we cannot reasonably expect. Aristotle, alluding to the Menexenus, says, Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ: just as, in alluding to the Gorgias in another place (Sophist. Elench. 12, p. 173), he says, Καλλικλῆς ἐν τῷ Γοργίᾳ: and again, in alluding to the Phædon, ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης (De Gen. et Corrupt. ii. 9, p. 335): not to mention his allusions in the Politica to the Platonic Republic, under the name of Sokrates. No instance can be produced in which Aristotle cites any Sokratic dialogue, composed by Antisthenes, Æschines, &c., or any other of the Sokratic companions except Plato. And when we read in Aristotle’s Politica (ii. 3, 3) the striking compliment paid — Τὸ μὲν οὖν περιττὸν ἔχουσι πάντες οἱ τοῦ Σωκράτους λόγοι, καὶ τὸ κομψόν, καὶ τὸ καινότομον, καὶ τὸ ζητητικόν· καλῶς δὲ πάντα ἴσως χαλεπόν — we cannot surely imagine that he intends to designate any other dialogues than those composed by Plato.

Any true theory of Plato must recognise all his varieties, and must be based upon all the works in the Canon, not upon some to the exclusion of the rest.

While adhering therefore to the Canon of Thrasyllus, I do not think myself obliged to make out that Plato is either like to himself, or equal to himself, or consistent with himself, throughout all the dialogues included therein, and throughout the period of fifty years during which these dialogues were composed. Plato is to be found in all and each of the dialogues, not in an imaginary type abstracted from some to the exclusion of the rest. The critics reverence so much this type of their own creation, that they insist on bringing out a result consistent with it, either by interpretation specially contrived, or by repudiating what will not harmonise. Such sacrifice of the inherent diversity, and separate individuality, of the dialogues, to the maintenance of a supposed unity of type, style, or purpose, appears to me an error. In fact,[77] there exists, for us, no personal Plato any more than there is a personal Shakespeare. Plato (except in the Epistolæ) never appears before us, nor gives us any opinion as his own: he is the unseen prompter of different characters who converse aloud in a number of distinct dramas — each drama a separate work, manifesting its own point of view, affirmative or negative, consistent or inconsistent with the others, as the case may be. In so far as I venture to present a general view of one who keeps constantly in the dark — who delights to dive, and hide himself, not less difficult to catch than the supposed Sophist in his own dialogue called Sophistês — I shall consider it as subordinate to the dialogues, each and all: and above all, it must be such as to include and acknowledge not merely diversities, but also inconsistencies and contradictions.[78]

[77] The only manifestation of the personal Plato is in the Epistolæ. I have already said that I accept these as genuine, though most critics do not. I consider them valuable illustrations of his character, as far as they go. They are all written after he was more than sixty years of age. And most of them relate to his relations with Dionysius the younger, with Dion, and with Sicilian affairs generally. This was a peculiar and outlying phase of Plato’s life, during which (through the instigation of Dion, and at the sacrifice of his own peace of mind) he became involved in the world of political action: he had to deal with real persons, passions, and interests — with the feeble character, literary velleities, and jealous apprehensions of Dionysius — the reforming vehemence and unpopular harshness of Dion — the courtiers, the soldiers, and the people of Syracuse, all moved by different passions of which he had had no practical experience. It could not be expected that, amidst such turbulent elements, Plato as an adviser could effect much: yet I do not think that he turned his chances, doubtful as they were, to the best account. I have endeavoured to show this in the tenth volume of my History of Greece, c. 84. But at all events, these operations lay apart from Plato’s true world — the speculation, dialectic, and lectures of the Academy at Athens. The Epistolæ, however, present some instructive points, bearing upon Plato’s opinions about writing as a medium of philosophical communication and instruction to learners, which I shall notice in the suitable place.

[78] I transcribe from the instructive work of M. Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’Averroïsme, a passage in which he deprecates the proceeding of critics who presume uniform consistency throughout the works of Aristotle, and make out their theory partly by forcible exegesis, partly by setting aside as spurious all those compositions which oppose them. The remark applies more forcibly to the dialogues or Plato, who is much less systematic than Aristotle:—

“On a combattu l’interprétation d’Ibn-Rosehd (Averroès), et soutenu que l’intellect actif n’est pour Aristote qu’une faculté de l’ame. L’intellect passif n’est alors que la faculté de recevoir les φαντάσματα: l’intellect actif n’est que l’induction s’exerçant sur les φαντάσματα et en tirant les idées générales. Ainsi l’on fait concorder la théorie exposée dans le troisième livre du Traité de l’Ame, avec celle des Seconds Analytiques, où Aristote semble réduire le rôle de la raison à l’induction généralisant les faits de la sensation. Certes, je ne me dissimule pas qu’Aristote paraît souvent envisager le νοῦς comme personnel à l’homme. Son attention constante à repéter que l’intellect est identique à l’intelligible, que l’intellect passe à l’acte quand il devient l’objet qu’il pense, est difficile à concilier avec l’hypothèse d’un intellect séparé de l’homme. Mais il est dangereux de faire ainsi coincider de force les différents aperçus des anciens. Les anciens philosophaient souvent sans se limiter dans un système, traitant le même sujet selon les points de vue qui s’offraient à eux, ou qui leur étaient offerts par les écoles antérieures, sans s’inquiéter des dissonances qui pouvaient exister entre ces divers tronçons de théorie. Il est puéril de chercher à les mettre d’accord avec eux-mêmes, quand eux-mêmes s’en sont peu souciés. Autant vaudrait, comme certains critiques Allemands, déclarer interpolés tous les passages que l’on ne peut concilier avec les autres. Ainsi, la théorie des Seconds Analytiques et celles du troisième livre de l’Ame, sans se contredire expressément, représentent deux aperçus profondément distincts et d’origine différente, sur le fait de l’intelligence.” (Averroès et l’Averroïsme, p. 96-98, Paris, 1852.)

There is also in Strümpell (Gesch. der Prakt. Phil. der Griech. vor Aristot. p. 200) a good passage to the same purpose as the above from M. Renan: disapproving this presumption, — that the doctrines of every ancient philosopher must of course be systematic and coherent with each other — as “a phantom of modern times”: and pointing out that both Plato and Aristotle founded their philosophy, not upon any one governing ἀρχὴ alone, from which exclusively consequences are deduced, but upon several distinct, co-ordinate, independent, points of view: each of which is by turns followed out, not always consistently with the others.

CHAPTER VIII.

PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

Variety and abundance visible in Plato’s writings.

On looking through the collection of works enumerated in the Thrasyllean Canon, the first impression made upon us respecting the author is, that which is expressed in the epithets applied to him by Cicero — “varius et multiplex et copiosus”. Such epithets bring before us the variety in Plato’s points of view and methods of handling — the multiplicity of the topics discussed — the abundance of the premisses and illustrations suggested:[1] comparison being taken with other literary productions of the same age. It is scarcely possible to find any one predicate truly applicable to all of Plato’s works. Every predicate is probably true in regard to some:—none in regard to all.

[1] The rhetor Aristeides, comparing Plato with Æschines (i.e. Æschines Socraticus, disciple of Sokrates also), remarks that Æschines was more likely to report what Sokrates really said, from being inferior in productive imagination. Plato (as he truly says Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 295, Dindorf) τῆς φύσεως χρῆται περιουσίᾳ, &c.

Plato both sceptical and dogmatical.

Several critics of antiquity considered Plato as essentially a sceptic — that is, a Searcher or Enquirer, not reaching any assured or proved result. They denied to him the character of a dogmatist: they maintained that he neither established nor enforced any affirmative doctrines.[2] This latter statement is carried too far. Plato is sceptical in some dialogues, dogmatical in others. And the catalogue of Thrasyllus shows that the sceptical dialogues (Dialogues of Search or Investigation) are more numerous than the dogmatical (Dialogues of Exposition) — as they are also, speaking generally, more animated and interesting.

[2] Diogen. Laert. iii. 52. Prolegom. Platon. Philosoph. c. 10, vol. vi. 205, of K. F. Hermann’s edition of Plato.

Poetical vein predominant in some compositions, but not in all.

Again, Aristotle declared the writing of Plato to be something between poetry and prose, and even the philosophical doctrine of Plato respecting Ideas, to derive all its apparent plausibility from poetic metaphors. The affirmation is true, up to a certain point. Many of the dialogues display an exuberant vein of poetry, which was declared — not by Aristotle alone, but by many other critics contemporary with Plato — to be often misplaced and excessive — and which appeared the more striking because the dialogues composed by the other Sokratic companions were all of them plain and unadorned.[3] The various mythes, in the Phædrus and elsewhere, are announced expressly as soaring above the conditions of truth and logical appreciation. Moreover, we find occasionally an amount of dramatic vivacity, and of artistic antithesis between the speakers introduced, which might have enabled Plato, had he composed for the drama as a profession, to contend with success for the prizes at the Dionysiac festivals. But here again, though this is true of several dialogues, it is not true of others. In the Parmenidês, Timæus, and the Leges, such elements will be looked for in vain. In the Timæus, they are exchanged for a professed cosmical system, including much mystic and oracular affirmation, without proof to support it, and without opponents to test it: in the Leges, for ethical sermons, and religious fulminations, proclaimed by a dictatorial authority.

[3] See Dionys. Hal. Epist. ad Cn. Pomp. 756, De Adm. Vi Dic. Dem. 956, where he recognises the contrast between Plato and τὸ Σωκρατικὸν διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν. His expression is remarkable: Ταῦτα γὰρ οἵ τε κατ’ αὐτὸν γενόμενοι πάντες ἐπιτιμῶσιν ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα οὐδὲν δεῖ με λέγειν. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 761; also 757. See also Diog. L. iii. 37; Aristotel. Metaph. A. 991, a. 22.

Cicero and Quintilian say the same about Plato’s style: “Multum supra prosam orationem, et quam pedestrem Græci vocant, surgit: ut mihi non hominis ingenio, sed quodam Delphico videatur oraculo instinctus”. Quintil. x. 1, 81. Cicero, Orator, c. 20. Lucian, Piscator, c. 22.

Sextus Empiricus designates the same tendency under the words τὴν Πλάτωνος ἀνειδωλοποίησιν. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. 189.

The Greek rhetors of the Augustan age — Dionysius of Halikarnassus and Kækilius of Kalaktê — not only blamed the style of Plato for excessive, overstrained, and misplaced metaphor, but Kækilius goes so far as to declare a decided preference for Lysias over Plato. (Dionys. Hal. De Vi Demosth. pp. 1025-1037, De Comp. Verb. p. 196 R; Longinus, De Sublimitat. c. 32.) The number of critics who censured the manner and doctrine of Plato (critics both contemporary with him and subsequent) was considerable (Dionys. H. Ep. ad Pomp. p. 757). Dionysius and the critics of his age had before their eyes the contrast of the Asiatic style of rhetoric, prevalent in their time, with the Attic style represented by Demosthenes and Lysias. They wished to uphold the force and simplicity of the Attic, against the tumid, wordy, pretensive Asiatic: and they considered the Phædrus, with other compositions of Plato, as falling under the same censure with the Asiatic. See Theoph. Burckhardt, Cæcili Rhet. Frag., Berlin, 1863, p. 15.

Form of dialogue — universal to this extent, that Plato never speaks in his own name.

One feature there is, which is declared by Schleiermacher and others to be essential to all the works of Plato — the form of dialogue. Here Schleiermacher’s assertion, literally taken, is incontestable. Plato always puts his thoughts into the mouth of some spokesman: he never speaks in his own name. All the works of Plato which we possess (excepting the Epistles, and the Apology, which last I consider to be a report of what Sokrates himself said) are dialogues. But under this same name, many different realities are found to be contained. In the Timæus and Kritias the dialogue is simply introductory to a continuous exposition — in the Menexenus, to a rhetorical discourse: while in the Leges, and even in Sophistês, Politikus, and others, it includes no antithesis nor interchange between two independent minds, but is simply a didactic lecture, put into interrogatory form, and broken into fragments small enough for the listener to swallow at once: he by his answer acknowledging the receipt. If therefore the affirmation of Schleiermacher is intended to apply to all the Platonic compositions, we must confine it to the form, without including the spirit, of dialogue.

No one common characteristic pervading all Plato’s works.

It is in truth scarcely possible to resolve all the diverse manifestations of the Platonic mind into one higher unity; or to predicate, about Plato as an intellectual person, anything which shall be applicable at once to the Protagoras, Gorgias, Parmenidês, Phædrus, Symposion, Philêbus, Phædon, Republic, Timæus, and Leges. Plato was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and inquisitor, mathematician, philosopher, poet (erotic as well as satirical), rhetor, artist — all in one:[4] or at least, all in succession, throughout the fifty years of his philosophical life. At one time his exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, manifesting itself in a string of ingenious doubts and unsolved contradictions: at another time, he is full of theological antipathy against those who libel Helios and Selênê, or who deny the universal providence of the Gods: here, we have unqualified confessions of ignorance, and protestations against the false persuasion of knowledge, as alike widespread and deplorable — there, we find a description of the process of building up the Kosmos from the beginning, as if the author had been privy to the inmost purposes of the Demiurgus. In one dialogue the erotic fever is in the ascendant, distributed between beautiful youths and philosophical concepts, and confounded with a religious inspiration and furor which supersedes and transcends human sobriety (Phædrus): in another, all vehement impulses of the soul are stigmatised and repudiated, no honourable scope being left for anything but the calm and passionless Nous (Philêbus, Phædon). Satire is exchanged for dithyramb, and mythe, and one ethical point of view for another (Protagoras, Gorgias). The all-sufficient dramatising power of the master gives full effect to each of these multifarious tendencies. On the whole — to use a comparison of Plato himself[5] — the Platonic sum total somewhat resembles those fanciful combinations of animals imagined in the Hellenic mythology — an aggregate of distinct and disparate individualities, which look like one because they are packed in the same external wrapper.

[4] Dikæarchus affirmed that Plato was a compound of Sokrates with Pythagoras. Plutarch calls him also a compound of Sokrates with Lykurgus. (Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 2, p. 718 B.)

Nemesius the Platonist (Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiv. 5-7-8) repeats the saying of Dikæarchus, and describes Plato as midway between Pythagoras and Sokrates; μεσεύων Πυθαγόρου καὶ Σωκράτους. No three persons could be more disparate than Lykurgus, Pythagoras, and Sokrates. But there are besides various other attributes of Plato, which are not included under either of the heads of this tripartite character.

The Stoic philosopher Sphærus composed a work in three books — Περὶ Λυκούργου καὶ Σωκράτους — (Diog. La. vii. 178). He probably compared therein the Platonic Republic with the Spartan constitution and discipline.

[5] Plato, Republ. ix. 588 C. Οἷαι μυθολογοῦνται παλαιαὶ γενέσθαι φύσεις, ἥ τε Χιμαίρας καὶ ἡ Σκύλλης καὶ Κερβέρου, καὶ ἄλλαι τινὲς συχναὶ λέγονται ξυμπεφυκυῖαι ἰδέαι πολλαὶ εἰς ἓν γενέσθαι … Περίπλασον δὴ αὐτοῖς ἔξωθεν ἑνὸς εἰκόνα, τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ὥστε τῷ μὴ δυναμένῳ τὰ ἐντὸς ὁρᾷν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἔξω μόνον ἔλυτρον ὁρῶντι, ἓν ζῶον φαίνεσθαι — ἄνθρωπον.

The real Plato was not merely a writer of dialogues, but also lecturer and president of a school. In this last important function he is scarcely at all known to us. Notes of his lectures taken by Aristotle.

Furthermore, if we intend to affirm anything about Plato as a whole, there is another fact which ought to be taken into account.[6] We know him only from his dialogues, and from a few scraps of information. But Plato was not merely a composer of dialogues. He was lecturer, and chief of a school, besides. The presidency of that school, commencing about 386 B.C., and continued by him with great celebrity for the last half (nearly forty years) of his life, was his most important function. Among his contemporaries he must have exercised greater influence through his school than through his writings.[7] Yet in this character of school-teacher and lecturer, he is almost unknown to us: for the few incidental allusions which have descended to us, through the Aristotelian commentators, only raise curiosity without satisfying it. The little information which we possess respecting Plato’s lectures, relates altogether to those which he delivered upon the Ipsum Bonum or Summum Bonum at some time after Aristotle became his pupil — that is, during the last eighteen years of Plato’s life. Aristotle and other hearers took notes of these lectures: Aristotle even composed an express work now lost (De Bono or De Philosophiâ), reporting with comments of his own these oral doctrines of Plato, together with the analogous doctrines of the Pythagoreans. We learn that Plato gave continuous lectures, dealing with the highest and most transcendental concepts (with the constituent elements or factors of the Platonic Ideas or Ideal Numbers: the first of these factors being The One — the second, The Indeterminate Dyad, or The Great and Little, the essentially indefinite), and that they were mystic and enigmatical, difficult to understand.[8]

[6] Trendelenburg not only adopts Schleiermacher’s theory of a preconceived and systematic purpose connecting together all Plato’s dialogues, but even extends this purpose to Plato’s oral lectures: “Id pro certo habendum est. sicut prioribus dialogis quasi præeparat (Plato) posteriores, posterioribus evolvit priores — ita et in scholis continuasse dialogos; quæ reliquerit, absolvisse; atque omnibus ad summa principia perductis, intima quasi semina aperuisse”. (Trendelenburg, De Ideis et Numeris Platonis, p. 6.)

This opinion is surely not borne out — it seems even contradicted — by all the information which we possess (very scanty indeed) about the Platonic lectures. Plato delivered therein his Pythagorean doctrines, merging his Ideas in the Pythagorean numerical symbols: and Aristotle, far from considering this as a systematic and intended evolution of doctrine at first imperfectly unfolded, treats it as an additional perversion and confusion, introduced into a doctrine originally erroneous. In regard to the transition of Plato from the doctrine of Ideas to that of Ideal Numbers, see Aristotel. Metaphys. M. 1078, b. 9, 1080, a. 12 (with the commentary of Bonitz, pp. 539-541), A. 987, b. 20.

M. Boeckh, too, accounts for the obscure and enigmatical speaking of Plato in various dialogues, by supposing that he cleared up all the difficulties in his oral lectures. “Platon deutet nur an — spricht meinethalben räthselhaft (in den Gesetzen); aber gerade so räthselhaft spricht er von diesen Sachen im Timaeus: er pflegt mathematische Theoreme nur anzudeuten, nicht zu entwickeln: ich glaube, weil er sie in den Vorträgen ausführte,” &c. (Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, p. 50.)

This may be true about the mathematical theorems; but I confess that I see no proof of it. Though Plato admits that his doctrine in the Timæus is ἀήθης λόγος, yet he expressly intimates that the hearers are instructed persons, able to follow him (Timæus, p. 53 C.).

[7] M. Renan, in his work, ‘Averroès et l’Averroïsme,’ pp. 257-325, remarks that several of the Italian professors of philosophy, at Padua and other universities, exercised far greater influence through their lectures than through their published works. He says (p. 325-6) respecting Cremonini (Professor at Padua, 1590-1620):—“Il a été jusqu’ici apprécié d’une manière fort incomplète par les historiens de la philosophie. On ne l’a jugé que par ses écrits imprimés, qui ne sont que des dissertations de peu d’importance, et ne peuvent en aucune manière faire comprendre la renommée colossale à laquelle il parvint. Cremonini n’est qu’un professeur: ses cours sont sa véritable philosophie. Aussi, tandis que ses écrits imprimés se vendaient fort mal, les rédactions de ses leçons se répandaient dans toute l’Italie et même au delà des monts. On sait que les élèves préfèrent souvent aux textes imprimés, les cahiers qu’ils ont ainsi recueillis de la bouche de leurs professeurs.… En général, c’est dans les cahiers, beaucoup plus que dans les sources imprimées, qu’il faut étudier l’école de Padoue. Pour Cremonini, cette tâche est facile; car les copies de ses cours sont innombrables dans le nord de l’Italie.”

[8] Aristotle (Physic. iv. p. 209, b. 34) alludes to τὰ λεγόμενα ἄγραφα δόγματα of Plato, and their discordance on one point with the Timæus.

Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. f. 104 b. p. 362, a. 11, Brandis. Ἀρχὰς γὰρ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν τὸ ἓν καὶ τὴν ἀόριστόν φασι δυάδα λέγειν τὸν Πλάτωνα. Τὴν δὲ ἀόριστον δυάδα καὶ ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς τιθεὶς ἄπειρον εἶναι ἔλεγεν, καὶ τὸ μέγα δὲ καὶ τὸ μικρὸν ἀρχὰς τιθεὶς ἄπειρα εἶναι ἔλεγεν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ λόγοις, οἷς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ Ἡρακλείδης καὶ Ἐστιαῖος καὶ ἄλλοι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἑταῖροι παραγενόμενοι ἀνεγράψαντο τὰ ῥηθέντα, αἰνιγματωδῶς ὡς ἐῤῥήθη· Πορφύριος δὲ διαρθροῦν αὐτὰ ἐπαγγελλόμενος τάδε περὶ αὐτῶν γέγραφεν ἐν τῳ Φιλήβῳ. Compare another passage of the same Scholia, p. 334, b. 28, p. 371, b. 26. Τὰς ἀγράφους συνουσίας τοῦ Πλάτωνος αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης ἀπεγράψατο. 372, a. Τὸ μεθεκτικὸν ἐν μὲν ταῖς περὶ Τἀγαθου συνουσίαις μέγα καὶ μικρὸν ἐκάλει, ἐν δὲ τῷ Τιμαίῳ ὕλην, ἢν καὶ χώραν καὶ τόπον ὠνόμαζε. Comp 371, a. 5, and the two extracts from Simplikius, cited by Zeller, De Hermodoro, pp. 20, 21. By ἄγραφα δόγματα, or ἄγραφοι συνούσιαι, we are to understand opinions or colloquies not written down (or not communicated to others as writings) by Plato himself: thus distinguished from his written dialogues. Aristotle, in the treatise, De Animâ, i. 2, p. 404, b. 18, refers to ἐν τοῖς περὶ Φιλοσοφίας: which Simplikius thus explains περὶ φιλοσοφίας νῦν λέγει τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ἀγαθοῦ αὐτῷ ἐκ τῆς Πλάτωνος ἀναγεγραμμένα συνουσίας, ἐν οἷς ἱστορεῖ τάς τε Πυθαγορείους καὶ Πλατωνικὰς περὶ τῶν ὄντων δόξας. Philoponus reports the same thing: see Trendelenburg’s Comm. on De Animâ, p. 226. Compare Alexand. ad Aristot. Met. A. 992, p. 581, a. 2, Schol. Brandis.

Plato’s lectures De Bono obscure and transcendental. Effect which they produced on the auditors.

One remarkable observation, made upon them by Aristotle, has been transmitted to us.[9] There were lectures announced to be, On the Supreme Good. Most of those who came to hear, expected that Plato would enumerate and compare the various matters usually considered good — i.e. health, strength, beauty, genius, wealth, power, &c. But these hearers were altogether astonished at what they really heard: for Plato omitting the topics expected, descanted only upon arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and told them that The Good was identical with The One (as contrasted with the Infinite or Indeterminate which was Evil).

[9] Aristoxenus, Harmon. ii. p. 30. Καθάπερ Ἀριστοτέλης ἀεὶ διηγεῖτο τοὺς πλείστους τῶν ἀκουσάντων παρὰ Πλάτωνος τὴν περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἀκρόασιν παθεῖν· προσεῖναι γὰρ ἕκαστον ὑπολαμβάνοντα λήψεσθαί τι τῶν νομιζομένων ἀνθρωπίνων ἀγαθῶν· — ὅτε δὲ φανείησαν οἱ λόγοι περὶ μαθημάτων καὶ ἀριθμῶν καὶ γεωμετρίας καὶ ἀστρολογίας, καὶ τὸ πέρας ὅτι ἀγαθόν ἐστιν ἕν, παντελῶς οἶμαι παράδοξον ἐφαίνετο αὐτοῖς.

Compare Themistius, Orat. xxi. p. 245 D. Proklus also alludes to this story, and to the fact that most of the πολὺς καὶ παντοῖος ὄχλος, who were attracted to Plato’s ἀκρόασις περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ, were disappointed or unable to understand him, and went away. (Proklus ad Platon. Parmen. p. 92, Cousin. 528, Stallb.)

They were delivered to miscellaneous auditors. They coincide mainly with what Aristotle states about the Platonic Ideas.

We see farther from this remark:—First, that Plato’s lectures were often above what his auditors could appreciate — a fact which we learn from other allusions also: Next, that they were not confined to a select body of advanced pupils, who had been worked up by special training into a state fit for comprehending them.[10] Had such been the case, the surprise which Aristotle mentions could never have been felt. And we see farther, that the transcendental doctrine delivered in the lectures De Bono (though we find partial analogies to it in Philêbus, Epinomis, and parts of Republic) coincides more with what Aristotle states and comments upon as Platonic doctrine, than with any reasonings which we find in the Platonic dialogues. It represents the latest phase of Platonism: when the Ideas originally conceived by him as Entities in themselves, had become merged or identified in his mind with the Pythagorean numbers or symbols.

[10] Respecting Plato’s lectures, see Brandis (Gesch. der Griech.-Röm. Phil. vol. ii. p. 180 seq., 306-319); also Trendelenburg, Platonis De Ideis et Numeris Doctrina, pp. 3, 4, seq.

Brandis, though he admits that Plato’s lectures were continuous discourses, thinks that they were intermingled with discussion and debate: which may have been the case, though there is no proof of it. But Schleiermacher goes further, and says (Einleitung. p. 18), “Any one who can think that Plato in these oral Vorträgen employed the Sophistical method of long speeches, shows such an ignorance as to forfeit all right of speaking about Plato”. Now the passage from Aristoxenus, given in the preceding note, is our only testimony; and it distinctly indicates a continuous lecture to an unprepared auditory, just as Protagoras or Prodikus might have given. K. F. Hermann protests, with good reason, against Schleiermacher’s opinion. (Ueber Plato’s schriftstellerische Motive, p. 289.)

The confident declaration just produced from Schleiermacher illustrates the unsound basis on which he and various other Platonic critics proceed. They find, in some dialogues of Plato, a strong opinion proclaimed, that continuous discourse is useless for the purpose of instruction. This was a point of view which, at the time when he composed these dialogues, he considered to be of importance, and desired to enforce. But we are not warranted in concluding that he must always have held the same conviction throughout his long philosophical life, and in rejecting as un-platonic all statements and all compositions which imply an opposite belief. We cannot with reason bind down Plato to a persistence in one and the same type of compositions.

The lectures De Bono may perhaps have been more transcendental than Plato’s other lectures.

This statement of Aristotle, alike interesting and unquestionable, attests the mysticism and obscurity which pervaded Plato’s doctrine in his later years. But whether this lecture on The Good is to be taken as a fair specimen of Plato’s lecturing generally, and from the time when he first began to lecture, we may perhaps doubt:[11] since we know that as a lecturer and converser he acquired extraordinary ascendency over ardent youth. We see this by the remarkable instance of Dion.[12]

[11] Themistius says (Orat. xxi. p. 245 D) that Plato sometimes lectured in the Peiræus, and that a crowd then collected to hear him, not merely from the city, but also from the country around: if he lectured De Bono, however, the ordinary hearers became tired and dispersed, leaving only τοὺς συνήθεις ὁμιλητάς.

It appears that Plato in his lectures delivered theories on the principles of geometry. He denied the reality of geometrical points — or at least admitted them only as hypotheses for geometrical reasoning. He maintained that what others called a point ought to be called “an indivisible line”. Xenokrates maintained the same doctrine after him. Aristotle controverts it (see Metaphys. A., 992, b. 20). Aristotle’s words citing Plato’s opinion (τούτῳ μὲν οὖν τῷ γένει καὶ διεμάχετο Πλάτων ὡς ὄντι γεωμετρικῷ δόγματι, ἀλλ’ ἐκάλει ἀρχὴν γραμμῆς· τοῦτο δὲ πολλάκις ἐτίθει τὰς ἀτόμους γραμμάς) must be referred to Plato’s oral lectures; no such opinion occurs in the dialogues. This is the opinion both of Bonitz and Schwegler in their comments on the passage: also of Trendelenburg, De Ideis et Numeris Platonis, p. 66. That geometry and arithmetic were matters of study and reflection both to Plato himself and to many of his pupils in the Academy, appears certain; and perhaps Plato may have had an interior circle of pupils, to which he applied the well-known exclusion — μηδεὶς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω. But we cannot make out clearly what was Plato’s own proficiency, or what improvements he may have introduced, in geometry, nor what there is to justify the comparison made by Montucla between Plato and Descartes. In the narrative respecting the Delian problem — the duplication of the cube — Archytas, Menæchmus, and Eudoxus, appear as the inventors of solutions, Plato as the superior who prescribes and criticises (see the letter and epigram of Eratosthenes: Bernhardy, Eratosthenica, pp. 176-184). The three are said to have been blamed by Plato for substituting instrumental measurement in place of geometrical proof (Plutarch, Problem. Sympos. viii. 2, pp. 718, 719; Plutarch, Vit. Marcelli, c. 14). The geometrical construction of the Κόσμος, which Plato gives us in the Timæus, seems borrowed from the Pythagoreans, though applied probably in a way peculiar to himself (see Finger, De Primordiis Geometriæ ap. Græcos, p. 38, Heidelb. 1831).

[12] See Epist. vii. pp. 327, 328.

Plato’s Epistles — in them only he speaks in his own person.

The only occasions on which we have experience of Plato as speaking in his own person, and addressing himself to definite individuals, are presented by his few Epistles; all of them (as I have before remarked) written after he he was considerably above sixty years of age, and nearly all addressed to Sicilians or Italians — Dionysius II., Dion, the friends of Dion after the death of the latter, and Archytas.[13] In so far as these letters bear upon Plato’s manner of lecturing or teaching, they go to attest, first, his opinion that direct written exposition was useless for conveying real instruction to the reader — next, his reluctance to publish any such exposition under his own name, and carrying with it his responsibility. When asked for exposition, he writes intentionally with mystery, so that ordinary persons cannot understand.

[13] Of the thirteen Platonic Epistles, Ep. 2, 3, 13, are addressed to the second or younger Dionysius; Ep. 4 to Dion; Ep. 7, 8, to the friends and relatives of Dion after Dion’s death. The 13th Epistle appears to be the earliest of all, being seemingly written after the first voyage of Plato to visit Dionysius II. at Syracuse, in 367-366 B.C., and before his second visit to the same place and person, about 363-362 B.C. Epistles 2 and 3 were written after his return from that second visit, in 360 B.C., and prior to the expedition of Dion against Dionysius in 357 B.C. Epistle 4 was written to Dion shortly after Dion’s victorious career at Syracuse, about 355 B.C. Epistles 7 and 8 were written not long after the murder of Dion in 354 B.C. The first in order, among the Platonic Epistles, is not written by Plato, but by Dion, addressed to Dionysius, shortly after the latter had sent Dion away from Syracuse. The fifth is addressed by Plato to the Macedonian prince Perdikkas. The sixth, to Hermeias of Atarneus, Erastus, and Koriskus. The ninth and twelfth, to Archytas of Tarentum. The tenth, to Aristodôrus. The eleventh, to Laodamas. I confess that I see nothing in these letters which compels me to depart from the judgment of the ancient critics, who unanimously acknowledged them as genuine. I do not think myself competent to determine à priori what the style of Plato’s letters must have been; what topics he must have touched upon, and what topics he could not have touched upon. I have no difficulty in believing that Plato, writing a letter on philosophy, may have expressed himself with as much mysticism and obscurity as we now read in Epist. 2 and 7. Nor does it surprise me to find Plato (in Epist. 13) alluding to details which critics, who look upon him altogether as a spiritual person, disallow as mean and unworthy. His recommendation of the geometer, Helikon of Kyzikus, to Dionysius and Archytas, is to me interesting: to make known the theorems of Eudoxus, through the medium of Helikon, to Archytas, was no small service to geometry in those days. I have an interest in learning how Plato employed the money given to him by Dionysius and other friends: that he sent to Dionysius a statue of Apollo by a good Athenian sculptor named Leochares (this sculptor executed a bust of Isokrates also, Plut. Vit. x. Orat. p. 838); and another statue by the same sculptor for the wife of Dionysius, in gratitude for the care which she had taken of him (Plato) when sick at Syracuse; that he spent the money of Dionysius partly in discharging his own public taxes and liturgies at Athens, partly in providing dowries for poor maidens among his friends; that he was so beset by applications, which he could not refuse, for letters of recommendation to Dionysius, as to compel him to signify, by a private mark, to Dionysius, which among the letters he wished to be most attended to. “These latter” (he says) “I shall begin with θεὸς (sing. number), the others I shall begin with θεοὶ (plural).” (Epist. xiii. 361, 362, 363.)

Intentional obscurity of his Epistles in reference to philosophical doctrine.

Knowing as we do that he had largely imbued himself with the tenets of the Pythagoreans (who designedly adopted a symbolical manner of speaking — published no writings — for Philolaus is cited as an exception to their rule — and did not care to be understood, except by their own adepts after a long apprenticeship) we cannot be surprised to find Plato holding a language very similar. He declares that the highest principles of his philosophy could not be set forth in writing so as to be intelligible to ordinary persons: that they could only be apprehended by a few privileged recipients, through an illumination kindled in the mind by multiplied debates and much mental effort: that such illumination was always preceded by a painful feeling of want, usually long-continued, sometimes lasting for nearly thirty years, and exchanged at length for relief at some unexpected moment.[14]

[14] Plato, Epist. ii. pp. 313, 314.

Plato during his second visit had had one conversation, and only one, with Dionysius respecting the higher mysteries of philosophy. He had impressed upon Dionysius the prodigious labour and difficulty of attaining truth upon these matters. The despot professed to thirst ardently for philosophy, and the conversation turned upon the Natura Primi — upon the first and highest principles of Nature.[15] Dionysius, after this conversation with Plato, intimated that he had already conceived in his own mind the solution of these difficulties, and the truth upon philosophy in its greatest mysteries. Upon which Plato expressed his satisfaction that such was the case,[16] so as to relieve him from the necessity of farther explanations, though the like had never happened to him with any previous hearer.

[15] Plat. Epist. ii. 312: περὶ τῆς τοῦ πρώτον φύσεως. Epist. vii. 344: τῶν περὶ φύσεως ἄκρων καὶ πρώτων. — One conversation only — Epist. vii. 345.

[16] Plato, Epist. ii. 313 B. Plato asserts the same about Dionysius in Epist. vii. 341 B.

Letters of Plato to Dionysius II. about philosophy. His anxiety to confine philosophy to discussion among select and prepared minds.

But Dionysius soon found that he could not preserve the explanation in his mind, after Plato’s departure — that difficulties again crowded upon him — and that it was necessary to send a confidential messenger to Athens to entreat farther elucidations. In reply, Plato sends back by the messenger what is now numbered as the second of his Epistles. He writes avowedly in enigmatical language, so that, if the letter be lost, the finder will not be able to understand it; and he enjoins Dionysius to burn it after frequent perusal.[17] He expresses his hope that when Dionysius has debated the matter often with the best minds near him, the clouds will clear away of themselves, and the moment of illumination will supervene.[18] He especially warns Dionysius against talking about these matters to unschooled men, who will be sure to laugh at them; though by minds properly prepared, they will be received with the most fervent welcome.[19] He affirms that Dionysius is much superior in philosophical debate to his companions; who were overcome in debate with him, not because they suffered themselves designedly to be overcome (out of flattery towards the despot, as some ill-natured persons alleged), but because they could not defend themselves against the Elenchus as applied by Dionysius.[20] Lastly, Plato advises Dionysius to write down nothing, since what has once been written will be sure to disappear from the memory; but to trust altogether to learning by heart, meditation, and repeated debate, as a guarantee for retention in his mind. “It is for that reason” (Plato says)[21] “that I have never myself written anything upon these subjects. There neither is, nor shall there ever be, any treatise of Plato. The opinions called by the name of Plato are those of Sokrates, in his days of youthful vigour and glory.”

[17] Plat. Epist. ii. 312 E: φραστέον δή σοι δι’ αἰνιγμῶν ἵν ἄν τι ἡ δέλτος ἢ πόντος ἢ γῆς ἐν πτυχαῖς πάθῃ, ὁ ἀναγνοὺς μὴ γνῷ. 314 C: ἔῤῥωσο καὶ πείθου, καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ταύτην νῦν πρῶτον πολλάκις ἀναγνοὺς κατάκαυσον.

Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (pp. 40, 41), remarks the fondness of Plato for τὸ αἰνιγματωδές.

[18] Plat. Epist. ii. 313 D.

[19] Plat. Epist. ii. 314 A. εὐλαβοῦ μέντοι μή ποτε ἐκπέσῃ ταῦτα εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἀπαιδεύτους.

[20] Plat. Epist. ii. 314 D.

[21] Plat. Epist. ii. 314 C. μεγίστη δὲ φυλακὴ τὸ μὴ γράφειν ἀλλ’ ἐκμανθάνειν· οὐ γὰρ ἐστι τὰ γραφέντα μὴ οὐκ ἐκπεσεῖν. διὰ ταῦτα οὐδὲν πώποτ’ ἐγὼ περὶ τούτων γέγραφα, οὔδ’ ἔστι σύγγραμμα Πλάτωνος οὐδὲν οὔδ’ ἔσται· τὰ δὲ νῦν λεγόμενα, Σωκράτους ἐστὶ καλοῦ καὶ νέου γεγονότος.

“Addamus ad superiora” (says Wesseling, Epist. ad Venemam, p. 41, Utrecht, 1748), “Platonem videri semper voluisse, dialogos, in quibus de Philosophiâ, deque Republicâ, atque ejus Legibus, inter confabulantes actum fuit, non sui ingenii sed Socratici, fœtus esse”.

He refuses to furnish any written, authoritative exposition of his own philosophical doctrine.

Such is the language addressed by Plato to the younger Dionysius, in a letter written seemingly between 362-357 B.C. In another letter, written about ten years afterwards (353-352 B.C.) to the friends of Dion (after Dion’s death), he expresses the like repugnance to the idea of furnishing any written authoritative exposition of his principal doctrines. “There never shall be any expository treatise of mine upon them” (he declares). “Others have tried, Dionysius among the number, to write them down; but they do not know what they attempt. I could myself do this better than any one, and I should consider it the proudest deed in my life, as well as a signal benefit to mankind, to bring forward an exposition of Nature luminous to all.[22] But I think the attempt would be nowise beneficial, except to a few, who require only slight direction to enable them to find it for themselves: to most persons it would do no good, but would only fill them with empty conceit of knowledge, and with contempt for others.[23] These matters cannot be communicated in words as other sciences are. Out of repeated debates on them, and much social intercourse, there is kindled suddenly a light in the mind, as from fire bursting forth, which, when once generated, keeps itself alive.”[24]

[22] Plato, Epist. vii. 341, B, C. τί τούτου κάλλιον ἐπέπρακτ’ ἂν ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ βίῳ ἢ τοῖς τε ἀνθρώποισι μέγα ὄφελος γράψαι καὶ τὴν φύσιν εἰς φῶς πᾶσι προαγαγεῖν;

[23] Plat. Epist. vii. 341 E.

[24] Plato, Epist. vii. 341 C. οὔκουν ἐμόν γε περὶ αὐτῶν ἔστι σύγγραμμα οὐδε μή ποτε γένηται· ῥητὸν γὰρ οὐδαμῶς ἐστιν ὡς ἄλλα μαθήματα, ἀλλ’ ἐκ πολλῆς συνουσίας γιγνομένης περὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα αὐτὸ καὶ τοῦ συζῇν, ἐξαίφνης, οἷον ἀπὸ πυρὸς πηδήσαντος ἐξαφθὲν φῶς, ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γενόμενον αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ ἤδη τρέφει.

This sentence, as a remarkable one, I have translated literally in the text: that which precedes is given only in substance.

We see in the Republic that Sokrates, when questioned by Glaukon, and urged emphatically to give some solution respecting ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα and ἡ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι δύναμις, answers only by an evasion or a metaphor (Republic, vi. 506 E, vii. 533 A). Now these are much the same points as what are signified in the letter to Dionysius, under the terms τὰ πρῶτα καὶ ἄκρα τῆς φύσεως — ἡ τοῦ πρώτου φύσις (312 E): as to which Plato, when questioned, replies in a mystic and unintelligible way.

He illustrates his doctrine by the successive stages of geometrical teaching. Difficulty to avoid the creeping in of error at each of these stages.

Plato then proceeds to give an example from geometry, illustrating the uselessness both of writing and of direct exposition. In acquiring a knowledge of the circle, he distinguishes five successive stages. 1. The Name. 2. The Definition, a proposition composed of nouns and verbs. 3. The Diagram. 4. Knowledge, Intelligence, True Opinion, Νοῦς. 5. The Noumenon — Αὐτὸ-Κύκλος — ideal or intelligible circle, the only true object of knowledge.[25] The fourth stage is a purely mental result, not capable of being exposed either in words or figure: it presupposes the three first, but is something distinct from them; and it is the only mental condition immediately cognate and similar to the fifth stage, or the self-existent idea.[26]

[25] Plato, Epist. vii. 342 A, B. The geometrical illustration which follows is intended merely as an illustration, of general principles which Plato asserts to be true about all other enquiries, physical or ethical.

[26] Plat. Epist. vii. 342 C. ὡς δὲ ἓν τοῦτο αὖ πᾶν θετέον, οὐκ ἐν φωναῖς οὐδ’ ἐν σωμάτων σχήμασιν ἀλλ’ ἐν ψυχαῖς ἐνόν, ᾧ δῆλον ἕτερον τε ὂν αὐτοῦ τοῦ κύκλου τῆς φύσεως, τῶν τε ἔμπροσθεν λεχθέντων τριῶν. τούτων δὲ ἐγγύτατα μὲν ξυγγενείᾳ καὶ ὁμοιότητι, τοῦ πέμπτου (i. e. τοῦ Αὐτὸ-κύκλου) νοῦς (the fourth stage) πεπλησίακε, τἄλλα δὲ πλέον ἀπέχει.

In Plato’s reckoning, ὁ νοῦς is counted as the fourth, in the ascending scale, from which we ascend to the fifth, τὸ νοούμενον, or νοητόν. Ὁ νοῦς and τὸ νοητὸν are cognate or homogeneous — according to a principle often insisted on in ancient metaphysics — like must be known by like. (Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2, 404, b. 15.)

Now in all three first stages (Plato says) there is great liability to error and confusion. The name is unavoidably equivocal, uncertain, fluctuating: the definition is open to the same reproach, and often gives special and accidental properties along with the universal and essential, or instead of them: the diagram cannot exhibit the essential without some variety of the accidental, nor without some properties even contrary to reality, since any circle which you draw, instead of touching a straight line in one point alone, will be sure to touch it in several points.[27] Accordingly no intelligent man will embody the pure concepts of his mind in fixed representation, either by words or by figures.[28] If we do this, we have the quid or essence, which we are searching for, inextricably perplexed by accompaniments of the quale or accidents, which we are not searching for.[29] We acquire only a confused cognition, exposing us to be puzzled, confuted, and humiliated, by an acute cross-examiner, when he questions us on the four stages which we have gone through to attain it.[30] Such confusion does not arise from any fault in the mind, but from the defects inherent in each of the four stages of progress. It is only by painful effort, when each of these is naturally good — when the mind itself also is naturally good, and when it has gone through all the stages up and down, dwelling upon each — that true knowledge can be acquired.[31] Persons whose minds are naturally bad, or have become corrupt, morally or intellectually, cannot be taught to see even by Lynkeus himself. In a word, if the mind itself be not cognate to the matter studied, no quickness in learning nor force of memory will suffice. He who is a quick learner and retentive, but not cognate or congenial with just or honourable things — he who, though cognate and congenial, is stupid in learning or forgetful — will never effectually learn the truth about virtue or wickedness.[32] These can only be learnt along with truth and falsehood as it concerns entity generally, by long practice and much time.[33] It is only with difficulty, — after continued friction, one against another, of all the four intellectual helps, names and definitions, acts of sight and sense, — after application of the Elenchus by repeated question and answer, in a friendly temper and without spite — it is only after all these preliminaries, that cognition and intelligence shine out with as much intensity as human power admits.[34]

[27] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 B. This illustrates what is said in the Republic about the geometrical ὑποθέσεις (vi. 510 E, 511 A; vii. 533 B.)

[28] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 A. ὧν ἕνεκα νοῦν ἔχων οὐδεὶς τολμήσει ποτὲ εἰς αὐτὸ τιθέναι τὰ νενοημένα, καὶ ταῦτα εἰς ἀμετακίνητον, ὃ δὴ πάσχει τὰ γεγραμμένα τύποις.

[29] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 C.

[30] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 D.

[31] Plat. Epistol. vii. 343 E. ἡ δὲ διὰ πάντων αὐτῶν διαγωγή, ἄνω καὶ κάτω μεταβαίνουσα ἐφ’ ἕκαστον, μόγις ἐπιστήμην ἐνέτεκεν εὖ πεφυκότος εὖ πεφυκότι.

[32] Plato, Epistol. vii. 344 A.

[33] Plato, Epist. vii. 344 B. ἅμα γὰρ αὐτὰ ἀνάγκη μανθάνειν, καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος ἅμα καὶ ἀληθὲς τῆς ὅλης οὐσίας.

[34] Plat. Epist. vii. 344 B. μόγις δὲ τριβόμενα πρὸς ἄλληλα αὐτῶν ἕκαστα, ὀνόματα καὶ λόγοι, ὄψεις τε καὶ αἰσθήσεις, ἐν εὐμενέσιν ἐλέγχος ἐλεγχόμενα καὶ ἄνευ φθόνων ἐρωτήσεσι καὶ ἀποκρίσεσι χρωμένων, ἐξέλαμψε φρόνησις περὶ ἕκαστον καὶ νοῦς, συντείνων ὅτι μάλιστ’ εἰς δύναμιν ἀνθρωπίνην.

No written exposition can keep clear of these chances of error.

For this reason, no man of real excellence will ever write and publish his views, upon the gravest matters, into a world of spite and puzzling contention. In one word, when you see any published writings, either laws proclaimed by the law-giver or other compositions by others, you may be sure that, if he be himself a man of worth, these were not matters of first-rate importance in his estimation. If they really were so, and if he has published his views in writing, some evil influence must have destroyed his good sense.[35]

[35] Plat. Epist. vii. 344 C-D.

Relations of Plato with Dionysius II. and the friends of the deceased Dion. Pretensions of Dionysius to understand and expound Plato’s doctrines.

We see by these letters that Plato disliked and disapproved the idea of publishing, for the benefit of readers generally, any written exposition of philosophia prima, carrying his own name, and making him responsible for it. His writings are altogether dramatic. All opinions on philosophy are enunciated through one or other of his spokesmen: that portion of the Athenian drama called the Parabasis, in which the Chorus addressed the audience directly and avowedly in the name of the poet, found no favour with Plato. We read indeed in several of his dialogues (Phædon, Republic, Timæus, and others) dogmas advanced about the highest and most recondite topics of philosophy: but then they are all advanced under the name of Sokrates, Timæus, &c. — Οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος, &c. There never was any written programme issued by Plato himself, declaring the Symbolum Fidei to which he attached his own name.[36] Even in the Leges, the most dogmatical of all his works, the dramatic character and the borrowed voice are kept up. Probably at the time when Plato wrote his letter to the friends of the deceased Dion, from which I have just quoted — his aversion to written expositions was aggravated by the fact, that Dionysius II., or some friend in his name, had written and published a philosophical treatise of this sort, passing himself off as editor of a Platonic philosophy, or of improved doctrines of his own built thereupon, from oral communication with Plato.[37] We must remember that Plato himself (whether with full sincerity or not) had complimented Dionysius for his natural ability and aptitude in philosophical debate:[38] so that the pretension of the latter to come forward as an expositor of Plato appears the less preposterous. On the other hand, such pretension was calculated to raise a belief that Dionysius had been among the most favoured and confidential companions of Plato: which belief Plato, writing as he was to the surviving friends of Dion the enemy of Dionysius, is most anxious to remove, while on the other hand he extols the dispositions and extenuates the faults of his friend Dion. It is to vindicate himself from misconception of his own past proceedings, as well as to exhort with regard to the future, that Plato transmits to Sicily his long seventh and eighth Epistles, wherein are embodied his objections against the usefulness of written exposition intended for readers generally.

[36] The Platonic dialogue was in this respect different from the Aristotelian dialogue. Aristotle, in his composed dialogues, introduced other speakers, but delivered the principal arguments in his own name. Cicero followed his example, in the De Finibus and elsewhere: “Quæ his temporibus scripsi, Ἀριστοτέλειον morem habent: in quo sermo ita inducitur cæterorum, ut penes ipsum sit principatus”. (Cic. ad Att. xiii. 19.)

Herakleides of Pontus (Cicero, ibid.), in his composed dialogues, introduced himself as a κωφὸν πρόσωπον. Plato does not even do thus much.

[37] We see this from Epist. vii. 341 B, 344 D, 345 A. Plato speaks of the impression as then prevalent (when he wrote) in the mind of Dionysius:—πότερον Διονύσιος ἀκούσας μόνον ἅπαξ οὕτως εἰδέναι τε οἴεται καὶ ἱκανως οἶδεν, &c.

[38] Plat. Epist. ii. 314 D.

Impossibility of teaching by written exposition assumed by Plato; the assumption intelligible in his day.

These objections (which Plato had often insisted on,[39] and which are also, in part, urged by Sokrates in the Phædrus) have considerable force, if we look to the way in which Plato conceives them. In the first place, Plato conceives the exposition as not merely written but published: as being, therefore, presented to all minds, the large majority being ignorant, unprepared, and beset with that false persuasion of knowledge which Sokrates regarded as universal. In so far as it comes before these latter, nothing is gained, and something is lost; for derision is brought upon the attempt to teach.[40] In the next place, there probably existed, at that time, no elementary work whatever for beginners in any science: the Elements of Geometry by Euclid were published more than a century after Plato’s death, at Alexandria. Now, when Plato says that written expositions, then scarcely known, would be useless to the student — he compares them with the continued presence and conversation of a competent teacher; whom he supposes not to rely upon direct exposition, but to talk much “about and about” the subject, addressing the pupil with a large variety of illustrative interrogations, adapting all that was said to his peculiar difficulties and rate of progress, and thus evoking the inherent cognitive force of the pupil’s own mind. That any Elements of Geometry (to say nothing of more complicated inquiries) could be written and published, such that an ἀγεωμέτρητος might take up the work and learn geometry by means of it, without being misled by equivocal names, bad definitions, and diagrams exhibiting the definition as clothed with special accessories — this is a possibility which Plato contests, and which we cannot wonder at his contesting.[41] The combination of a written treatise, with the oral exposition of a tutor, would have appeared to Plato not only useless but inconvenient, as restraining the full liberty of adaptive interrogation necessary to be exercised, different in the case of each different pupil.

[39] Plato, Epist. vii. 342. λόγος ἀληθής, πολλάκις μὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ πρόσθεν ῥηθείς, &c.

[40] Plato (Epist. ii. 314 A) remarks this expressly: also in the Phædrus, 275 E, 276 A.

Ἄθρει δὴ περισκοπῶν, μή τις τῶν ἀμυήτων ἐπακούσῃ is the language of the Platonic Sokrates as a speaker in the Theætêtus (155 E).

[41] Some just and pertinent remarks, bearing on this subject, are made by Condorcet, in one of his Academic Éloges: “Les livres ne peuvent remplacer les leçons des maîtres habiles, lorsque les sciences n’ont pas encore fait assez de progrès, pour que les vérités, qui en forment l’ensemble, puissent êtres distribuées et rapprochées entre elles suivant un ordre systématique: lorsque la méthode d’en chercher de nouvelles n’a pas été réduite à des procédés exacts et simples, à des règles sûres et précises. Avant cette époque, il faut être déjà consommé dans une science pour lire avec utilité les ouvrages qui en traitent: et comme cette espèce d’enfance de l’art est le temps où les préjugés y regnent avec le plus d’empire, où les savants sont les plus exposés à donner leurs hypothèses pour de véritables principes, on risquerait encore de s’égarer si l’on se bornait aux leçons d’un seul maître, quand même on aurait choisi celui que la renommée place au premier rang; car ce temps est aussi celui des reputations usurpées. Les voyages sont donc alors le seul moyen de s’instruire, comme ils l’étaient dans l’antiquité et avant la découverte de l’imprimerie.” (Condorcet, Éloge de M. Margraaf, p. 349, Œuvres Complets, Paris, 1804. Éloges, vol. ii. Or Ed. Firmin Didot Frères, Paris, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 598-9.)

Standard by which Plato tested the efficacy of the expository process. — Power of sustaining a Sokratic cross-examination.

Lastly, when we see by what standard Plato tests the efficacy of any expository process, we shall see yet more clearly how he came to consider written exposition unavailing. The standard which he applies is, that the learner shall be rendered able both to apply to others, and himself to endure from others, a Sokratic Elenchus or cross-examination as to the logical difficulties involved in all the steps and helps to learning. Unless he can put to others and follow up the detective questions — unless he can also answer them, when put to himself, pertinently and consistently, so as to avoid being brought to confusion or contradiction — Plato will not allow that he has attained true knowledge.[42] Now, if we try knowledge by a test so severe as this, we must admit that no reading of written expositions will enable the student to acquire it. The impression made is too superficial, and the mind is too passive during such a process, to be equal to the task of meeting new points of view, and combating difficulties not expressly noticed in the treatise which has been studied. The only way of permanently arming and strengthening the mind, is (according to Plato) by long-continued oral interchange and stimulus, multiplied comment and discussion from different points of view, and active exercise in dialectic debate: not aiming at victory over an opponent, but reasoning out each question in all its aspects, affirmative and negative. It is only after a long course of such training — the living word of the competent teacher, applied to the mind of the pupil, and stimulating its productive and self-defensive force — that any such knowledge can be realised as will suffice for the exigencies of the Sokratic Elenchus.[43]

[42] Plato, Epist. vii. 343 D. The difficulties which Plato had here in his eye, and which he required to be solved as conditions indispensable to real knowledge — are jumped over in geometrical and other scientific expositions, as belonging not to geometry, &c., but to logic. M. Jouffroy remarks, in the Preface to his translation of Reid’s works (p. clxxiv.):—“Toute science particulière qui, au lieu de prendre pour accordées les données à priori qu’elle implique, discute l’autorité de ces données — ajoute à son objet propre celui de la logique, confond une autre mission avec la sienne, et par cela même compromet la sienne: car nous verrons tout à-l’heure, et l’histoire de la philosophic montre, quelles difficultés présentent ces problèmes qui sont l’objet propre de la logique; et nous demeurerons convaincus que, si les différentes sciences avaient eu la prétention de les éclaircir avant de passer outre, toutes peut-être en seraient encore à cette préface, et aucune n’aurait entamé sa véritable tâche.”

Remarks of a similar bearing will be found in the second paragraph of Mr. John Stuart Mill’s Essay on Utilitarianism. It has been found convenient to distinguish the logic of a science from the expository march of the same science. But Plato would not have acknowledged ἐπιστήμη, except as including both. Hence his view about the uselessness of written expository treatises.

Aristotle, in a remarkable passage of the Metaphysica (Γ. p. 1005, a. 20 seqq.) takes pains to distinguish the Logic of Mathematics from Mathematics themselves — as a separate province and matter of study. He claims the former as belonging to Philosophia Prima or Ontology. Those principles which mathematicians called Axioms were not peculiar to Mathematics (he says), but were affirmations respecting Ens quatenus Ens: the mathematician was entitled to assume them so far as concerned his own department, and his students must take them for granted: but if he attempted to explain or appreciate them in their full bearing, he overstepped his proper limits, through want of proper schooling in Analytica (ὅσα δ’ ἐγχειροῦσι τῶν λεγόντων τινὲς περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, ὃν τρόπον δεῖ ἀποδέχεσθαι, δι’ ἀπαιδευσίαν τῶν ἀναλυτικῶν τοῦτο δρῶσιν· δεῖ γὰρ περὶ τούτων ἥκειν προεπισταμένους, ἀλλὰ μὴ ἀκούοντας ζητεῖν — p. 1005, b. 2.) We see from the words of Aristotle that many mathematical enquirers of his time did not recognise (any more than Plato recognised) the distinction upon which he here insists: we see also that the term Axioms had become a technical one for the principia of mathematical demonstration (περὶ τῶν ἐν τοῖς μαθήμασι καλουμένων ἀξιωμάτων — p. 1005, a. 20); I do not concur in Sir William Hamilton’s doubts on this point. (Dissertations on Reid’s Works, note A. p. 764.)

The distinction which Aristotle thus brings to notice, seemingly for the first time, is one of considerable importance.

[43] This is forcibly put by Plato, Epistol. vii. 344 B. Compare Plato, Republic, vi. 499 A. Phædrus, 276 A-E. τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον, &c.

Though Plato, in the Phædrus, declares oral teaching to be the only effectual way of producing a permanent and deep-seated effect — as contrasted with the more superficial effect produced by reading a written exposition: yet even oral teaching, when addressed in the form of continuous lecture or sermon (ἄνευ ἀνακρίσεως καὶ διδαχῆς, Phædrus, 277 E; τὸ νουθετητικὸν εἶδος, Sophistês, p. 230), is represented elsewhere as of little effect. To produce any permanent result, you must diversify the point of view — you must test by circumlocutory interrogation — you must begin by dispelling established errors, &c. See the careful explanation of the passage in the Phædrus (277 E), given by Ueberweg, Aechtheit der Platon. Schrift. pp. 16-22. Direct teaching, in many of the Platonic dialogues, is not counted as capable of producing serious improvement.

When we come to the Menon and the Phædon, we shall hear more of the Platonic doctrine — that knowledge was to be evolved out of the mind, not poured into it from without.

Plato never published any of the lectures which he delivered at the Academy.

Since we thus find that Plato was unconquerably averse to publication in his own name and with his own responsibility attached to the writing, on grave matters of philosophy — we cannot be surprised that, among the numerous lectures which he must have delivered to his pupils and auditors in the Academy, none were ever published. Probably he may himself have destroyed them, as he exhorts Dionysius to destroy the Epistle which we now read as second, after reading it over frequently. And we may doubt whether he was not displeased with Aristotle and Hestiæus[44] for taking extracts from his lectures De Bono, and making them known to the public: just as he was displeased with Dionysius for having published a work purporting to be derived from conversations with Plato.

[44] Themistius mentions it as a fact recorded (I wish he had told us where or by whom) that Aristotle stoutly opposed the Platonic doctrine of Objective Ideas, even during the lifetime of Plato, ἱστορεῖται δὲ ὅτι καὶ ζῶντος τοῦ Πλάτωνος καρτερώτατα περὶ τούτου τοῦ δόγματος ἐνέστη ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης τῷ Πλάτωνι. (Scholia ad Aristotel. Analyt. Poster. p. 228 b. 16 Brandis.)

Plato would never publish his philosophical opinions in his own name; but he may have published them in the dialogues under the name of others.

That Plato would never consent to write for the public in his own name, must be taken as a fact in his character; probably arising from early caution produced by the fate of Sokrates, combined with preference for the Sokratic mode of handling. But to what extent he really kept back his opinions from the public, or whether he kept them back at all, by design — I do not undertake to say. The borrowed names under which he wrote, and the veil of dramatic fiction, gave him greater freedom as to the thoughts enunciated, and were adopted for the express purpose of acquiring greater freedom. How far the lectures which he delivered to his own special auditory differed from the opinions made known in his dialogues to the general reader, or how far his conversation with a few advanced pupils differed from both — are questions which we have no sufficient means of answering. There probably was a considerable difference. Aristotle alludes to various doctrines of Plato which we cannot find in the Platonic writings: but these doctrines are not such as could have given peculiar offence, if published; they are, rather abstruse and hard to understand. It may also be true (as Tennemann says) that Plato had two distinct modes of handling philosophy — a popular and a scientific: but it cannot be true (as the same learned author[45] asserts) that his published dialogues contained the popular and not the scientific. No one surely can regard the Timæus, Parmenidês, Philêbus, Theætêtus, Sophistês, Politikus, &c., as works in which dark or difficult questions are kept out of sight for the purpose of attracting the ordinary reader. Among the dialogues themselves (as I have before remarked) there exist the widest differences; some highly popular and attractive, others altogether the reverse, and many gradations between the two. Though I do not doubt therefore that Plato produced powerful effect both as lecturer to a special audience, and as talker with chosen students — yet in what respect such lectures and conversation differed from what we read in his dialogues, I do not feel that we have any means of knowing.

[45] See Tennemann, Gesch. d. Phil. vol. ii. p. 205, 215, 221 seq. This portion of Tennemann’s History is valuable, as it takes due account of the seventh Platonic Epistle, compared with the remarkable passage in the Phædrus about the inefficacy of written exposition for the purpose of teaching.

But I cannot think that Tennemann rightly interprets the Epistol. vii. I see no proof that Plato had any secret or esoteric philosophy, reserved for a few chosen pupils, and not proclaimed to the public from apprehension of giving offence to established creeds: though I believe such apprehension to have operated as one motive, deterring him from publishing any philosophical exposition under his own name — any Πλάτωνος σύγγραμμα.

Groups into which the dialogues admit of being thrown.

In judging of Plato, we must confine ourselves to the evidence furnished by one or more of the existing Platonic compositions, adding the testimony of Aristotle and a few others respecting Platonic views not declared in the dialogues. Though little can be predicated respecting the dialogues collectively, I shall say something about the various groups into which they admit of being thrown, before I touch upon them separately and seriatim.

Distribution made by Thrasyllus defective, but still useful — Dialogues of Search, Dialogues of Exposition.

The scheme proposed by Thrasyllus, so far as intended to furnish a symmetrical arrangement of all the Platonic works, is defective, partly because the apportionment of the separate works between the two leading classes is in several cases erroneous — partly because the discrimination of the two leading classes, as well as the sub-division of one of the two, is founded on diversity of Method, while the sub-division of the other class is founded on diversity of Subject. But the scheme is nevertheless useful, as directing our attention to real and important attributes belonging in common to considerable groups of dialogues. It is in this respect preferable to the fanciful dramatic partnership of trilogies and tetralogies, as well as to the mystical interpretation and arrangement suggested by the Neo-platonists. The Dialogues of Exposition — in which one who knows (or professes to know) some truth, announces and developes it to those who do not know it — are contrasted with those of Search or Investigation, in which the element of knowledge and affirmative communication is wanting. All the interlocutors are at once ignorant and eager to know; all of them are jointly engaged in searching for the unknown, though one among them stands prominent both in suggesting where to look and in testing all that is found, whether it be really the thing looked for. Among the expository dialogues, the most marked specimens are Timæus and Epinomis, in neither of which is there any searching or testing debate at all. Republic, Phædon, Philêbus, exhibit exposition preceded or accompanied by a search. Of the dialogues of pure investigation, the most elaborate specimen is the Theætêtus: Menon, Lachês, Charmidês, Lysis, Euthyphron, &c., are of the like description, yet less worked out. There are also several others. In the Menon, indeed,[46] Sokrates goes so far as to deny that there can be any real teaching, and to contend that what appears teaching is only resuscitation of buried or forgotten knowledge.

[46] Plato, Menon, p. 81-82.

Dialogues of Exposition — present affirmative result. Dialogues of Search are wanting in that attribute.

Of these two classes of Dialogues, the Expository are those which exhibit the distinct attribute — an affirmative result or doctrine, announced and developed by a person professing to know, and proved in a manner more or less satisfactory. The other class — the Searching or Investigative — have little else in common except the absence of this property. We find in them debate, refutation, several points of view canvassed and some shown to be untenable; but there is no affirmative result established, or even announced as established, at the close. Often there is even a confession of disappointment. In other respects, the dialogues of this class are greatly diversified among one another: they have only the one common attribute — much debate, with absence of affirmative result.

The distribution coincides mainly with that of Aristotle — Dialectic, Demonstrative.

Now the distribution made by Thrasyllus of the dialogues under two general heads (1. Dialogues of Search or Investigation, 2. Dialogues of Exposition) coincides, to a considerable extent, with the two distinct intellectual methods recognised by Aristotle as Dialectic and Demonstrative: Dialectic being handled by Aristotle in the Topica, and Demonstration in the Posterior Analytica. “Dialectic” (says Aristotle) “is tentative, respecting those matters of which philosophy aims at cognizance.” Accordingly, Dialectic (as well as Rhetoric) embraces all matters without exception, but in a tentative and searching way, recognising arguments pro as well as con, and bringing to view the antithesis between the two, without any preliminary assumption or predetermined direction, the questioner being bound to proceed only on the answers given by the respondent: while philosophy comes afterwards, dividing this large field into appropriate compartments, laying down authoritative principia in regard to each, and deducing from them, by logical process, various positive results.[47] Plato does not use the term Dialectic exactly in the same sense as Aristotle. He implies by it two things: 1. That the process shall be colloquial, two or more minds engaged in a joint research, each of them animating and stimulating the others. 2. That the matter investigated shall be general — some general question or proposition: that the premisses shall all be general truths, and that the objects kept before the mind shall be Forms or Species, apart from particulars.[48] Here it stands in contrast with Rhetoric, which aims at the determination of some particular case or debated course of conduct, judicial or political, and which is intended to end in some immediate practical verdict or vote. Dialectic, in Plato’s sense, comprises the whole process of philosophy. His Dialogues of Search correspond to Aristotle’s Dialectic, being machinery for generating arguments and for ensuring that every argument shall be subjected to the interrogation of an opponent: his Dialogues of Exposition, wherein some definite result is enunciated and proved (sufficiently or not), correspond to what Aristotle calls Demonstration.

[47] Aristot. Metaphys. Γ. 1004, b. 25. ἔστι δὲ ἡ διαλεκτικὴ πειραστικὴ, περὶ ὧν ἡ φιλοσοφία γνωριστική. Compare also Rhet. i. 2, p. 1356, a. 33, i. 4, p. 1359, b. 12, where he treats Dialectic (as well as Rhetoric) not as methods of acquiring instruction on any definite matter, but as inventive and argumentative aptitudes — powers of providing premisses and arguments — δυνάμεις τινὲς τοῦ πορίσαι λόγους. If (he says) you try to convert Dialectic from a method of discussion into a method of cognition, you will insensibly eliminate its true nature and character:—ὅσῳ δ’ ἄν τις ἢ τὴν διαλεκτικὴν ἢ ταύτην, μὴ καθάπερ ἂν δυνάμεις ἀλλ’ ἐπιστήμας πειρᾶται κατασκευάζειν, λήσεται τὴν φύσιν αὐτῶν ἀφανίσας, τῷ μεταβαίνειν ἐπισκευάζων εἰς ἐπιστήμας ὑποκειμένων τινῶν πραγμάτων, ἀλλὰ μὴ μόνον λόγων.

The Platonic Dialogues of Search are δυνάμεις τοῦ πορίσαι λόγους. Compare the Proœmium of Cicero to his Paradoxa.

[48] Plato, Republ. vi. 511, vii. 582. Respecting the difference between Plato and Aristotle about Dialectic, see Ravaisson — Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote — iii. 1, 2, p. 248.

Classification of Thrasyllus in its details. He applies his own principles erroneously.

If now we take the main scheme of distributing the Platonic Dialogues, proposed by Thrasyllus — 1. Dialogues of Exposition, with an affirmative result; 2. Dialogues of Investigation or Search, without an affirmative result — and if we compare the number of Dialogues (out of the thirty-six in all), which he specifies as belonging to each — we shall find twenty-two specified under the former head, and fourteen under the latter. Moreover, among the twenty-two are ranked Republic and Leges: each of them greatly exceeding in bulk any other composition of Plato. It would appear thus that there is a preponderance both in number and bulk on the side of the Expository. But when we analyse the lists of Thrasyllus, we see that he has unduly enlarged that side of the account, and unduly contracted the other. He has enrolled among the Expository — 1. The Apology, the Epistolæ, and the Menexenus, which ought not properly to be ranked under either head. 2. The Theætêtus, Parmenidês, Hipparchus, Erastæ, Minos, Kleitophon — every one of which ought to be transferred to the other head. 3. The Phædrus, Symposion, and Kratylus, which are admissible by indulgence, since they do indeed present affirmative exposition, but in small proportion compared to the negative criticism, the rhetorical and poetical ornament: they belong in fact to both classes, but more preponderantly to one. 4. The Republic. This he includes with perfect justice, for the eight last books of it are expository. Yet the first book exhibits to us a specimen of negative and refutative dialectic which is not surpassed by anything in Plato.

On the other hand, Thrasyllus has placed among the Dialogues of Search one which might, with equal or greater propriety, be ranked among the Expository — the Protagoras. It is true that this dialogue involves much of negation, refutation, and dramatic ornament: and that the question propounded in the beginning (Whether virtue be teachable?) is not terminated. But there are two portions of the dialogue which are, both of them, decided specimens of affirmative exposition — the speech of Protagoras in the earlier part (wherein the growth of virtue, without special teaching or professional masters, is elucidated) — and the argument of Sokrates at the close, wherein the identity of the Good and the Pleasurable is established.[49]

[49] We may remark that Thrasyllus, though he enrols the Protagoras under the class Investigative, and the sub-class Agonistic, places it alone in a still lower class which he calls Ἐνδεικτικός. Now, if we turn to the Platonic dialogue Euthydêmus, p. 278 D, we shall see that Plato uses the words ἐνδείξομαι and ὑφηγήσομαι as exact equivalents: so that ἐνδεικτικὸς would have the same meaning as ὑφηγητικός.

The classification, as it would stand, if his principles were applied correctly.

If then we rectify the lists of Thrasyllus, they will stand as follows, with the Expository Dialogues much diminished in number:—

Dialogues of Investigation or Search.	Dialogues of Exposition.
Ζητητικοί.	Ὑφηγητικοί.
1. Theætêtus.	1. Timæus.
2. Parmenidês.	2. Leges.
3. Alkibiadês I.	3. Epinomis.
4. Alkibiadês II.	4. Kritias.
5. Theagês.	5. Republic.
6. Lachês.	6. Sophistês.
7. Lysis.	7. Politikus.
8. Charmidês.	8. Phædon.
9. Menon.	9. Philêbus.
10. Ion.	10. Protagoras.
11. Euthyphron.	11. Phædrus.
12. Euthydêmus.	12. Symposion.
13. Gorgias.	13. Kratylus.
14. Hippias I.	14. Kriton.
15. Hippias II.
16. Kleitophon.
17. Hipparchus.	The Apology, Menexenus, Epistolæ, do not properly belong to either head.
18. Erastæ.
19. Minos.

Preponderance of the searching and testing dialogues over the expository and dogmatical.

It will thus appear, from a fair estimate and comparison of lists, that the relation which Plato bears to philosophy is more that of a searcher, tester, and impugner, than that of an expositor and dogmatist — though he undertakes both the two functions: more negative than affirmative — more ingenious in pointing out difficulties, than successful in solving them. I must again repeat that though this classification is just, as far as it goes, and the best which can be applied to the dialogues, taken as a whole — yet the dialogues have much which will not enter into the classification, and each has its own peculiarities.

Dialogues of Search — sub-classes among them recognised by Thrasyllus — Gymnastic and Agonistic, &c.

The Dialogues of Search, thus comprising more than half the Platonic compositions, are again distributed by Thrasyllus into two sub-classes — Gymnastic and Agonistic: the Gymnastic, again, into Obstetric and Peirastic; the Agonistic, into Probative and Refutative. Here, again, there is a pretence of symmetrical arrangement, which will not hold good if we examine it closely. Nevertheless, the epithets point to real attributes of various dialogues, and deserve the more attention, inasmuch as they imply a view of philosophy foreign to the prevalent way of looking at it. Obstetric and Tentative or Testing (Peirastic) are epithets which a reader may understand; but he will not easily see how they bear upon the process of philosophy.

Philosophy, as now understood, includes authoritative teaching, positive results, direct proofs.

The term philosopher is generally understood to mean something else. In appreciating a philosopher, it is usual to ask, What authoritative creed has he proclaimed, for disciples to swear allegiance to? What positive system, or positive truths previously unknown or unproved, has he established? Next, by what arguments has he enforced or made them good? This is the ordinary proceeding of an historian of philosophy, as he calls up the roll of successive names. The philosopher is assumed to speak as one having authority; to have already made up his mind; and to be prepared to explain what his mind is. Readers require positive results announced, and positive evidence set before them, in a clear and straightforward manner. They are intolerant of all that is prolix, circuitous, not essential to the proof of the thesis in hand. Above all, an affirmative result is indispensable.

When I come to the Timæus, and Republic, &c., I shall consider what reply Plato could make to these questions. In the meantime, I may observe that if philosophers are to be estimated by such a scale, he will not stand high on the list. Even in his expository dialogues, he cares little about clear proclamation of results, and still less about the shortest, straightest, and most certain road for attaining them.

The Platonic Dialogues of Search disclaim authority and teaching — assume truth to be unknown to all alike — follow a process devious as well as fruitless.

But as to those numerous dialogues which are not expository, Plato could make no reply to the questions at all. There are no affirmative results:—and there is a process of enquiry, not only fruitless, but devious, circuitous, and intentionally protracted. The authoritative character of a philosopher is disclaimed. Not only Plato never delivers sentence in his own name, but his principal spokesman, far from speaking with authority, declares that he has not made up his own mind, and that he is only a searcher along with others, more eager in the chase than they are.[50] Philosophy is conceived as the search for truth still unknown; not as an explanation of truth by one who knows it, to others who do not know it. The process of search is considered as being in itself profitable and invigorating, even though what is sought be not found. The ingenuity of Sokrates is shown, not by what he himself produces, for he avows himself altogether barren — but by his obstetric aid: that is, by his being able to evolve, from a youthful mind, answers of which it is pregnant, and to test the soundness and trustworthiness of those answers when delivered: by his power, besides, of exposing or refuting unsound answers, and of convincing others of the fallacy of that which they confidently believed themselves to know.

[50] In addition to the declarations of Sokrates to this effect in the Platonic Apology (pp. 21-23), we read the like in many Platonic dialogues. Gorgias, 506 A. οὐδὲ γάρ τοι ἔγωγε εἰδὼς λέγω ἃ λέγω, ἀλλὰ ζητῶ κοινῇ μεθ’ ὑμῶν (see Routh’s note): and even in the Republic, in many parts of which there is much dogmatism and affirmation: v. p. 450 E. ἀπιστοῦντα δὲ καὶ ζητοῦντα ἅμα τοὺς λόγους ποιεῖσθαι, ὃ δὴ ἐγὼ δρῶ, &c.

The questioner has no predetermined course, but follows the lead given by the respondent in his answers.

To eliminate affirmative, authoritative exposition, which proceeds upon the assumption that truth is already known — and to consider philosophy as a search for unknown truth, carried on by several interlocutors all of them ignorant — this is the main idea which Plato inherited from Sokrates, and worked out in more than one half of his dialogues. It is under this general head that the subdivisions of Thrasyllus fall — the Obstetric, the Testing or Verifying, the Refutative. The process is one in which both the two concurrent minds are active, but each with an inherent activity peculiar to itself. The questioner does not follow a predetermined course of his own, but proceeds altogether on the answer given to him. He himself furnishes only an indispensable stimulus to the parturition of something with which the respondent is already pregnant, and applies testing questions to that which he hears, until the respondent is himself satisfied that the answer will not hold. Throughout all this, there is a constant appeal to the free, self-determining judgment of the respondent’s own mind, combined with a stimulus exciting the intellectual productiveness of that mind to the uttermost.

Relation of teacher and learner. Appeal to authority is suppressed.

What chiefly deserves attention here, as a peculiar phase in the history of philosophy, is, that the relation of teacher and learner is altogether suppressed. Sokrates not only himself disclaims the province and title of a teacher, but treats with contemptuous banter those who assume it. Now “the learner” (to use a memorable phrase of Aristotle[51]) “is under obligation to believe”: he must be a passive recipient of that which is communicated to him by the teacher. The relation between the two is that of authority on the one side, and of belief generated by authority on the other. But Sokrates requires from no man implicit trust: nay he deprecates it as dangerous.[52] It is one peculiarity in these Sokratic dialogues, that the sentiment of authority, instead of being invoked and worked up, as is generally done in philosophy, is formally disavowed and practically set aside. “I have not made up my mind: I am not prepared to swear allegiance to any creed: I give you the reasons for and against each: you must decide for yourself.”[53]

[51] Aristot. De Sophist. Elenchis, Top. ix. p. 165, b. 2. δεῖ γὰρ πιστεύειν τὸν μανθάνοντα.

[52] Plato, Protagor. p. 314 B.

[53] The sentiment of the Academic sect — descending from Sokrates and Plato, not through Xenokrates and Polemon, but through Arkesilaus and Karneades — illustrates the same elimination of the idea of authority. “Why are you so curious to know what I myself have determined on the point? Here are the reasons pro and con: weigh the one against the other, and then judge for yourself.”

See Sir William Hamilton’s Discussions on Philosophy — Appendix, p. 681 — about mediæval disputations: also Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iv. 4-7. “Sed defendat quod quisque sentit: sunt enim judicia libera: nos institutum tenebimus, nulliusque unius disciplinæ legibus adstricti, quibus in philosophiâ necessario pareamus, quid sit in quâque re maximé probabile, semper requiremus.”

Again, Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 5, 10-13. “Qui autem requirunt, quid quâque de re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam necesse est. Non enim tam auctoritatis in disputando quam rationis momenta quærenda sunt. Quin etiam obest plorumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum qui se docere profitentur; desinunt enim suum judicium adhibere; id habent ratum, quod ab eo quem probant judicatum vident.… Si singulas disciplinas percipere magnum est, quanto majus omnes? Quod facere iis necesse est, quibus propositum est, veri reperiendi causâ, et contra omnes philosophos et pro omnibus dicere.… Nec tamen fieri potest, ut qui hâc ratione philosophentur, ii nihil habeant quod sequantur.… Non enim sumus ii quibus nihil verum esse videatur, sed ii, qui omnibus veris falsa quædam adjuncta esse dicamus, tantâ similitudine ut in iis nulla insit certa judicandi et assentiendi nota. Ex quo exsistit illud, multa esse probabilia, quæ quanquam non perciperentur, tamen quia visum haberent quendam insignem et illustrem, his sapientis vita regeretur.”

Compare Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. sect. 2-3-5-9. Quintilian, xii. 2-25.

In the modern world the search for truth is put out of sight. Every writer or talker professes to have already found it, and to proclaim it to others.

This process — the search for truth as an unknown — is in the modern world put out of sight. All discussion is conducted by persons who profess to have found it or learnt it, and to be in condition to proclaim it to others. Even the philosophical works of Cicero are usually pleadings by two antagonists, each of whom professes to know the truth, though Cicero does not decide between them: and in this respect they differ from the groping and fumbling of the Platonic dialogues. Of course the search for truth must go on in modern times, as it did in ancient: but it goes on silently and without notice. The most satisfactory theories have been preceded by many infructuous guesses and tentatives. The theorist may try many different hypotheses (we are told that Kepler tried nineteen) which he is forced successively to reject; and he may perhaps end without finding any better. But all these tentatives, verifying tests, doubts, and rejections, are confined to his own bosom or his own study. He looks back upon them without interest, sometimes even with disgust; least of all does he seek to describe them in detail as objects of interest to others. They are probably known to none but himself: for it does not occur to him to follow the Platonic scheme of taking another mind into partnership, and entering upon that distribution of active intellectual work which we read in the Theætêtus. There are cases in which two chemists have carried on joint researches, under many failures and disappointments, perhaps at last without success. If a record were preserved of their parley during the investigation, the grounds for testing and rejecting one conjecture, and for selecting what should be tried after it — this would be in many points a parallel to the Platonic process.

The search for truth by various interlocutors was a recognised process in the Sokratic age. Acute negative Dialectic of Sokrates.

But at Athens in the fourth century, B.C., the search for truth by two or more minds in partnership was not so rare a phenomenon. The active intellects of Athens were distributed between Rhetoric, which addressed itself to multitudes, accepted all established sentiments, and handled for the most part particular issues — and Dialectic, in which a select few debated among themselves general questions.[54] Of this Dialectic, the real Sokrates was the greatest master that Athens ever saw: he could deal as he chose (says Xenophon[55]) with all disputants: he turned them round his finger. In this process, one person set up a thesis, and the other cross-examined him upon it: the most irresistible of all cross-examiners was the real Sokrates. The nine books of Aristotle’s Topica (including the book De Sophisticis Elenchis) are composed with the object of furnishing suggestions, and indicating rules, both to the cross-examiner and to the respondent, in such Dialectic debates. Plato does not lay down any rules: but he has given us, in his dialogues of search, specimens of dialectic procedure shaped in his own fashion. Several of his contemporaries, companions of Sokrates, like him, did the same each in his own way: but their compositions have not survived.[56]

[54] The habit of supposing a general question to be undecided, and of having it argued by competent advocates before auditors who have not made up their minds — is now so disused (everywhere except in a court of law), that one reads with surprise Galen’s declaration that the different competing medical theories were so discussed in his day. His master Pelops maintained a disputation of two days with a rival; — ἡνίκα Πέλοψ μετὰ Φιλίππου τοῦ ἐμπειρικοῦ διελέχθη δυοῖν ἡμερῶν· τοῦ μὲν Πέλοπος, ὡς μὴ δυναμένης τῆς ἰατρικῆς δι’ ἐμπειρίας μόνης συστῆναι, τοῦ Φιλίππου δὲ ἐπιδεικνύντος δύνασθαι. (Galen, De Propriis Libris, c. 2, p. 16, Kühn.)

Galen notes (ib. 2, p. 21) the habit of literary men at Rome to assemble in the temple of Pax, for the purpose of discussing logical questions, prior to the conflagration which destroyed that temple.

[55] Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2.

[56] The dialogues composed by Aristotle himself were in great measure dialogues of search, exercises of argumentation pro and con (Cicero, De Finib. v. 4). “Aristoteles, ut solet, quærendi gratiâ, quædam subtilitatis suæ argumenta excogitavit in Gryllo,” &c. (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. ii. 17.)

Bernays indicates the probable titles of many among the lost Aristotelian Dialogues (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 132, 133, Berlin, 1868), and gives in his book many general remarks upon them.

The observations of Aristotle in the Metaphys. (A. ἐλάττων 993, b. 1-16) are conceived in a large and just spirit. He says that among all the searchers for truth, none completely succeed, and none completely fail: those, from whose conclusions we dissent, do us service by exercising our intelligence — τὴν γὰρ ἕξιν προήσκησαν ἡμῶν. The enumeration of ἀπορίαι in the following book B of the Metaphysica is a continuation of the same views. Compare Scholia, p. 604, b. 29, Brandis.

Such compositions give something like fair play to the negative arm of philosophy; in the employment of which the Eleate Zeno first became celebrated, and the real Sokrates yet more celebrated. This negative arm is no less essential than the affirmative, to the validity of a body of reasoned truth, such as philosophy aspires to be. To know how to disprove is quite as important as to know how to prove: the one is co-ordinate and complementary to the other. And the man who disproves what is false, or guards mankind against assenting to it,[57] renders a service to philosophy, even though he may not be able to render the ulterior service of proving any truth in its place.

[57] The Stoics had full conviction of this. In Cicero’s summary of the Stoic doctrine (De Finibus, iii. 21, 72) we read:—“Ad easque virtutes, de quibus disputatum est, Dialecticam etiam adjungunt (Stoici) et Physicam: easque ambas virtutum nomine appellant: alteram (sc. Dialecticam), quod habeat rationem, ne cui falso adsentiamur, neve unquam captiosâ probabilitate fallamur; eaque, quæ de bonis et malis didicerimus, ut tenere tuerique possimus.”

Negative procedure supposed to be represented by the Sophists and the Megarici; discouraged and censured by historians of philosophy.

By historians of ancient philosophy, negative procedure is generally considered as represented by the Sophists and the Megarici, and is the main ground for those harsh epithets which are commonly applied to both of them. The negative (they think) can only be tolerated in small doses, and even then merely as ancillary to the affirmative. That is, if you have an affirmative theory to propose, you are allowed to urge such objections as you think applicable against rival theories, but only in order to make room for your own. It seems to be assumed as requiring no proof that the confession of ignorance is an intolerable condition; which every man ought to be ashamed of in himself, and which no man is justified in inflicting on any one else. If you deprive the reader of one affirmative solution, you are required to furnish him with another which you are prepared to guarantee as the true one. “Le Roi est mort — Vive le Roi”: the throne must never be vacant. It is plain that under such a restricted application, the full force of the negative case is never brought out. The pleadings are left in the hands of counsel, each of whom takes up only such fragments of the negative case as suit the interests of his client, and suppresses or slurs over all such other fragments of it as make against his client. But to every theory (especially on the topics discussed by Sokrates and Plato) there are more or less of objections applicable — even the best theory being true only on the balance. And if the purpose be to ensure a complete body of reasoned truth, all these objections ought to be faithfully exhibited, by one who stands forward as their express advocate, without being previously retained for any separate or inconsistent purpose.

Vocation of Sokrates and Plato for the negative procedure: absolute necessity of it as a condition of reasoned truth. Parmenidês of Plato.

How much Plato himself, in his dialogues of search, felt his own vocation as champion of the negative procedure, we see marked conspicuously in the dialogue called Parmenidês. This dialogue is throughout a protest against forward affirmation, and an assertion of independent locus standi for the negationist and objector. The claims of the latter must first be satisfied, before the affirmant can be considered as solvent. The advocacy of those claims is here confided to veteran Parmenides, who sums them up in a formidable total: Sokrates being opposed to him under the unusual disguise of a youthful and forward affirmant. Parmenides makes no pretence of advancing any rival doctrine. The theories which he selects for criticism are the Platonic theory of intelligible Concepts, and his own theory of the Unum: he indicates how many objections must be removed — how many contradictions must be solved — how many opposite hypotheses must be followed out to their results — before either of these theories can be affirmed with assurance. The exigencies enumerated may and do appear insurmountable:[58] but of that Plato takes no account. Such laborious exercises are inseparable from the process of searching for truth, and unless a man has strength to go through them, no truth, or at least no reasoned truth, can be found and maintained.[59]

[58] Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B. δεῖ σκοπεῖν — εἰ μέλλεις τελέως γυμνασάμενος κυρίως διόψεσθαι τὸ ἀληθές. Ἀμήχανον, ἔφη, λέγεις, ὦ Παρμενίδη, πραγματείαν, &c.

Aristotle declares that no man can be properly master of any affirmative truth without having examined and solved all the objections and difficulties — the negative portion of the enquiry. To go through all these ἀπορίας is the indispensable first stage, and perhaps the enquirer may not be able to advance farther, see Metaphysic. B. 995, a. 26, 996, a. 16 — one of the most striking passages in his works. Compare also what he says, De Cœlo, ii. 294, b. 10, διὸ δεῖ τὸν μέλλοντα καλῶς ζητήσειν ἐνστατικὸν εἶναι διὰ τῶν οἰκείων ἐνστάσεων τῷ γένει, τοῦτο δὲ ἐστὶν ἐκ τοῦ πάσας τεθεωρηκέναι τὰς διαφοράς.

[59] That the only road to trustworthy affirmation lies through a string of negations, unfolded and appreciated by systematic procedure, is strongly insisted on by Bacon, Novum Organum, ii. 15, “Omnino Deo (formarum inditori et opifici), aut fortasse angelis et intelligentiis competit formas per affirmationem immediate nosse, atque ab initio contemplationis. Sed certe supra hominem est: cui tantum conceditur, procedere primo per negativas, et postremo loco desinere in affirmativas, post omnimodam exclusionem.” Compare another Aphorism, i. 46.

The following passage, transcribed from the Lectures of a distinguished physical philosopher of the present day, is conceived in the spirit of the Platonic Dialogues of Search, though Plato would have been astonished at such patient multiplication of experiments:—

“I should hardly sustain your interest in stating the difficulties which at first beset the investigation conducted with this apparatus, or the numberless precautions which the exact balancing of the two powerful sources of heat, here resorted to, rendered necessary. I believe the experiments, made with atmospheric air alone, might be numbered by tens of thousands. Sometimes for a week, or even for a fortnight, coincident and satisfactory results would be obtained: the strict conditions of accurate experimenting would appear to be found, when an additional day’s experience would destroy this hope and necessitate a recommencement, under changed conditions, of the whole inquiry. It is this which daunts the experimenter. It is this preliminary fight with the entanglements of a subject so dark, so doubtful, so uncheering, without any knowledge whether the conflict is to lead to anything worth possessing, that renders discovery difficult and rare. But the experimenter, and particularly the young experimenter, ought to know that as regards his own moral manhood, he cannot but win, if he only contend aright. Even, with a negative result, his consciousness that he has gone fairly to the bottom of his subject, as far as his means allowed — the feeling that he has not shunned labour, though that labour may have resulted in laying bare the nakedness of his case — re-acts upon his own mind, and gives it firmness for future work.” (Tyndall, Lectures on Heat, considered as a Mode of Motion, Lect x. p. 332.)

Sokrates considered the negative procedure to be valuable by itself, and separately. His theory of the natural state of the human mind; not ignorance, but false persuasion of knowledge.

It will thus appear that among the conditions requisite for philosophy, both Sokrates and Plato regarded the negative procedure as co-ordinate in value with the affirmative, and indispensable as a preliminary stage. But Sokrates went a step farther. He assigned to the negative an intrinsic importance by itself, apart from all implication with the affirmative; and he rested that opinion upon a psychological ground, formally avowed, and far larger than anything laid down by the Sophists. He thought that the natural state of the human mind, among established communities, was not simply ignorance, but ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge — false or uncertified belief — false persuasion of knowledge. The only way of dissipating such false persuasion was, the effective stimulus of the negative test, or cross-examining Elenchus; whereby a state of non-belief, or painful consciousness of ignorance, was substituted in its place. Such second state was indeed not the best attainable. It ought to be preliminary to a third, acquired by the struggles of the mind to escape from such painful consciousness; and to rise, under the continued stimulus of the tutelary Elenchus, to improved affirmative and defensible beliefs. But even if this third state were never reached, Sokrates declared the second state to be a material amendment on the first, which he deprecated as alike pernicious and disgraceful.

Declaration of Sokrates in the Apology; his constant mission to make war against the false persuasion of knowledge.

The psychological conviction here described stands proclaimed by Sokrates himself, with remarkable earnestness and emphasis, in his Apology before the Dikasts, only a month before his death. So deeply did he take to heart the prevalent false persuasion of knowledge, alike universal among all classes, mischievous, and difficult to correct — that he declared himself to have made war against it throughout his life, under a mission imposed upon him by the Delphian God; and to have incurred thereby wide-spread hatred among his fellow-citizens. To convict men, by cross-examination, of ignorance in respect to those matters which each man believed himself to know well and familiarly — this was the constant employment and the mission of Sokrates: not to teach — for he disclaimed the capacity of teaching — but to make men feel their own ignorance instead of believing themselves to know. Such cross-examination, conducted usually before an audience, however it might be salutary and indispensable, was intended to humiliate the respondent, and could hardly fail to offend and exasperate him. No one felt satisfaction except some youthful auditors, who admired the acuteness with which it was conducted. “I (declared Sokrates) am distinguished from others, and superior to others, by this character only — that I am conscious of my own ignorance: the wisest of men would be he who had the like consciousness; but as yet I have looked for such a man in vain.”[60]

[60] Plat. Apol. S. pp. 23-29. It is not easy to select particular passages for reference; for the sentiments which I have indicated pervade nearly the whole discourse.

Opposition of feeling between Sokrates and the Dikasts.

In delivering this emphatic declaration, Sokrates himself intimates his apprehension that the Dikasts will treat his discourse as mockery; that they will not believe him to be in earnest: that they will scarcely have patience to hear him claim a divine mission for so strange a purpose.[61] The declaration is indeed singular, and probably many of the Dikasts did so regard it; while those who thought it serious, heard it with repugnance. The separate value of the negative procedure or Elenchus was never before so unequivocally asserted, or so highly estimated. To disabuse men of those false beliefs which they mistook for knowledge, and to force on them the painful consciousness that they knew nothing — was extolled as the greatest service which could be rendered to them, and as rescuing them from a degraded and slavish state of mind.[62]

[61] Plato, Apol. S. pp. 20-38.

[62] Aristotle, in the first book of Metaphysica (982, b. 17), when repeating a statement made in the Theætêtus of Plato (155 D), that wonder is the beginning, or point of departure, of philosophy — explains the phrase by saying, that wonder is accompanied by a painful conviction of ignorance and sense of embarrassment. ὁ δὲ ἀπορῶν καὶ θαυμάζων οἴεται ἀγνοεῖν ... διὰ τὸ φεύγειν τὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐφιλοσόφησαν ... οὐ χρήσεώς τινος ἕνεκεν. This painful conviction of ignorance is what Sokrates sought to bring about.

The Dialogues of Search present an end in themselves. Mistake of supposing that Plato had in his mind an ulterior affirmative end, not declared.

To understand the full purpose of Plato’s dialogues of search — testing, exercising, refuting, but not finding or providing — we must keep in mind the Sokratic Apology. Whoever, after reading the Theætêtus, Lachês, Charmidês, Lysis, Parmenidês, &c., is tempted to exclaim “But, after all, Plato must have had in his mind some ulterior doctrine of conviction which he wished to impress, but which he has not clearly intimated,” will see, by the Sokratic Apology, that such a presumption is noway justifiable. Plato is a searcher, and has not yet made up his own mind: this is what he himself tells us, and what I literally believe, though few or none of his critics will admit it. His purpose in the dialogues of search, is plainly and sufficiently enunciated in the words addressed by Sokrates to Theætêtus — “Answer without being daunted: for if we prosecute our search, one of two alternatives is certain — either we shall find what we are looking for, or we shall get clear of the persuasion that we know what in reality we do not yet know. Now a recompense like this will leave no room for dissatisfaction.”[63]

[63] Plato, Theætet. 187 C. ἐὰν γὰρ οὕτω δρῶμεν, δυοῖν θάτερον — ἢ εὑρήσομεν ἐφ’ ὃ ἐρχόμεθα, ἢ ἧττον οἰησόμεθα εἰδέναι ὃ μηδαμῇ ἴσμεν· καίτοι οὐκ ἂν εἴη μεμπτὸς ὁ τοιοῦτος. Bonitz (in his Platonische Studien, pp. 8, 9, 74, 76, &c.) is one of the few critics who deprecate the confidence and boldness with which recent scholars have ascribed to Plato affirmative opinions and systematic purpose which he does not directly announce. Bonitz vindicates the separate value and separate locus standi of the negative process in Plato’s estimation, particularly in the example of the Theætêtus. Susemihl, in the preface to his second part, has controverted these views of Bonitz — in my judgment without any success.

The following observations of recent French scholars are just, though they imply too much the assumption that there is always some affirmative jewel wrapped up in Plato’s complicated folds. M. Egger observes (Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs, Paris, 1849, p. 84, ch. ii. sect. 4):

“La philosophie de Platon n’offre pas, en général, un ensemble de parties très rigoureusement liées entre elles. D’abord, il ne l’expose que sous forme dialoguée: et dans ses dialogues, où il ne prend jamais de rôle personnel, on ne voit pas clairement auquel des interlocuteurs il a confié la défense de ses propres opinions. Parmi ces interlocuteurs, Socrate lui-même, le plus naturel et le plus ordinaire interprète de la pensée de son disciple, use fort souvent des libertés de cette forme toute dramatique, pour se jouer dans les distinctions subtiles, pour exagérer certains arguments, pour couper court à une discussion embarrassante, au moyen de quelque plaisanterie, et pour se retirer d’un débat sans conclure; en un mot, il a — ou, ce qui est plus vrai, Platon a, sous son nom — des opinions de circonstance et des ruses de dialectique, à travers lesquelles il est souvent difficile de retrouver le fond sérieux de sa doctrine. Heureusement ces difficultés ne touchent pas aux principes généraux du Platonisme. La critique Platonicienne en particulier dans ce qu’elle a de plus original, et de plus élevé, se rattache à la grande théorie des idées et de la réminiscence. On la retrouve exposée dans plusieurs dialogues avec une clarté qui ne permet ni le doute ni l’incertitude.”

I may also cite the following remarks made by M. Vacherot (Histoire Critique de l’École d’Alexandrie, vol. ii. p. 1, Pt. ii. Bk. ii. ch. i.) after his instructive analysis of the doctrines of Plotinus. I think the words are as much applicable to Plato as to Plotinus: the rather, as Plato never speaks in his own name, Plotinus always:—“Combien faut-il prendre garde d’ajouter à la pensée du philosophe, et de lui prêter un arrangement artificiel! Ce génie, plein d’enthousiasme et de fougue, n’a jamais connu ni mesure ni plan: jamais il ne s’est astreint à developper régulièrement une théorie, ni à exposer avec suite un ensemble de théories, de manière à en former un système. Fort incertain dans sa marche, il prend, quitte, et reprend le même sujet, sans jamais paraître avoir dit son dernier mot; toujours il répand de vives et abondantes clartés sur les questions qu’il traite, mais rarement il les conduit à leur dernière et définitive solution; sa rapide pensée n’effleure pas seulement le sujet sur lequel elle passe, elle le pénétre et le creuse toujours, sans toutefois l’épuiser. Fort inégal dans ses allures, tantôt ce génie s’échappe en inspirations rapides et tumultueuses, tantôt il semble se traîner péniblement, et se perdre dans un dédale de subtiles abstractions, &c.”

False persuasion of knowledge — had reference to topics social, political, ethical.

What those topics were, in respect to which Sokrates found this universal belief of knowledge, without the reality of knowledge — we know, not merely from the dialogues of Plato, but also from the Memorabilia of Xenophon. Sokrates did not touch upon recondite matters — upon the Kosmos, astronomy, meteorology. Such studies he discountenanced as useless, and even as irreligious.[64] The subjects on which he interrogated were those of common, familiar, every-day talk: those which every one believed himself to know, and on which every one had a confident opinion to give: the respondent being surprised that any one could put the questions, or that there could be any doubt requiring solution. What is justice? what is injustice? what are temperance and courage? what is law, lawlessness, democracy, aristocracy? what is the government of mankind, and the attributes which qualify any one for exercising such government? Here were matters upon which every one talked familiarly, and would have been ashamed to be thought incapable of delivering an opinion. Yet it was upon these matters that Sokrates detected universal ignorance, coupled with a firm, but illusory, persuasion of knowledge. The conversation of Sokrates with Euthydêmus, in the Xenophontic Memorabilia[65] — the first Alkibiadês, Lachês, Charmidês, Euthyphron, &c., of Plato — are among the most marked specimens of such cross-examination or Elenchus — a string of questions, to which there are responses in indefinite number successively given, tested, and exposed as unsatisfactory.

[64] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1.

[65] Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2. A passage from Paley’s preface to his “Principles of Moral Philosophy,” illustrates well this Sokratic process: “Concerning the principle of morals, it would be premature to speak: but concerning the manner of unfolding and explaining that principle, I have somewhat which I wish to be remarked. An experience of nine years in the office of a public tutor in one of the Universities, and in that department of education to which these sections relate, afforded me frequent opportunity to observe, that in discoursing to young minds upon topics of morality, it required much more pains to make them perceive the difficulty than to understand the solution: that unless the subject was so drawn up to a point as to exhibit the full force of an objection, or the exact place of a doubt, before any explanation was entered upon — in other words, unless some curiosity was excited, before it was attempted to be satisfied — the teacher’s labour was lost. When information was not desired, it was seldom, I found, retained. I have made this observation my guide in the following work: that is, I have endeavoured, before I suffered myself to proceed in the disquisition, to put the reader in complete possession of the question: and to do it in a way that I thought most likely to stir up his own doubts and solicitude about it.”

To those topics, on which each community possesses established dogmas, laws, customs, sentiments, consecrated and traditional, peculiar to itself. The local creed, which is never formally proclaimed or taught, but is enforced unconsciously by every one upon every one else. Omnipotence of King Nomos.

The answers which Sokrates elicited and exposed were simple expressions of the ordinary prevalent belief upon matters on which each community possesses established dogmas, laws, customs, sentiments, fashions, points of view, &c., belonging to itself. When Herodotus passed over to Egypt, he was astonished to find the judgment, feelings, institutions, and practices of the Egyptians, contrasting most forcibly with those of all other countries. He remarks the same (though less in degree) respecting Babylonians, Indians, Scythians, and others; and he is not less impressed with the veneration of each community for its own creed and habits, coupled with indifference or antipathy towards other creeds, disparate or discordant, prevailing elsewhere.[66]

[66] Herodot. ii. 35-36-64; iii. 38-94, seq. i. 196; iv. 76-77-80. The discordance between the various institutions established among the separate aggregations of mankind, often proceeding to the pitch of reciprocal antipathy — the imperative character of each in its own region, assuming the appearance of natural right and propriety — all this appears brought to view by the inquisitive and observant Herodotus, as well as by others (Xenophon, Cyropæd. i. 3-18): but many new facts, illustrating the same thesis, were noticed by Aristotle and the Peripatetics, when a larger extent of the globe became opened to Hellenic survey. Compare Aristotle, Ethic. Nik. i. 3, 1094, b. 15; Sextus Empiric. Pyrr. Hypotyp. i. sect 145-156, iii. sect 198-234; and the remarkable extract from Bardesanes Syrus, cited by Eusebius, Præp. Evang. vi., and published in Orelli’s collection, pp. 202-219, Alexandri Aphrodis. et Aliorum De Fato, Zurich, 1824.

Many interesting passages in illustration of the same thesis might be borrowed from Montaigne, Pascal, and others. But the most forcible of all illustrations are those furnished by the Oriental world, when surveyed or studied by intelligent Europeans, as it has been more fully during the last century. See especially Sir William Sleeman’s Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official: two volumes which unfold with equal penetration and fidelity the manifestations of established sentiment among the Hindoos and Mahomedans. Vol. i. ch. iv., describing a Suttee on the Nerbudda, is one of the most impressive chapters in the work: the rather as it describes the continuance of a hallowed custom, transmitted even from the days of Alexander. I transcribe also some valuable matter from an eminent living scholar, whose extensive erudition comprises Oriental as well as Hellenic philosophy.

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire (Premier Mémoire sur le Sânkhya, Paris, 1852, pp. 392-396) observes as follows respecting the Sanscrit system of philosophy called Sânkhya, the doctrine expounded and enforced by the philosopher Kapila — and respecting Buddha and Buddhism which was built upon the Sânkhya, amending or modifying it. Buddha is believed to have lived about 547 B.C. Both the system of Buddha, and that of Kapila, are atheistic, as described by M. St. Hilaire.

“Le second point où Bouddha se sépare de Kapila concerne la doctrine. L’homme ne peut rester dans l’incertitude que Kapila lui laisse encore. L’âme délivrée, selon les doctrines de Kapila, peut toujours renaître. Il n’y a qu’un moyen, un seul moyen, de le sauver, — c’est de l’anéantir. Le néant seul est un sûr asile: on ne revient pas de celui là. — Bouddha lui promet le néant; et c’est avec cette promesse inouie qu’il a passionné les hommes et converti les peuples. Que cette monstrueuse croyance, partagée aujourd’hui par trois cents millions de sectateurs, révolte en nous les instincts les plus énergiques de notre nature — qu’elle soulève toutes les répugnances et toutes les horreurs de notre âme — qu’elle nous paraisse aussi incompréhensible que hideuse — peu importe. Une partie considérable de l’humanité l’a reçue, — prête même à la justifier par toutes les subtilités de la metaphysique la plus raffinée, et à la confesser dans les tortures des plus affreux supplices et les austérités homicides d’un fanatisme aveugle. Si c’est une gloire que de dominer souverainement, à travers les âges, la foi des hommes, — jamais fondateur de religion n’en eut une plus grande que le Bouddha: car aucun n’eut de prosélytes plus fidèles ni plus nombreux. Mais je me trompe: le Bouddha ne prétendait jamais fonder une réligion. Il n’était que philosophe: et instruit dans toutes les sciences des Brahmans, il ne voulut personnellement que fonder, à leur exemple, un nouveau système. Seulement, les moyens qu’il employait durent mener ses disciples plus loin qu’il ne comptait aller lui même. En s’adressant à la foule, il faut bientôt la discipliner et la régler. De là, cette ordination réligieuse que le Bouddha donnait à ses adeptes, la hiérarchie qu’il établissait entre eux, fondée uniquement, comme la science l’exigeait, sur le mérite divers des intelligences et des vertus — la douce et sainte morale qu’il prêchait, — le détachement de toutes choses en ce monde, si convenable à des ascètes qui ne pensent qu’au salut éternel — le vœu de pauvreté, qui est la première loi des Bouddhistes — et tout cet ensemble de dispositions qui constituent un gouvernement au lieu d’une école.

“Mais ce n’est là que l’extérieur du Bouddhisme: c’en est le développement matériel et nécessaire. Au fond, son principe est celui du Sânkhya: seulement, il l’applique en grand. — C’est la science qui délivre l’homme: et le Bouddha ajoute — Pour que l’homme soit délivré à jamais, il faut qu’il arrive au Nirvâna, c’est à dire, qu’il soit absolument anéanti. Le néant est donc le bout de la science: et le salut eternel, c’est l’anéantissement.”

The same line of argument is insisted on by M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire in his other work — Bouddha et sa réligion, Paris, 1862, ed. 2nd: especially in his Chapter on the Nirvâna: wherein moreover he complains justly of the little notice which authors take of the established beliefs of those varieties of the human race which are found apart from Christian Europe.

This aggregate of beliefs and predispositions to believe, ethical, religious, æsthetical, social, respecting what is true or false, probable or improbable, just or unjust, holy or unholy, honourable or base, respectable or contemptible, pure or impure, beautiful or ugly, decent or indecent, obligatory to do or obligatory to avoid, respecting the status and relations of each individual in the society, respecting even the admissible fashions of amusement and recreation — this is an established fact and condition of things, the real origin of which is for the most part unknown, but which each new member of the society is born to and finds subsisting. It is transmitted by tradition from parents to children, and is imbibed by the latter almost unconsciously from what they see and hear around, without any special season of teaching, or special persons to teach. It becomes a part of each person’s nature — a standing habit of mind, or fixed set of mental tendencies, according to which, particular experience is interpreted and particular persons appreciated.[67] It is not set forth in systematic proclamation, nor impugned, nor defended: it is enforced by a sanction of its own, the same real sanction or force in all countries, by fear of displeasure from the Gods, and by certainty of evil from neighbours and fellow-citizens. The community hate, despise, or deride, any individual member who proclaims his dissent from their social creed, or even openly calls it in question. Their hatred manifests itself in different ways at different times and occasions, sometimes by burning or excommunication, sometimes by banishment or interdiction[68] from fire and water; at the very least, by exclusion from that amount of forbearance, good-will, and estimation, without which the life of an individual becomes insupportable: for society, though its power to make an individual happy is but limited, has complete power, easily exercised, to make him miserable. The orthodox public do not recognise in any individual citizen a right to scrutinise their creed, and to reject it if not approved by his own rational judgment. They expect that he will embrace it in the natural course of things, by the mere force of authority and contagion — as they have adopted it themselves: as they have adopted also the current language, weights, measures, divisions of time, &c. If he dissents, he is guilty of an offence described in the terms of the indictment preferred against Sokrates — “Sokrates commits crime, inasmuch as he does not believe in the Gods, in whom the city believes, but introduces new religious beliefs,” &c.[69] “Nomos (Law and Custom), King of All” (to borrow the phrase which Herodotus cites from Pindar[70]), exercises plenary power, spiritual as well as temporal, over individual minds; moulding the emotions as well as the intellect according to the local type — determining the sentiments, the belief, and the predisposition in regard to new matters tendered for belief, of every one — fashioning thought, speech, and points of view, no less than action — and reigning under the appearance of habitual, self-suggested tendencies. Plato, when he assumes the function of Constructor, establishes special officers for enforcing in detail the authority of King Nomos in his Platonic variety. But even where no such special officers exist, we find Plato himself describing forcibly (in the speech assigned to Protagoras)[71] the working of that spontaneous ever-present police by whom the authority of King Nomos is enforced in detail — a police not the less omnipotent because they wear no uniform, and carry no recognised title.

[67] This general fact is powerfully set forth by Cicero, in the beginning of the third Tusculan Disputation. Chrysippus the Stoic, “ut est in omni historiâ curiosus,” had collected striking examples of these consecrated practices, cherished in one territory, abhorrent elsewhere. (Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 45, 108.)

[68] See the description of the treatment of Aristodêmus, one of the two Spartans who survived the battle of Thermopylæ, after his return home, Herodot. vii. 231, ix. 71. The interdiction from communion of fire, water, eating, sacrifice, &c., is the strongest manifestation of repugnance: so insupportable to the person excommunicated, that it counted for a sentence of exile in the Roman law. (Deinarchus cont. Aristogeiton, s. 9. Heineccius, Ant. Rom. i. 16, 9, 10.)

[69] Xenophon. Memor. i. 1, 1. Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης, οὓς μὲν ἡ πόλις νομίζει θεοὺς οὐ νομίζων, ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων, &c. Plato (Leges, x. 909, 910) and Cicero (Legib. ii. 19-25) forbid καινὰ δαιμόνια, “separatim nemo habessit Deos,” &c.

[70] Νόμος πάντων βασιλεύς (Herodot. iii. 38). It will be seen from Herodotus, as well as elsewhere, that the idea really intended to be expressed by the word Νόμος is much larger than what is now commonly understood by Law. It is equivalent to that which Epiktêtus calls τὸ δόγμα — πανταχοῦ ἀνίκητον τὸ δόγμα (Epiktet. iii. 16). It includes what is meant by τὸ νόμιμον (Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 13-24), τὰ νόμιμα, τὰ νομιζόμενα, τα πάτρια, τὰ νόμαια, including both positive morality, and social æsthetical precepts, as well as civil or political, and even personal habits, such as that of abstinence from spitting or wiping the nose (Xenoph. Cyrop. viii. 8, 8-10). The case which Herodotus quotes to illustrate his general thesis is the different treatment which, among different nations, is considered dutiful and respectful towards senior relatives and the corpses of deceased relatives; which matters come under τἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ Θεῶν Νόμιμα (Soph. Antig. 440) — of immemorial antiquity; —

Οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε κἀχθὲς ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε Ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ’ ὅτου’ φάνη.

Νόμος and ἐπιτήδευμα run together in Plato’s mind, dictating every hour’s proceeding of the citizen through life (Leges, vii. 807-808-823).

We find Plato, in the Leges, which represents the altered tone and compressive orthodoxy of his old age, extolling the simple goodness (εὐήθεια) of our early forefathers, who believed implicitly all that was told them, and were not clever enough to raise doubts, ὥσπερ τανῦν (Legg. iii. 679, 680). Plato dwells much upon the danger of permitting any innovation on the fixed modes of song and dance (Legg. v. 727, vii. 797-800), and forbids it under heavy penalties. He says that the lawgiver both can consecrate common talk, and ought to consecrate it — καθιερῶσαι τὴν φήμην (Legg. 838), the dicta of Νόμος Βασιλεύς.

Pascal describes, in forcible terms, the wide-spread authority of Νόμος Βασιλεύς:—“Il ne faut pas se méconnaître, nous sommes automates autant qu’esprit: et delà vient que l’instrument, par lequel la persuasion se fait, n’est pas la seule démonstration. Combien y a-t-il peu de choses démontrées! Les preuves ne convainquent que l’esprit. La coutume fait nos preuves les plus fortes et les plus crues: elle incline l’automate, qui entraîne l’esprit sans qu’il y pense. Qui a démontré qu’il sera demain jour, et que nous mourrons — et qu’y a-t-il de plus cru? C’est donc la coutume qui nous en persuade, c’est elle qui fait tant de Chrétiens, c’est elle qui fait les Turcs les Paiens, les métiers, les soldats, &c. Enfin, il faut avoir recours à elle quand une fois l’esprit a vu où est la vérité, afin de nous abreuver et nous teindre de cette créance, qui nous échappe à toute heure; car d’en avoir toujours les preuves présentes, c’est trop d’affaire. Il faut acquérir une créance plus facile, qui est celle de l’habitude, qui, sans violence, sans art, sans argument, nous fait croire les choses, et incline toutes nos puissances à cette croyance, en sorte que notre âme y tombe naturellement. Quand on ne croit que par la force de la conviction, et que l’automate est incliné à croire le contraire, ce n’est pas assez.” (Pascal, Pensées, ch. xi. p. 237, ed. Louandre, Paris, 1854.)

Herein Pascal coincides with Montaigne, of whom he often speaks harshly enough: “Comme de vray nous n’avons aultre mire de la vérité et de la raison, que l’exemple et idée des opinions et usances du païs où nous sommes: là est tousiours la parfaicte religion, la parfaicte police, parfaict et accomply usage de toutes choses.” (Essais de Montaigne, liv. i. ch. 30.) Compare the same train of thought in Descartes (Discours sur la Méthode, pp. 132-139, ed. Cousin).

[71] Plat. Protag. 320-328. The large sense of the word Νόμος, as conceived by Pindar and Herodotus, must be kept in mind, comprising positive morality, religious ritual, consecrated habits, the local turns of sympathy and antipathy, &c. M. Salvador observes, respecting the Mosaic Law: “Qu’on écrive tous les rapports publics et privés qui unissent les membres d’un peuple quelconque, et tous les principes sur lesquels ces rapports sont fondés — il en résultera un ensemble complet, un véritable système plus ou moins raisonnable, qui sera l’expression exacte de la manière d’exister de ce peuple. Or, cet ensemble ou ce système est ce que les Hébreux appellent la tora, la loi ou la constitution publique — en prenant ce mot dans le sens le plus étendu.” (Salvador, Histoire des Institutions de Moise, liv. i. ch. ii. p. 96.)

Compare also about the sense of the word Lex, as conceived by the Arabs, M. Renan, Averroès, p. 286, and Mr. Mill’s chapter respecting the all-comprehensive character of the Hindoo law (Hist. of India, ch. iv., beginning): “In the law books of the Hindus, the details of jurisprudence and judicature occupy comparatively a very moderate space. The doctrines and ceremonies of religion; the rules and practice of education; the institutions, duties, and customs of domestic life; the maxims of private morality, and even of domestic economy; the rules of government, of war, and of negotiation; all form essential parts of the Hindu code of law, and are treated in the same style, and laid down with the same authority, as the rules for the distribution of justice.”

Mr. Maine, in his admirable work on Ancient Law, notes both the all-comprehensive and the irresistible ascendancy of what is called Law in early societies. He remarks emphatically that “the stationary condition of the human race is the rule — the progressive condition the exception — a rare exception in the history of the world”. (Chap. i. pp. 16-18-19; chap. ii. pp. 22-24.)

Again, Mr. Maine observes:—“The other liability, to which the infancy of society is exposed, has prevented or arrested the progress of far the greater part of mankind. The rigidity of ancient law, arising chiefly from its early association and identification with religion, has chained down the mass of the human race to those views of life and conduct which they entertained at the time when their institutions were first consolidated into a systematic form. There were one or two races exempted by a marvellous fate from this calamity: and grafts from these stocks have fertilised a few modern societies. But it is still true that over the larger part of the world, the perfection of law has always been considered as consisting in adherence to the ground-plan supposed to have been marked out by the legislator. If intellect has in such cases been exercised upon jurisprudence, it has uniformly prided itself on the subtle perversity of the conclusions it could build on ancient texts, without discoverable departure from their literal tenor.” (Maine, Ancient Law, ch. iv. pp. 77-78.)

Small minority of exceptional individual minds, who do not yield to the established orthodoxy, but insist on exercising their own judgment.

There are, however, generally a few exceptional minds to whom this omnipotent authority of King Nomos is repugnant, and who claim a right to investigate and judge for themselves on many points already settled and foreclosed by the prevalent orthodoxy. In childhood and youth these minds must have gone through the ordinary influences,[72] but without the permanent stamp which such influences commonly leave behind. Either the internal intellectual force of the individual is greater, or he contracts a reverence for some new authority, or (as in the case of Sokrates) he believes himself to have received a special mission from the Gods — in one way or other the imperative character of the orthodoxy around him is so far enfeebled, that he feels at liberty to scrutinise for himself the assemblage of beliefs and sentiments around him. If he continues to adhere to them, this is because they approve themselves to his individual reason: unless this last condition be fulfilled, he becomes a dissenter, proclaiming his dissent more or less openly, according to circumstances. Such disengagement from authority traditionally consecrated (ἐξαλλαγὴ τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων),[73] and assertion of the right of self-judgment, on the part of a small minority of ἰδιογνώμονες,[74] is the first condition of existence for philosophy or “reasoned truth”.

[72] Cicero, Tusc. D. iii. 2; Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. x. 10, 1179, b. 23. ὁ δὲ λόγος καὶ ἡ διδαχὴ μή ποτ’ οὐκ ἐν ἅπασιν ἰσχύῃ, ἀλλὰ δέῃ προδιειργάσθαι τοῖς ἔθεσι τὴν τοῦ ἀκροατοῦ ψυχὴν πρὸς τὸ καλῶς χαίρειν καὶ μισεῖν, ὥσπερ γῆν τὴν θρέψουσαν τὸ σπέρμα. To the same purpose Plato, Republ. iii. 402 A, Legg. ii. 653 B, 659 E, Plato and Aristotle (and even Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 2, 3), aiming at the formation of a body of citizens, and a community very different from anything which they saw around them — require to have the means of shaping the early sentiments, love, hatred, &c., of children, in a manner favourable to their own ultimate views. This is exactly what Νόμος Βασιλεὺς does effectively in existing societies, without need of special provision for the purpose. See Plato, Protagor. 325, 326.

[73] Plato, Phædrus, 265 A. See Sir Will. Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, Lect. 29, pp. 88-90. In the Timæus (p. 40 E) Plato interrupts the thread of his own speculations on cosmogony, to take in all the current theogony on the authority of King Nomos. ἀδύνατον οὖν θεῶν παισὶν ἀπιστεῖν, καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων καὶ ἀναγκαίων ἀποδείξεων λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς οἰκεῖα φάσκουσιν ἀπαγγέλλειν ἑπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον.

Hegel adverts to this severance of the individual consciousness from the common consciousness of the community, as the point of departure for philosophical theory:—“On one hand we are now called upon to find some specific matter for the general form of Good; such closer determination of The Good is the criterion required. On the other hand, the exigencies of the individual subject come prominently forward: this is the consequence of the revolution which Sokrates operated in the Greek mind. So long as the religion, the laws, the political constitution, of any people, are in full force — so long as each individual citizen is in complete harmony with them all — no one raises the question, What has the Individual to do for himself? In a moralised and religious social harmony, each individual finds his destination prescribed by the established routine; while this positive morality, religion, laws, form also the routine of his own mind. On the contrary, if the Individual no longer stands on the custom of his nation, nor feels himself in full agreement with the religion and laws — he then no longer finds what he desires, nor obtains satisfaction in the medium around him. When once such discord has become confirmed, the Individual must fall back on his own reflections, and seek his destination there. This is what gives rise to the question — What is the essential scheme for the Individual? To what ought he to conform — what shall he aim at? An ideal is thus set up for the Individual. This is, the Wise Man, or the Ideal of the Wise Man, which is, in truth, the separate working of individual self-consciousness, conceived as an universal or typical character.” (Hegel, Geschichte der Philosophie, Part ii. pp. 132, 133.)

[74] This is an expression of the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches:—“Si quelqu’un me demande maintenant, ce que nous sommes, puisque nous ne voulons être ni Académiciens, ni Sceptiques, ni Eclectiques, ni d’aucune autre Secte, je répondrai que nous sommes nôtres — c’est à dire libres: ne voulans soumettre notre esprit à aucune autorité, et n’approuvans que ce qui nous paroit s’approcher plus près de la vérité. Que si quelqu’un, par mocquerie ou par flatterie, nous appelle ἰδιογνώμονας — c’est à dire, attachés à nos propres sentimens, nous n’y répugnerons pas.” (Huet, Traité Philosophique de la Foiblesse de l’Esprit Humain, liv. ii. ch. xi. p. 224, ed. 1741.)

Early appearance of a few free-judging individuals, or free-thinkers in Greece.

Amidst the epic and lyric poets of Greece, with their varied productive impulse — as well as amidst the Gnomic philosophers, the best of whom were also poets — there are not a few manifestations of such freely judging individuality. Xenophanes the philosopher, who wrote in poetry, censured severely several of the current narratives about the Gods and Pindar, though in more respectful terms, does the like. So too, the theories about the Kosmos, propounded by various philosophers, Thales, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Herakleitus, Anaxagoras, &c., were each of them the free offspring of an individual mind. But these were counter-affirmations: novel theories, departing from the common belief, yet accompanied by little or no debate, or attack, or defence: indeed the proverbial obscurity of Herakleitus, and the recluse mysticism of the Pythagoreans, almost excluded discussion. These philosophers (to use the phrase of Aristotle[75]) had no concern with Dialectic: which last commenced in the fifth century B.C., with the Athenian drama and dikastery, and was enlisted in the service of philosophy by Zeno the Eleate and Sokrates.

[75] Aristot. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 32. Eusebius, having set forth the dissentient and discordant opinions of the various Hellenic philosophers, triumphantly contrasts with them the steady adherence of Jews and Christians to one body of truth, handed down by an uniform tradition from father to son, from the first generation of man — ἀπὸ πρώτης ἀνθρωπογονίας. (Præp. Ev. xiv. 3.)

Cicero, in the treatise (not preserved) entitled Hortensius — set forth, at some length, an attack and a defence of philosophy; the former he assigned to Hortensius, the latter he undertook in his own name. One of the arguments urged by Hortensius against philosophy, to prove that it was not “vera sapientia,” was, that it was both a human invention and a recent novelty, not handed down by tradition a principio, therefore not natural to man. “Quæ si secundum hominis naturam est, cum homine ipso cœperit necesse est; si vero non est, nec capere quidem illam posset humana natura. Ubi apud antiquiores latuit amor iste investigandæ veritatis?” (Lactantius, Inst. Divin. iii. 16.) The loss of this Ciceronian pleading (Philosophy versus Consecrated Tradition) is much to be deplored. Lactantius and Augustin seem to have used it largely.

The Hermotimus of Lucian, manifesting all his lively Sokratic acuteness, is a dialogue intended to expose the worthlessness of all speculative philosophy. The respondent Hermotimus happens to be a Stoic, but the assailant expressly declares (c. 85) that the arguments would be equally valid against Platonists or Aristotelians. Hermotimus is advised to desist from philosophy, to renounce inquiry, to employ himself in some of the necessary affairs of life, and to acquiesce in the common received opinions, which would carry him smoothly along the remainder of his life (ἀξιῶ πράττειν τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων, καὶ ὅ σε παραπέμψει ἐς τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ βίου, τὰ κοινὰ ταῦτα φρονοῦντα, c. 72). Among the worthless philosophical speculations Lucian ranks geometry: the geometrical definitions (point and line) he declares to be nonsensical and inadmissible (c. 74).

Rise of Dialectic — Effect of the Drama and the Dikastery.

Both the drama and the dikastery recognise two or more different ways of looking at a question, and require that no conclusion shall be pronounced until opposing disputants have been heard and compared. The Eumenides plead against Apollo, Prometheus against the mandates and dispositions of Zeus, in spite of the superior dignity as well as power with which Zeus is invested: every Athenian citizen, in his character of dikast, took an oath to hear both the litigant parties alike, and to decide upon the pleadings and evidence according to law. Zeno, in his debates with the anti-Parmenidean philosophers, did not trouble himself to parry their thrusts. He assumed the aggressive, impugned the theories of his opponents, and exposed the contradictions in which they involved themselves. The dialectic process, in which there are (at the least) two opposite points of view both represented — the negative and the affirmative — became both prevalent and interesting.

Application of Negative scrutiny to ethical and social topics by Sokrates.

I have in a former [chapter] explained the dialectic of Zeno, as it bore upon the theories of the anti-Parmenidean philosophers. Still more important was the proceeding of Sokrates, when he applied the like scrutiny to ethical, social, political, religious topics. He did not come forward with any counter-theories: he declared expressly that he had none to propose, and that he was ignorant. He put questions to those who on their side professed to know, and he invited answers from them. His mission, as he himself described it, was, to scrutinise and expose false pretensions to knowledge. Without such scrutiny, he declares life itself to be not worth having. He impugned the common and traditional creed, not in the name of any competing doctrine, but by putting questions on the familiar terms in which it was confidently enunciated, and by making its defenders contradict themselves and feel the shame of their own contradictions. The persons who held it were shown to be incapable of defending it, when tested by an acute cross-examiner; and their supposed knowledge, gathered up insensibly from the tradition around them, deserved the language which Bacon applies to the science of his day, conducting indirectly to the necessity of that remedial course which Bacon recommends. “Nemo adhuc tantâ mentis constantiâ et rigore inventus est, ut decreverit et sibi proposuerit, theorias et notiones communes penitus abolere, et intellectum abrasum et æquum ad particularia rursus applicare. Itaque ratio illa quam habemus, ex multâ fide et multo etiam casu, necnon ex puerilibus quas primo hausimus notionibus, farrago quædam est et congeries.”[76]

[76] Bacon, Nov. Org. Aph. 97. I have already cited this passage in a note on the 68th chapter of my ‘History of Greece,’ pp. 612-613; in which note I have also alluded to other striking passages of Bacon, indicating the confusion, inconsistencies, and misapprehensions of the “intellectus sibi permissus”. In that note, and in the text of the chapter, I have endeavoured to illustrate the same view of the Sokratic procedure as that which is here taken.

Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the right of satisfaction for his own individual reason.

Never before (so far as we know) had the authority of King Nomos been exposed to such an enemy as this dialectic or cross-examination by Sokrates: the prescriptive creed and unconsciously imbibed sentiment (“ratio ex fide, casu, et puerilibus notionibus”) being thrown upon their defence against negative scrutiny brought to bear upon them by the inquisitive reason of an individual citizen. In the Apology, Sokrates clothes his own strong intellectual œstrus in the belief (doubtless sincerely entertained) of a divine mission. In the Gorgias, the Platonic Sokrates asserts it in naked and simple, yet not less emphatic, language. “You, Polus, bring against me the authority of the multitude, as well as that of the most eminent citizens, all of whom agree in upholding your view. But I, one man standing here alone, do not agree with you. And I engage to compel you, my one respondent, to agree with me.”[77] The autonomy or independence of individual reason against established authority, and the title of negative reason as one of the litigants in the process of philosophising, are first brought distinctly to view in the career of Sokrates.

[77] Plato, Gorgias, p. 472 A. καὶ νῦν, περὶ ὧν σὺ λέγεις, ὀλίγου σοὶ πάντες συμφήσουσι ταὐτα Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ οἱ ξένοι, ἐὰν βούλη κατ’ ἐμοῦ μάρτυρας παρασχέσθαι ὡς οὐκ ἀληθῆ λέγω· μαρτυρήσουσί σοι, ἐὰν μὲν βούλῃ, Νικίας ὁ Νικηράτου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ μετ’ αὐτοῦ — ἐὰν δὲ βούλῃ, Ἀριστοκράτης ὁ Σκελλίου — ἐὰν δὲ βούλῃ, ἡ Περικλέους ὅλη οἰκία ἢ ἄλλη συγγένεια, ἥντινα ἂν βούλῃ τῶν ἔνθαδε ἐκλέξασθαι. Ἀλλ’ ἐγώ σοι εἶς ὣν οὐχ ὁμολογῶ· οὐ γάρ με σὺ ἀναγκάζεις, &c.

Aversion of the Athenian public to the negative procedure of Sokrates. Mistake of supposing that that negative procedure belongs peculiarly to the Sophists and the Megarici.

With such a career, we need not wonder that Sokrates, though esteemed and admired by a select band of adherents, incurred a large amount of general unpopularity. The public (as I have before observed) do not admit the claim of independent exercise for individual reason. In the natural process of growth in the human mind, belief does not follow proof, but springs up apart from and independent of it: an immature intelligence believes first, and proves (if indeed it ever seeks proof) afterwards.[78] This mental tendency is farther confirmed by the pressure and authority of King Nomos; who is peremptory in exacting belief, but neither furnishes nor requires proof. The community, themselves deeply persuaded, will not hear with calmness the voice of a solitary reasoner, adverse to opinions thus established; nor do they like to be required to explain, analyse, or reconcile those opinions.[79] They disapprove especially that dialectic debate which gives free play and efficacious prominence to the negative arm. The like disapprobation is felt even by most of the historians of philosophy; who nevertheless, having an interest in the philosophising process, might be supposed to perceive that nothing worthy of being called reasoned truth can exist, without full and equal scope to negative as well as to affirmative.

[78] See Professor Bain’s Chapter on Belief; one of the most original and instructive chapters in his volume on the Emotions and the Will, pp. 578-584. [Third Ed., pp. 505-538.]

[79] This antithesis and reciprocal repulsion — between the speculative reason of the philosopher who thinks for himself, and the established traditional convictions of the public — is nowhere more strikingly enforced than by Plato in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic; together with the corrupting influence exercised by King Nomos, at the head of his vehement and unanimous public, over those few gifted natures which are competent to philosophical speculation. See Plato, Rep. vi. 492-493.

The unfavourable feelings with which the attempts to analyse morality (especially when quite novel, as such attempts were in the time of Sokrates) are received in a community — are noticed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his tract on Utilitarianism, ch. iii. pp. 38-39:—

“The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposed moral standard, What is its sanction? What are the motives to obey it? or more specifically, What is the source of its obligation? Whence does it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophy to provide the answer to this question: which though frequently assuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it had some special applicability to that above others, really arises in regard to all standards. It arises in fact whenever a person is called on to adopt a standard, or refer morality to any basis on which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obligatory: and when a person is asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox. The supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem: the superstructure seems to stand better without than with what is represented as its foundation.… The difficulty has no peculiar application to the doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analyse morality, and reduce it to principles: which, unless the principle is already in men’s minds invested with as much sacredness as any of its applications, always seems to divest them of a part of their sanctity.”

Epiktêtus observes that the refined doctrines acquired by the self-reasoning philosopher, often failed to attain that intense hold on his conviction, which the “rotten doctrines” inculcated from childhood possessed over the conviction of ordinary men. Διὰ τί οὖν ἐκεῖνοι (οἱ πολλοὶ, οἱ ἰδιῶται) ὑμῶν (των φιλοσόφων) ἰσχυρότεροι; Ὅτι ἐκεῖνοι μὲν τὰ σαπρὰ ταῦτα ἀπὸ δογμάτων λαλοῦσιν; ὑμεῖς δὲ τὰ κομψὰ ἀπὸ τῶν χειλῶν.… Οὕτως ὑμᾶς οἱ ἰδιῶται νικῶσι· Πανταχοῦ γὰρ ἰσχυρὸν τὸ δόγμα· ἀνίκητον τὸ δόγμα. (Epiktêtus, iii. 16.)

The same charges which the historians of philosophy bring against the Sophists were brought by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates. They represent the standing dislike of free inquiry, usual with an orthodox public.

These historians usually speak in very harsh terms of the Sophists, as well as of Eukleides and the Megaric sect; who are taken as the great apostles of negation. But the truth is, that the Megarics inherited it from Sokrates, and shared it with Plato. Eukleides cannot have laid down a larger programme of negation than that which we read in the Apology of Sokrates, — nor composed a dialogue more ultra-negative than the Platonic Parmenidês: nor, again, did he depart so widely, in principle as well as in precept, from existing institutions, as Plato in his Republic. The charges which historians of philosophy urge against the Megarics as well as against the persons whom they call the Sophists — such as corruption of youth — perversion of truth and morality, by making the worse appear the better reason — subversion of established beliefs — innovation as well as deception — all these were urged against Sokrates himself by his contemporaries,[80] and indeed against all the philosophers indiscriminately, as we learn from Sokrates himself in the Apology.[81] They are outbursts of feeling natural to the practical, orthodox citizen, who represents the common sense of the time and place; declaring his antipathy to these speculative, freethinking innovations of theory, which challenges the prescriptive maxims of traditional custom and tests them by a standard approved by herself. The orthodox citizen does not feel himself in need of philosophers to tell him what is truth or what is virtue, nor what is the difference between real and fancied knowledge. On these matters he holds already settled persuasions, acquired from his fathers and his ancestors, and from the acknowledged civic authorities, spiritual and temporal;[82] who are to him exponents of the creed guaranteed by tradition:—

“Quod sapio, satis est mihi: non ego curo Esse quod Arcesilas ærumnosique Solones.”

[80] Themistius, in defending himself against contemporary opponents, whom he represents to have calumniated him, consoles himself by saying, among other observations, that these arrows have been aimed at all the philosophers successively — Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus. Ὁ γὰρ σοφιστὴς καὶ ἀλαζὼν καὶ καινότομος πρῶτον μὲν Σωκράτους ὀνείδη ἦν, ἔπειτα Πλάτωνος ἐφεξῆς, εἶθ’ ὕστερον Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου. (Orat. xxiii. p. 346, Dindorf.)

We read in Zeller’s account of the Platonic philosophy (Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 368, ed. 2nd):

“Die propädeutische Begründung der Platonischen Philosophie besteht im Allgemeinen darin, dass der unphilosophische Standpunkt aufgelöst, und die Erhebung zum philosophischen in ihrer Nothwendigkeit nachgewiesen wird. Im Besondern können wir drey Stadien dieses Wegs unterscheiden. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet das gewöhnliche Bewusstsein. Indem die Voraussetzungen, welche Diesem für ein Erstes und Festes gegolten hatten, dialektisch zersetzt werden, so erhalten wir zunächst das negative Resultat der Sophistik. Erst wenn auch diese überwunden ist, kann der philosophische Standpunkt positiv entwickelt werden.”

Zeller here affirms that it was the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias and others) who first applied negative analysis to the common consciousness; breaking up, by their dialectic scrutiny, those hypotheses which had before exercised authority therein, as first principles not to be disputed.

I dissent from this position. I conceive that the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias) did not do what Zeller affirms, and that Sokrates (and Plato after him) did do it. The negative analysis was the weapon of Sokrates, and not of Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, &c. It was he who declared (see Platonic Apology) that false persuasion of knowledge was at once universal and ruinous, and who devoted his life to the task of exposing it by cross-examination. The conversation of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydêmus (Memor. iv. 2), exhibits a complete specimen of that aggressive analysis, brought to bear on the common consciousness, which Zeller ascribes to the Sophists: the Platonic dialogues, in which Sokrates cross-examines upon Justice, Temperance, Courage, Piety, Virtue, &c., are of the like character; and we know from Xenophon (Mem. i. 1-16) that Sokrates passed much time in such examinations with pre-eminent success.

I notice this statement of Zeller, not because it is peculiar to him (for most of the modern historians of philosophy affirm the same; and his history, which is the best that I know, merely repeats the ordinary view), but because it illustrates clearly the view which I take of the Sophists and Sokrates. Instead of the unmeaning abstract “Sophistik,” given by Zeller and others, we ought properly to insert the word “Sokratik,” if we are to have any abstract term at all.

Again — The negative analysis, which these authors call “Sophistik,” they usually censure as discreditable and corrupting. To me it appears, on the contrary, both original and valuable, as one essential condition for bringing social and ethical topics under the domain of philosophy or “reasoned truth”.

Professor Charles Thurot (in his Études sur Aristote, Paris, 1860, p. 119) takes a juster view than Zeller of the difference between Plato and the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias). “Les Sophistes, comme tous ceux qui dissertent superficiellement sur des questions de philosophie, et en particulier sur la morale et la politique, s’appuyaient sur l’autorité et le témoignage; ils alléguaient les vers des poètes célèbres qui passaient aux yeux des Grecs pour des oracles de sagesse: ils invoquaient l’opinion du commun des hommes. Platon récusait absolument ces deux espèces de témoignages. Ni les poètes ni le commun des hommes ne savent ce qu’ils disent, puisqu’ils ne peuvent en rendre raison....... Aux yeux de Platon, il n’y a d’autre méthode, pour arriver au vrai et pour le communiquer, que la dialectique: qui est à la fois l’art d’interroger et de répondre, et l’art de définir et de diviser.”

M. Thurot here declares (in my judgment very truly) that the Sophists appealed to the established ethical authorities, and dwelt upon or adorned the received common-places — that Plato denied these authorities, and brought his battery of negative cross-examination to bear upon them as well as upon their defenders. M. Thurot thus gives a totally different version of the procedure of the Sophists from that which is given by Zeller. Nevertheless he perfectly agrees with Zeller, and with Anytus, the accuser of Sokrates (Plat. Menon, pp. 91-92), in describing the Sophists as a class who made money by deceiving and perverting the minds of hearers (p. 120).

[81] Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 23 D. ἵνα δὲ μὴ δοκῶσιν ἀπορεῖν, τὰ κατὰ πάντων τῶν φιλοσοφούντων πρόχειρα ταῦτα λέγουσιν, ὅτι τὰ μετέωρα καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς καὶ θεοὺς μὴ νομίζειν καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν, &c.

Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 31. τὸ κοινῇ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἐπιτιμώμενον. The rich families in Athens severely reproached their relatives who frequented the society of Sokrates. Xenophon, Sympos. iv. 32.

[82] See this point strikingly set forth by Plato, Politikus, 299: also Plutarch, Ἐρωτικός, c. 13, 756 A.

This is the “auctoritas majorum,” put forward by Cotta in his official character of Pontifex, as conclusive per se: when reasons are produced to sustain it, the reasons fail. (Cic. Nat. Deor. iii. 3, 5, 6, 9.)

The “auctoritas maiorum,” proclaimed by the Pontifex Cotta, may be illustrated by what we read in Father Paul’s History of the Council of Trent, respecting the proceedings of that Council when it imposed the duty of accepting the authoritative interpretation of Scripture:—“Lorsqu’on fut à opiner sur le quatrième Article, presque tous se rendirent à l’avis du Cardinal Pachèco, qui représenta: Que l’Écriture ayant été expliquée par tant de gens éminens en piété et en doctrine, l’on ne pouvoit pas espérer de rien ajouter de meilleur: Que les nouvelles Hérésies etant toutes nées des nouveaux sens qu’on avoit donnés à l’Écriture, il étoit nécessaire d’arrêter la licence des esprits modernes, et de les obliger de se laisser gouverner par les Anciens et par l’Église: Et que si quelqu’un naissoit avec un esprit singulier, on devoit le forcer à le renfermer au dedans de lui-même, et à ne pas troubler le monde en publiant tout ce qu’il pensoit.” (Fra Paolo, Histoire du Concile de Trente, traduction Françoise, par Le Courayer, Livre II. p. 284, 285, in 1546, pontificate of Paul III.)

P. 289. “Par le second Décret, il étoit ordonné en substance, de tenir l’Edition Vulgate pour authentique dans les leçons publiques, les disputes, les prédications, et les explications; et défendre à qui que ce fut de la rejeter. On y défendoit aussi d’expliquer la Saint Écriture dans un sens contraire à celui que lui donne la Sainte Église notre Mère, et au consentement unanime des Pères, quand bien même on auroit intention de tenir ces explications secrètes; et on ordonnoit que ceux qui contreviendroient à cette défense fussent punis par les Ordinaires.”

He will not listen to ingenious sophistry respecting these consecrated traditions; he does not approve the tribe of fools who despise what they are born to, and dream of distant, unattainable novelties:[83] he cannot tolerate the nice discoursers, ingenious hair-splitters, priests of subtleties and trifles — dissenters from the established opinions, who corrupt the youth, teaching their pupils to be wise above the laws, to despise or even beat their fathers and mothers,[84] and to cheat their creditors — mischievous instructors, whose appropriate audience are the thieves and malefactors, and who ought to be silenced if they display ability to pervert others.[85] Such feeling of disapprobation and antipathy against speculative philosophy and dialectic — against the libertas philosophandi — counts as a branch of virtue among practical and orthodox citizens, rich or poor, oligarchical or democratical, military or civil, ancient or modern. It is an antipathy common to men in other respects very different, to Nikias as well as Kleon, to Eupolis and Aristophanes as well as to Anytus and Demochares. It was expressed forcibly by the Roman Cato (the Censor), when he censured Sokrates as a dangerous and violent citizen; aiming, in his own way, to subvert the institutions and customs of the country, and poisoning the minds of his fellow-citizens with opinions hostile to the laws.[86] How much courage is required in any individual citizen, to proclaim conscientious dissent in the face of wide-spread and established convictions, is recognised by Plato himself, and that too in the most orthodox and intolerant of all his compositions.[87] He (and Aristotle after him), far from recognising the infallibility of established King Nomos, were bold enough[88] to try and condemn him, and to imagine (each of them) a new Νόμος of his own, representing the political Art or Theory of Politics — a notion which would not have been understood by Themistokles or Aristeides.

[83] Pindar, Pyth. iii. 21.

Ἔστι δὲ φῦλον ἐν ἀνθρώποισι ματαιοτατον, Ὅστις αἰσχύνων ἐπιχώρια παπταίνει τὰ πόρσω, Μεταμώνια θηρεύων ἀκράντοις ἐλπίσιν.

[84]

Οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσι· Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ἃς θ’ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ Κεκτήμεθ’, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος, Οὔδ’ εἰ δι’ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν ηὕρηται φρενῶν. (Euripides, Bacchæ, 200.)

Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque Endogredi sceleris. (Lucretius, i. 85.)

Compare Valckenaer, Diatrib. Eurip. pp. 38, 39, cap. 5.

About the accusations against Sokrates, of leading the youth to contract doubts and to slight the authority of their fathers, see Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 52; Plato, Gorgias, 522 B, p. 79, Menon, p. 70. A touching anecdote, illustrating this displeasure of the fathers against Sokrates, may be found in Xenophon, Cyropæd. iii. 1, 89, where the father of Tigranes puts to death the σοφιστὴς who had taught his son, because that son had contracted a greater attachment to the σοφιστὴς than to his own father.

Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 9; i. 2, 49. Apolog. So. s. 20; compare the speech of Kleon in Thucyd. iii. 37. Plato, Politikus, p. 299 E.

Timon in the Silli bestows on Sokrates and his successors the title of ἀκριβόλογοι. Diog. Laert. ii. 19. Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii. 8. Aristophan. Nubes, 130, where Strepsiades says —

πως οὖν γερὼν ὦν κἀπιλήσμων καὶ βραδὺς λόγων ἀκριβῶν σχινδαλάμους μαθήσομαι;

Compare 320-359 of the same comedy — σύ τε λεπτοτάτων λήρων ἱερεῦ — also Ranæ, 149, b.

When Euripides (ὁ σκηνικὸς φιλόσοφος) went down to Hades, he is described by Aristophanes as giving clever exhibitions among the malefactors there, with great success and applause. Ranæ, 771 —

Ὅτε δὴ κατῆλθ’ Εὐριπίδης, ἐπεδείκνυτο τοῖς λωποδύταις καὶ τοῖς βαλαντιητόμοις … ὅπερ ἔστ’ ἐν ᾍδου πλῆθος· οἱ δ’ ἀκροώμενοι τῶν ἀντιλογιῶν καὶ λυγισμῶν και στροφῶν ὑπερεμάνησαν, κἀνόμισαν σοφώτατον.

These astute cavils and quibbles of Euripides are attributed by Aristophanes, and the other comic writers, to his frequent conversations with Sokrates. Ranæ, 1490-1500. Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhet. p. 301-355. Valckenaer, Diatribe in Euripid. c. 4. Aristophanes describes Sokrates as having stolen a garment from the palæstra (Nubes, 180); and Eupolis also introduces him as having stolen a wine-ladle (Schol. ad loc. Eupolis, Fragm. Incert. ix. ed. Meineke). The fragment of Eupolis (xi. p. 553, Ἀδολεσχεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκδίδαξον, ὦ σοφιστά) seems to apply to Sokrates. About the sympathy of the people with the attacks of the comic writers on Sokrates, see Lucian, Piscat. c. 25.

The rhetor Aristeides (Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, pp. 406-407-408, Dindorf), after remarking on the very vague and general manner in which the title Σοφιστὴς was applied among the Greeks (Herodotus having so designated both Solon and Pythagoras), mentions that Androtion not only spoke of the seven wise men as τοὺς ἕπτα σοφιστάς, but also called Sokrates σοφιστὴν τοῦτον τὸν πάνυ: that Lysias called Plato σοφιστὴν, and called Æschines (the Sokratic) by the same title; that Isokrates represented himself, and rhetors and politicians like himself, as φιλοσόφους, while he termed the dialecticians and critics σοφιστάς. Nothing could be more indeterminate than these names, σοφιστὴς and φιλόσοφος. It was Plato who applied himself chiefly to discredit the name σοφιστὴς (ὁ μάλιστα ἐπαναστὰς τῷ ὀνόματι) but others had tried to discredit φιλόσοφος and τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν in like manner. It deserves notice that in the restrictive or censorial law (proposed by Sophokles, and enacted by the Athenians in B.C. 307, but repealed in the following year) against the philosophers and their schools, the philosophers generally are designated as σοφισταί. Pollux, Onomast. ix. 42 ἔστι δὲ καὶ νόμος Ἀττικὸς κατὰ τῶν φιλοσοφούντων γραφείς, ὃν Σοφοκλῆς Ἀμφικλείδου Σουνιεὺς εἶπεν, ἐν ᾧ τινα κατὰ αὐτῶν προειπὼν, ἐπήγαγε, μὴ ἐξεῖναι μηδενὶ τῶν σοφιστῶν διατριβὴν κατασκευάσασθαι.

[85] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 3 C-D. Ἀθηναίοις γὰρ οὐ σφόδρα μέλει, ἂν τινα δεινὸν οἴωνται εἶναι, μὴ μέντοι διδασκαλικὸν τῆς αὑτοῦ σοφίας· ὃν δ’ ἂν καὶ ἄλλους οἴωνται ποιεῖν τοιούτους, θυμοῦνται, εἶτ’ οὖν φθόνῳ, ὡς συ λέγεις, εἴτε δι’ ἄλλο τι.

[86] Plato, Menon, pp. 90-92. The antipathy manifested here by Anytus against the Sophists, is the same feeling which led him to indict Sokrates, and which induced also Cato the Censor to hate the character of Sokrates, and Greek letters generally. Plutarch, Cato, 23: ὅλως φιλοσοφίᾳ προσκεκρουκὼς, καὶ πᾶσαν Ἑλληνικὴν μοῦσαν καὶ παιδείαν ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας προπηλακίζων· ὃς γε καὶ Σωκράτη φησὶ λάλον καὶ βίαιον γενόμενον ἐπιχειρεῖν, ᾧ τρόπῳ δυνατὸν ἦν, τυραννεῖν τῆς πατρίδος, καταλύοντα τὰ ἔθη, καὶ πρὸς ἐναντίας τοῖς νόμοις δόξας ἕλκοντα καὶ μεθίσταντα τοὺς πολίτας. Comp. Cato, Epist. ap. Plin. H. N. xxix. 7.

[87] Plato, Legg. viii. p. 835 C. νῦν δε ἀνθρώπου τολμηροῦ κινδυνεύει δεῖσθαί τινος, ὃς παῤῥησίαν διαφερόντως τιμῶν ἐρεῖ τὰ δοκοῦντα ἄριστ’ εἶναι πόλει καὶ πολίταις, ἐν ψυχαῖς διεφθαρμέναις τὸ πρέπον καὶ ἑπόμενον πάσῃ τῇ πολιτείᾳ τάττων, ἐναντία λέγων ταῖς μεγίσταισιν ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ οὐκ ἔχων βοηθὸν ἀνθρώπων οὐδένα, λόγῳ ἑπόμενος μόνῳ μόνος.

Here the dissenter who proclaims his sincere convictions is spoken of with respect: compare the contrary feeling, Leges, ix. 881 A, and in the tenth book generally. In the striking passage of the Republic, referred to in a previous [note] (vi. 492) Plato declares the lessons taught by the multitude — the contagion of established custom and tradition, communicated by the crowd of earnest assembled believers — to be of overwhelming and almost omnipotent force. The individual philosopher (he says), who examines for himself and tries to stand against it, can hardly maintain himself without special divine aid.

[88] In the dialogue called Politikus, Plato announces formally and explicitly (what the historical Sokrates had asserted before him, Xen. Mem. iii. 9, 10) the exclusive pretensions of the Βασιλεὺς Τεχνικὸς (representing political science, art, or theory) to rule mankind — the illusory nature of all other titles to rule and the mischievous working of all existing governments. The same view is developed in the Republic and the Leges. Compare also Aristotel. Ethic. Nikom. x. p. 1180, b. 27 ad fin.

In a remarkable passage of the Leges (i. 637 D, 638 C), Plato observes, in touching upon the discrepancy between different local institutions at Sparta, Krete, Keos. Tarentum, &c.:—“If natives of different cities argue with each other about their respective institutions, each of them has a good and sufficient reason. This is the custom with us; with you perhaps it is different. But we, who are now conversing, do not apply our criticisms to the private citizen; we criticise the lawgiver himself, and try to determine whether his laws are good or bad.” ἡμῖν δ’ ἐστι οὐ περὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἄλλων ὁ λόγος, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῶν νομοθετῶν αὐτῶν κακίας τε καὶ ἀρετῆς. King Nomos was not at all pleased to be thus put upon his trial.

Aversion towards Sokrates aggravated by his extreme publicity of speech. His declaration, that false persuasion of knowledge is universal; must be understood as a basis in appreciating Plato’s Dialogues of Search.

The dislike so constantly felt by communities having established opinions, towards free speculation and dialectic, was aggravated in its application to Sokrates, because his dialectic was not only novel, but also public, obtrusive, and indiscriminate.[89] The name of Sokrates, after his death, was employed not merely by Plato, but by all the Sokratic companions, to cover their own ethical speculations: moreover, all of them either composed works or gave lectures. But in either case, readers or hearers were comparatively few in number, and were chiefly persons prompted by some special taste or interest: while Sokrates passed his day in the most public place, eager to interrogate every one, and sometimes forcing his interrogations even upon reluctant hearers.[90] That he could have been allowed to persist in this course of life for thirty years, when we read his own account (in the Platonic Apology) of the antipathy which he provoked — and when we recollect that the Thirty, during their short dominion, put him under an interdict — is a remarkable proof of the comparative tolerance of Athenian practice.

[89] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 3. “Est enim philosophia paucis contenta judicibus, multitudinem consulto ipsa fugiens, eique ipsi et suspecta et invisa,” &c.

The extreme publicity, and indiscriminate, aggressive conversation of Sokrates, is strongly insisted on by Themistius (Orat. xxvi. p. 384, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ λέγειν) as aggravating the displeasure of the public against him.

[90] Xenophon, Memor. iv. 2, 3-5-40.

However this may be, it is from the conversation of Sokrates that the Platonic Dialogues of Search take their rise, and we must read them under those same fundamental postulates which Sokrates enunciates to the Dikasts. “False persuasion of knowledge is almost universal: the Elenchus, which eradicates this, is salutary and indispensable: the dialectic search for truth between two active, self-working minds, both of them ignorant, yet both feeling their own ignorance, is instructive, as well as fascinating, though it should end without finding any truth at all, and without any other result than that of discovering some proposed hypotheses to be untrue.” The modern reader must be invited to keep these postulates in mind, if he would fairly appreciate the Platonic Dialogues of Search. He must learn to esteem the mental exercise of free debate as valuable in itself,[91] even though the goal recedes before him in proportion to the steps which he makes in advance. He perceives a lively antithesis of opinions, several distinct and dissentient points of view opened, various tentatives of advance made and broken off. He has the first half of the process of truth-seeking, without the last; and even without full certainty that the last half can be worked out, or that the problem as propounded is one which admits of an affirmative solution.[92] But Plato presumes that the search will be renewed, either by the same interlocutors or by others. He reckons upon responsive energy in the youthful subject; he addresses himself to men of earnest purpose and stirring intellect, who will be spurred on by the dialectic exercise itself to farther pursuit — men who, having listened to the working out of different points of view, will meditate on these points for themselves, and apply a judicial estimate conformable to the measure of their own minds. Those respondents, who, after having been puzzled and put to shame by one cross-examination, became disgusted and never presented themselves again — were despised by Sokrates as lazy and stupid.[93] For him, as well as for Plato, the search after truth counted as the main business of life.

[91] Aristotel. Topica, i. p. 101, a. 29, with the Scholion of Alexander of Aphrodisias, who remarks that the habit of colloquial debate had been very frequent in the days of Aristotle, and afterwards; but had comparatively ceased in his own time, haying been exchanged for written treatises. P. 254, b. Schol. Brandis, also Plato, Parmenid. pp. 135, 136, and the Commentary of Proklus thereupon, p. 776 seqq., and p. 917, ed. Stallbaum.

[92] A passage in one of the speeches composed by Lysias, addressed by a plaintiff in court to the Dikasts, shows how debate and free antithesis of opposite opinions were accounted as essential to the process τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν — καὶ ἐγὼ μὲν ᾤμην φιλοσοφοῦντας αὐτοὺς περὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἀντιλέγειν τὸν ἐναντίον λόγον· οἱ δ’ ἄρα οὐκ ἀντέλεγον, ἀλλ’ ἀντέπραττον. (Lysias, Or. viii. Κακολογιῶν s. 11, p. 273; compare Plat. Apolog. p. 28 E.)

Bacon describes his own intellectual cast of mind, in terms which illustrate the Platonic διάλογοι ζητητικοί, — the character of the searcher, doubter, and tester, as contrasted with that of the confident affirmer and expositor:—“Me ipsum autem ad veritatis contemplationes quam ad alia magis fabrefactum deprehendi, ut qui mentem et ad rerum similitudinem (quod maximum est) agnoscendum satis mobilem, et ad differentiarum subtilitates observandas satis fixam et intentam haberem — qui et quærendi desiderium, et dubitandi patientiam, et meditandi voluptatem, et asserendi cunctationem, et resipiscendi facilitatem, et disponendi sollicitudinem tenerem — quique nec novitatem affectarem, nec antiquitatem admirarer, et omnem imposturam odissem. Quare naturam meam cum veritate quandam familiaritatem et cognationem habere judicavi.” (Impetus Philosophici, De Interpretatione Naturæ Proœmium.)

Σωκρατικῶς εἰς ἑκάτερον is the phrase of Cicero, ad Atticum ii. 3.

[93] Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 40.

Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his Essay on Liberty, has the following remarks, illustrating Plato’s Dialogues of Search. I should have been glad if I could have transcribed here many other pages of that admirable Essay: which stands almost alone as an unreserved vindication of the rights of the searching individual intelligence, against the compression and repression of King Nomos (pp. 79-80-81):—

“The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to or defending it against opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefits of its universal recognition. Where this advantage cannot be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavouring to provide a substitute for it: some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion eager for his conversion.

“But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Sokratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a discussion of the great questions of life and philosophy, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one, who had merely adopted the common-places of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject — that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed: in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school-disputations of the middle ages had a similar object. They were intended to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it — and could enforce the grounds of the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests had indeed the incurable defect, that the premisses appealed to were taken from authority, not from reason; and as a discipline to the mind they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which formed the intellects of the ‘Socratici viri’. But the modern mind owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit; and the present modes of instruction contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other.… It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic — that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result, but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one’s opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents.”

Result called Knowledge, which Plato aspires to. Power of going through a Sokratic cross examination; not attainable except through the Platonic process and method.

Another matter must here be noticed, in regard to these Dialogues of Search. We must understand how Plato conceived the goal towards which they tend: that is the state of mind which he calls knowledge or cognition. Knowledge (in his view) is not attained until the mind is brought into clear view of the Universal Forms or Ideas, and intimate communion with them: but the test (as I have already observed) for determining whether a man has yet attained this end or not, is to ascertain whether he can give to others a full account of all that he professes to know, and can extract from them a full account of all that they profess to know: whether he can perform, in a manner exhaustive as well as unerring, the double and correlative function of asking and answering: in other words, whether he can administer the Sokratic cross-examination effectively to others, and reply to it without faltering or contradiction when administered to himself.[94] Such being the way in which Plato conceives knowledge, we may easily see that it cannot be produced, or even approached, by direct, demonstrative, didactic communication: by simply announcing to the hearer, and lodging in his memory, a theorem to be proved, together with the steps whereby it is proved. He must be made familiar with each subject on many sides, and under several different aspects and analogies: he must have had before him objections with their refutation, and the fallacious arguments which appear to prove the theorem, but do not really prove it:[95] he must be introduced to the principal counter-theorems, with the means whereby an opponent will enforce them: he must be practised in the use of equivocal terms and sophistry, either to be detected when the opponent is cross-examining him, or to be employed when he is cross-examining an opponent. All these accomplishments must be acquired, together with full promptitude and flexibility, before he will be competent to perform those two difficult functions, which Plato considers to be the test of knowledge. You may say that such a result is indefinitely distant and hopeless: Plato considers it attainable, though he admits the arduous efforts which it will cost. But the point which I wish to show is, that if attainable at all, it can only be attained through a long and varied course of such dialectic discussion as that which we read in the Platonic Dialogues of Search. The state and aptitude of mind called knowledge, can only be generated as a last result of this continued practice (to borrow an expression of Longinus).[96] The Platonic method is thus in perfect harmony and co-ordination with the Platonic result, as described and pursued.

[94] See Plato, Republic, vii. 518, B, C, about παιδεία, as developing τὴν ἐνοῦσαν ἑκάστου δύναμιν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ: and 534, about ἐπιστήμη, with its test, τὸ δοῦναι καὶ δέξασθαι λόγον. Compare also Republic, v. 477, 478, with Theætêt. 175, C, D; Phædon, 76, B, Phædrus, 276; and Sympos. 202 A. τὸ ὀρθὰ δοξάζειν καὶ ἄνευ τοῦ ἔχειν λόγον δοῦναι, οὐκ οἶσθ’ ὅτι οὔτε ἐπίστασθαι ἐστιν; ἄλογον γὰρ πρᾶγμα πῶς ἂν εἴη ἐπιστήμη;

[95] On this point the scholastic manner of handling in the Middle Ages furnishes a good illustration for the Platonic dialectic. I borrow a passage from the treatise of M Hauréau, De la Phil. Scolastique, vol. ii. p. 190.

“Saint Thomas pouvait s’en tenir là: nous le comprenons, nous avons tout son système sur l’origine des idées, et nous pouvons croire qu’il n’a plus rien à nous apprendre à ce sujet: mais en scolastique, il ne suffit pas de démontrer, par deux ou trois arguments, réputés invincibles, ce que l’on suppose être la vérité, il faut, en outre, répondre aux objections première, seconde, troisième, &c., &c., de divers interlocuteurs, souvent imaginaires; il faut établir la parfaite concordance de la conclusion enoncée et des conclusions precédents ou subséquentes; il faut réproduire, à l’occasion de tout problème controversé, l’ensemble de la doctrine pour laquelle on s’est déclaré.”

[96] Longinus De Sublim. s. 6. καίτοι τὸ πρᾶγμα δύσληπτον· ἡ γὰρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἐστι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα. Compare what is said in a succeeding [chapter] about the Hippias Minor. And see also Sir W. Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, Lect. 35, p. 224.

Platonic process adapted to Platonic topics — man and society.

Moreover, not merely method and result are in harmony, but also the topics discussed. These topics were ethical, social, and political: matters especially human[97] (to use the phrase of Sokrates himself) familiar to every man, — handled, unphilosophically, by speakers in the assembly, pleaders in the dikastery, dramatists in the theatre. Now it is exactly upon such topics that debate can be made most interesting, varied, and abundant. The facts, multifarious in themselves, connected with man and society, depend upon a variety of causes, co-operating and conflicting. Account must be taken of many different points of view, each of which has a certain range of application, and each of which serves to limit or modify the others: the generalities, even when true, are true only on the balance, and under ordinary circumstances; they are liable to exception, if those circumstances undergo important change. There are always objections, real as well as apparent, which require to be rebutted or elucidated. To such changeful and complicated states of fact, the Platonic dialectic was adapted: furnishing abundant premisses and comparisons, bringing into notice many distinct points of view, each of which must be looked at and appreciated, before any tenable principle can be arrived at. Not only Platonic method and result, but also Platonic topics, are thus well suited to each other. The general terms of ethics were familiar but undefined: the tentative definitions suggested, followed up by objections available against each, included a large and instructive survey of ethical phenomena in all their bearings.

[97] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 12-15. I transcribe the following passage from an article in the Edinburgh Review (April, 1866, pp. 325-326), on the first edition of the present work: an article not merely profound and striking as to thought, but indicating the most comprehensive study and appreciation of the Platonic writings:—

“The enemy against whom Plato really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of his life and writings, was — not Sophistry, either in the ancient or modern sense of the term, but — Commonplace. It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and current sentiments as an ultimate fact; and bandying of the abstract terms which express approbation and disapprobation, desire and aversion, admiration and disgust, as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood and universally assented to. The men of his day (like those of ours) thought that they knew what Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honourable and Shameful, were — because they could use the words glibly, and affirm them of this or that, in agreement with existing custom. But what the property was, which these several instances possessed in common, justifying the application of the term, nobody had considered; neither the Sophists, nor the rhetoricians, nor the statesmen, nor any of those who set themselves up, or were set up by others, as wise. Yet whoever could not answer this question was wandering in darkness — had no standard by which his judgments were regulated, and which kept them consistent with one another — no rule which he knew and could stand by for the guidance of his life. Not knowing what Justice and Virtue are, it was impossible to be just and virtuous: not knowing what Good is, we not only fail to reach it, but are certain to embrace evil instead. Such a condition, to any one capable of thought, made life not worth having. The grand business of human intellect ought to consist in subjecting these terms to the most rigorous scrutiny, and bringing to light the ideas that lie at the bottom of them. Even if this cannot be done and real knowledge attained, it is already no small benefit to expel the false opinion of knowledge: to make men conscious of the things most needful to be known, fill them with shame and uneasiness at their own state, and rouse a pungent internal stimulus, summoning up all their energies to attack those greatest of all problems, and never rest until, as far as possible, the true solutions are reached. This is Plato’s notion of the condition of the human mind in his time, and of what philosophy could do to help it: and any one who does not think the description applicable, with slight modifications, to the majority of educated minds in our own time and in all times known to us, certainly has not brought either the teachers or the practical men of any time to the Platonic test.”

The Reviewer farther illustrates this impressive description by a valuable citation from Max Müller to the same purpose (Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, pp. 520-527). “Such terms as Nature, Law, Freedom, Necessity, Body, Substance, Matter, Church, State, Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, &c., are tossed about in the war of words as if every body knew what they meant, and as if every body used them exactly in the same sense; whereas most people, and particularly those who represent public opinion, pick up these complicated terms as children, beginning with the vaguest conceptions, adding to them from time to time — perhaps correcting likewise at haphazard some of their involuntary errors — but never taking stock, never either enquiring into the history of the terms which they handle so freely, or realising the fulness of their meaning according to the strict rules of logical definition.”

Plato does not provide solutions for the difficulties which he has raised. The affirmative and negative veins are in him completely distinct. His dogmas are enunciations à priori of some impressive sentiment.

The negative procedure is so conspicuous, and even so preponderant, in the Platonic dialogues, that no historian of philosophy can omit to notice it. But many of them (like Xenophon in describing Sokrates) assign to it only a subordinate place and a qualified application: while some (and Schleiermacher especially) represent all the doubts and difficulties in the negative dialogues as exercises to call forth the intellectual efforts of the reader, preparatory to full and satisfactory solutions which Plato has given in the dogmatic dialogues at the end. The first half of this hypothesis I accept: the last half I believe to be unfounded. The doubts and difficulties were certainly exercises to the mind of Plato himself, and were intended as exercises to his readers; but he has nowhere provided a key to the solution of them. Where he propounds positive dogmas, he does not bring them face to face with objections, nor verify their authority by showing that they afford satisfactory solution of the difficulties exhibited in his negative procedure. The two currents of his speculation, the affirmative and the negative, are distinct and independent of each other. Where the affirmative is especially present (as in Timæus), the negative altogether disappears. Timæus is made to proclaim the most sweeping theories, not one of which the real Sokrates would have suffered to pass without abundant cross-examination: but the Platonic Sokrates hears them with respectful silence, and commends afterwards. The declaration so often made by Sokrates that he is a searcher, not a teacher — that he feels doubts keenly himself, and can impress them upon others, but cannot discover any good solution of them — this declaration, which is usually considered mere irony, is literally true.[98] The Platonic theory of Objective Ideas separate and absolute, which the commentators often announce as if it cleared up all difficulties — not only clears up none, but introduces fresh ones belonging to itself. When Plato comes forward to affirm, his dogmas are altogether à priori: they enunciate preconceptions or hypotheses, which derive their hold upon his belief, not from any aptitude for solving the objections which he has raised, but from deep and solemn sentiment of some kind or other — religious, ethical, æsthetical, poetical, &c., the worship of numerical symmetry or exactness, &c. The dogmas are enunciations of some grand sentiment of the divine, good, just, beautiful, symmetrical, &c.,[99] which Plato follows out into corollaries. But this is a process of itself; and while he is performing it, the doubts previously raised are not called up to be solved, but are forgotten or kept out of sight. It is therefore a mistake to suppose[100] that Plato ties knots in one dialogue only with a view to untie them in another; and that the doubts which he propounds are already fully solved in his own mind, only that he defers the announcement of the solution until the embarrassed hearer has struggled to find it for himself.

[98] See the conversation between Menippus and Sokrates. (Lucian, Dialog. Mortuor. xx.)

[99] Dionysius of Halikarnassus remarks that the topics upon which Plato renounces the character of a searcher, and passes into that of a vehement affirmative dogmatist, are those which are above human investigation and evidence — the transcendental: καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος (Plato) τὰ δόγματα οὐκ αὐτὸς ἀποφαίνεται, εἶτα περὶ αὐτῶν διαγωνίζεται· ἀλλ’ ἐν μεσῳ τὴν ζήτησιν ποιούμενος πρὸς τοὺς διαλεγομένους, εὑρίσκων μᾶλλον τὸ δέον δόγμα, ἢ φιλονεικῶν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ φαίνεται· πλὴν ὅσα περὶ τῶν κρειττόνων, ἢ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, λέγεται (Dion. Hal. Ars Rhet. c. 10, p. 376, Reiske.)

M. Arago, in the following passage, points to a style of theorising in the physical sciences, very analogous to that of Plato, generally:—

Arago, Biographies, vol. i. p. 149, Vie de Fresnel. “De ces deux explications des phénomènes de la lumière, l’une s’appelle la théorie de l’émission; l’autre est connue sous le nom de système des ondes. On trouve déjà des traces de la première dans les écrits d’Empédocle. Chez les modernes, je pourrais citer parmi ses adhérents Képler, Newton, Laplace. Le système des ondes ne compte pas des partisans moins illustres: Aristote, Descartes, Hooke, Huygens, Euler, l’avaient adopté.…

“Au reste, si l’on s’étonnait de voir d’aussi grands génies ainsi divisés, je dirais que de leurs temps la question on litige ne pouvait être résolue; que les expériences nécessaires manquaient; qu’alors les divers systèmes sur la lumière étaient, non des déductions logiques des faits, mais, si je puis m’exprimer ainsi, de simples vérités de sentiment, qu’enfin, le don de l’infaillibilité n’est pas accordé même aux plus habiles, des qu’en sortant du domaine des observations, et se jetant dans celui des conjectures, ils abandonnent la marche sévère et assurée dont les sciences se prévalent de nos jours avec raison, et qui leur a fait faire de si incontestables progrès.”

[100] Several of the Platonic critics speak as if they thought that Plato would never suggest any difficulty which he had not, beforehand and ready-made, the means of solving; and Munk treats the idea which I have stated in the text as ridiculous. “Plato (he observes) must have held preposterous doctrines on the subject of pædagogy. He undertakes to instruct others by his writings, before he has yet cleared up his own ideas on the question, he proposes, in propædeutic writings, enigmas for his scholars to solve, while he has not yet solved them himself; and all this for the praiseworthy (ironically said) purpose of correcting in their minds the false persuasion of knowledge.” (Die natürliche Ordnung der Platon Schrift. p. 515.)

That which Munk here derides, appears stated, again and again, by the Platonic Sokrates, as his real purpose. Munk is at liberty to treat it as ridiculous, but the ridicule falls upon Plato himself. The Platonic Sokrates disclaims the pædagogic function, describing himself as nothing more than a fellow searcher with the rest.

So too Munk declares (p. 79-80, and Zeller also, Philos. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 472, ed. 2nd) that Plato could not have composed the Parmenidês, including, as it does, such an assemblage of difficulties and objections against the theory of Ideas, until he possessed the means of solving all of them himself. This is a bold assertion, altogether conjectural; for there is no solution of them given in any of Plato’s writings, and the solutions to which Munk alludes as given by Zeller and Steinhart (even assuming them to be satisfactory, which I do not admit) travel much beyond the limits of Plato.

Ueberweg maintains the same opinion (Ueber die Aechtheit der Platon. Schriften, p. 103-104); that Sokrates, in the Platonic Dialogues, though he appears as a Searcher, must nevertheless be looked upon as a matured thinker, who has already gone through the investigation for himself, and solved all the difficulties, but who goes back upon the work of search over again, for the instruction of the interlocutors. “The special talent and dexterity (Virtuosität) which Sokrates displays in conducting the dialogue, can only be explained by supposing that he has already acquired for himself a firm and certain conviction on the question discussed.”

This opinion of Ueberweg appears to me quite untenable, as well as inconsistent with a previous opinion which he had given elsewhere (Platonische Welt-seele, p. 69-70) — That the Platonic Ideenlehre was altogether insufficient for explanation. The impression which the Dialogues of Search make upon me is directly the reverse. My difficulty is, to understand how the constructor of all these puzzles, if he has the answer ready drawn up in his pocket, can avoid letting it slip out. At any rate, I stand upon the literal declarations, often repeated, of Sokrates; while Munk and Ueberweg contradict them.

For the doubt and hesitation which Plato puts into the mouth of Sokrates (even in the Republic, one of his most expository compositions) see a remarkable passage, Rep. v. p. 450 E. ἀπιστοῦντα δὲ καὶ ζητοῦντα ἄμα τοὺς λόγους ποιεῖσθαι, ὃ δὴ ἐγὼ δρῶ, &c.

Hypothesis — that Plato had solved all his own difficulties for himself; but that he communicated the solution only to a few select auditors in oral lectures — Untenable.

Some critics, assuming confidently that Plato must have produced a full breadth of positive philosophy to countervail his own negative fertility, yet not finding enough of it in the written dialogues look for it elsewhere. Tennemann thinks, and his opinion is partly shared by Boeckh and K. F. Hermann, that the direct, affirmative, and highest principles of Plato’s philosophy were enunciated only in his lectures: that the core, the central points, the great principles of his system (der Kern) were revealed thus orally to a few select students in plain and broad terms, while the dialogues were intentionally written so as to convey only indirect hints, illustrations, applications of these great principles, together with refutation of various errors opposed to them: that Plato did not think it safe or prudent to make any full, direct, or systematic revelation to the general public.[101] I have already said that I think this opinion untenable. Among the few points which we know respecting the oral lectures, one is, that they were delivered not to a select and prepared few, but to a numerous and unprepared audience: while among the written dialogues, there are some which, far from being popular or adapted to an ordinary understanding, are highly perplexing and abstruse. The Timæus does not confine itself to indirect hints, but delivers positive dogmas about the super-sensible world: though they are of a mystical cast, as we know that the oral lectures De Bono were also.

[101] Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 205-220. Hermann, Ueber Plato’s Schriftsteller. Motive, pp. 290-294.

Hermann considers this reserve and double doctrine to be unworthy of Plato, and ascribes it to Protagoras and other Sophists, on the authority of a passage in the Theætêtus (152 C), which does not at all sustain his allegation.

Hermann considers “die akroamatischen Lehren als Fortsetzung und Schlussstein der schriftlichen, die dort erst zur vollen Klarheit principieller Auffassung erhoben wurden, ohne jedoch über den nämlichen Gegenstand, soweit die Rede auf denselben kommen musste, etwas wesentlich Verschiedenes zu lehren” (p. 293).

Characteristic of the oral lectures — that they were delivered in Plato’s own name. In what other respects they departed from the dialogues, we cannot say.

Towards filling up this gap, then, the oral lectures cannot be shown to lend any assistance. The cardinal point of difference between them and the dialogues was, that they were delivered by Plato himself, in his own name; whereas he never published any written composition in his own name. But we do not know enough to say, in what particular way this difference would manifest itself. Besides the oral lectures, delivered to a numerous auditory, it is very probable that Plato held special communications upon philosophy with a few advanced pupils. Here however we are completely in the dark. Yet I see nothing, either in these supposed private communications or in the oral lectures, to controvert what was said in the last page — that Plato’s affirmative philosophy is not fitted on to his negative philosophy, but grows out of other mental impulses, distinct and apart. Plato (as Aristotle tells us[102]) felt it difficult to determine, whether the march of philosophy was an ascending one toward the principia (ἀρχὰς), or a descending one down from the principia. A good philosophy ought to suffice for both, conjointly and alternately: in Plato’s philosophy, there is no road explicable either upwards or downwards, between the two: no justifiable mode of participation (μέθεξις) between the two disparate worlds — intellect and sense. The principia of Plato take an impressive hold on the imagination: but they remove few or none of the Platonic difficulties; and they only seem to do this because the Sokratic Elenchus, so effective whenever it is applied, is never seriously brought to bear against them.

[102] Aristot. Eth. Nik. i. 4, 5. εὖ γὰρ καὶ Πλάτων ἠπόρει τοῦτο καὶ ἐζήτει πότερον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἢ ἐπὶ τὰς ἀρχάς ἐστιν ἡ ὁδός.

Apart from any result, Plato has an interest in the process of search and debate per se. Protracted enquiry is a valuable privilege, not a tiresome obligation.

With persons who complain of prolixity in the dialogue — of threads which are taken up only to be broken off, devious turns and “passages which lead to nothing” — of much talk “about it and about it,” without any peremptory decision from an authorised judge — with such complainants Plato has no sympathy. He feels a strong interest in the process of enquiry, in the debate per se: and he presumes a like interest in his readers. He has no wish to shorten the process, nor to reach the end and dismiss the question as settled.[103] On the contrary, he claims it as the privilege of philosophical research, that persons engaged in such discussions are noway tied to time; they are not like judicial pleaders, who, with a klepsydra or water-clock to measure the length of each speech, are under slavish dependence on the feelings of the Dikasts, and are therefore obliged to keep strictly to the point.[104] Whoever desires accurate training of mind must submit to go through a long and tiresome circuit.[105] Plato regards the process of enquiry as being in itself, both a stimulus and a discipline, in which the minds both of questioner and respondent are implicated and improved, each being indispensable to the other: he also represents it as a process, carried on under the immediate inspiration of the moment, without reflection or foreknowledge of the result.[106] Lastly, Plato has an interest in the dialogue, not merely as a mental discipline, but as an artistic piece of workmanship, whereby the taste and imagination are charmed. The dialogue was to him what the tragedy was to Sophokles, and the rhetorical discourse to Isokrates. He went on “combing and curling it” (to use the phrase of Dionysius) for as many years as Isokrates bestowed on the composition of the Panegyrical Oration. He handles the dialectic drama so as to exhibit some one among the many diverse ethical points of view, and to show what it involves as well as what it excludes in the way of consequence. We shall not find the ethical point of view always the same: there are material inconsistencies and differences in this respect between one dialogue and another.

[103] As an illustration of that class of minds which take delight in the search for truth in different directions, I copy the following passage respecting Dr. Priestley, from an excellent modern scientific biography. “Dr. Priestley had seen so much of the evil of obstinate adherence to opinions which time had rendered decrepit, not venerable — and had been so richly rewarded in his capacity of natural philosopher, by his adventurous explorations of new territories in science — that he unavoidably and unconsciously over-estimated the value of what was novel, and held himself free to change his opinions to an extent not easily sympathised with by minds of a different order. Some men love to rest in truth, or at least in settled opinions, and are uneasy till they find repose. They alter their beliefs with great reluctance, and dread the charge of inconsistency, even in reference to trifling matters. Priestley, on the other hand, was a follower after truth, who delighted in the chase, and was all his life long pursuing, not resting in it.

On all subjects which interested him he held by certain cardinal doctrines, but he left the outlines of his systems to be filled up as he gained experience, and to an extent very few men have done, disavowed any attempt to reconcile his changing views with each other, or to deprecate the charge of inconsistency.… I think it must be acknowledged by all who have studied his writings, that in his scientific researches at least he carried this feeling too far, and that often when he had reached a truth in which he might and should have rested, his dread of anything like a too hasty stereotyping of a supposed discovery, induced him to welcome whatever seemed to justify him in renewing the pursuit of truth, and thus led him completely astray. Priestley indeed missed many a discovery, the clue to which was in his hands and in his alone, by not knowing where to stop.”

(Dr. Geo Wilson — Life of the Hon. H. Cavendish, among the publications of the Cavendish Society, 1851, p. 110-111.)

[104] Plato, Theætêt. p. 172.

[105] Plato, Republic, v. 450 B. μέτρον δέ γ’, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὁ Γλαύκων, τοιούτων λόγων ἀκούειν, ὅλος ὁ βίος νοῦν ἔχουσιν. vi. 504 D. Τὴν μακροτέραν περϊιτέον τῷ τοιούτῳ, καὶ οὐχ ἧττον μανθάνοντι πονητέον ἢ γυμναζομένῳ. Also Phædrus, 274 A, Parmenid. p. 135 D, 136 D, ἀμήχανον πραγματείαν — ἀδολεσχίας, &c. Compare Politikus, 286, in respect to the charge of prolixity against him.

In the Hermotimus of Lucian, the assailant of philosophy draws one of his strongest arguments from the number of years required to examine the doctrines of all the philosophical sects — the whole of life would be insufficient (Lucian, Hermot. c. 47-48). The passages above cited, especially the first of them, show that Sokrates and Plato would not have been discouraged by this protracted work.

[106] Plato, Republic, iii. 394 D. Μαντεύομαι (says Glaukon) σκοπεῖσθαι σε, εἴτε παραδεξόμεθα τραγῳδίαν τε καὶ κωμῳδίαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εἴτε καὶ οὔ. Ἴσως (says Sokrates) καὶ πλείω ἔτι τούτων· οὐ γὰρ δὴ ἔγωγε πω οἶδα, ἀλλ’ ὅπῃ ἂν ὁ λόγος ὥσπερ πνεῦμα φέρῃ, ταύτῃ ἰτεον. Καὶ καλῶς γ’, ἔφη, λέγεις.

The Republic, from the second book to the close, is one of those Platonic compositions in which Sokrates is most expository.

We find a remarkable passage in Des Cartes, wherein that very self-working philosopher expresses his conviction that the longer he continued enquiring, the more his own mind would become armed for the better appreciation of truth — and in which he strongly protests against any barrier restraining the indefinite liberty of enquiry.

“Et encore qu’il y en ait peut-être d’aussi bien sensés parmi les Perses ou les Chinois que parmi nous, il me sembloit que le plus utile étoit, de me régler selon ceux avec lesquels j’aurois à vivre; et que, pour savoir quelles étoient véritablement leurs opinions, je devois plutôt prendre garde à ce qu’ils pratiquaient qu’à ce qu’ils disaient; non seulement à cause qu’en la corruption de nos mœurs, il y a peu de gens qui veuillent dire tout ce qu’ils croient — mais aussi à cause que plusieurs l’ignorent eux mêmes; car l’action de la pensée, par laquelle on croit une chose étant différente de celle par laquelle on connoit qu’on la croit, elles sont souvent l’une sans l’autre. Et entre plusieurs opinions également reçues, je ne choisissois que les plus modérées; tant à cause que ce sont toujours les plus commodes pour la pratique, et vraisemblablement les meilleures — tous excès ayans coutume d’être mauvais — comme aussi afin de me détourner moins du vrai chemin, en cas que je faillisse, que si, ayant choisi l’un des deux extrêmes, c’eût été l’autre qu’il eut fallu suivre.

“Et particulièrement, je mettois entre les excès toutes les promesses par lesquelles on retranche quelque chose de sa liberté; non que je désapprouvasse les lois, qui pour remédier à l’inconstance des esprits foibles, permettent, lorsqu’on a quelque bon dessein (ou même, pour la sureté du commerce, quelque dessein qui n’est qu’indifférent), qu’on fasse des vœux ou des contrats qui obligent à y persévérer: mais à cause que je ne voyois au monde aucune chose qui demeurât toujours en même état, et que comme pour mon particulier, je me promettois de perfectionner de plus en plus en mes jugemens, et non point de les rendre pires, j’eusse pensé commettre une grande faute contre le bon sens, si, parceque j’approuvois alors quelque chose, je me fusse obligé de la prendre pour bonne encore après, lorsqu’elle auroit peut-être cessé de l’être, ou que j’aurois cessé de l’estimer telle.” Discours de la Méthode, part iii. p. 147-148, Cousin edit.; p. 16, Simon edit.

Plato has done more than any one else to make the process of enquiry interesting to others, as it was to himself.

But amidst all these differences — and partly indeed by reason of these differences — Plato succeeds in inspiring his readers with much of the same interest in the process of dialectic enquiry which he evidently felt in his own bosom. The charm, with which he invests the process of philosophising, is one main cause of the preservation of his writings from the terrible ship-wreck which has overtaken so much of the abundant contemporary literature. It constitutes also one of his principle titles to the gratitude of intellectual men. This is a merit which may be claimed for Cicero also, but hardly for Aristotle, in so far as we can judge from the preserved portion of the Aristotelian writings: whether for the other viri Socratici his contemporaries, or in what proportion, we are unable to say. Plato’s works charmed and instructed all; so that they were read not merely by disciples and admirers (as the Stoic and Epikurean treatises were), but by those who dissented from him as well as by those who agreed with him.[107] The process of philosophising is one not naturally attractive except to a few minds: the more therefore do we owe to the colloquy of Sokrates and the writing of Plato, who handled it so as to diffuse the appetite for enquiry, and for sifting dissentient opinions. The stimulating and suggestive influence exercised by Plato — the variety of new roads pointed out to the free enquiring mind — are in themselves sufficiently valuable: whatever we may think of the positive results in which he himself acquiesced.[108]

[107] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 3, 8.

Cicero farther commends the Stoic Panætius for having relinquished the “tristitiam atque asperitatem” of his Stoic predecessors, Zeno, Chrysippus, &c., and for endeavouring to reproduce the style and graces of Plato and Aristotle, whom he was always commending to his students (De Fin. iv. 28, 79).

[108] The observation which Cicero applies to Varro, is applicable to the Platonic writings also. “Philosophiam multis locis inchoasti, ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum” (Academ. Poster. i. 3, 9).

I shall say more about this when I touch upon the Platonic [Kleitophon]; an unfinished dialogue, which takes up the point of view here indicated by Cicero.

I have said thus much respecting what is common to the Dialogues of Search, because this is a species of composition now rare and strange. Modern readers do not understand what is meant by publishing an enquiry without any result — a story without an end. Respecting the Dialogues of Exposition, there is not the like difficulty. This is a species of composition, the purpose of which is generally understood. Whether the exposition be clear or obscure — orderly or confused — true or false — we shall see when we come to examine each separately. But these Dialogues of Exposition exhibit Plato in a different character: as the counterpart, not of Sokrates, but of Lykurgus (Republic and Leges) or of Pythagoras (in Timæus).[109]

[109] See the citation from Plutarch in an earlier [note] of this chapter.

Process of generalisation always kept in view and illustrated throughout the Platonic Dialogues of Search — general terms and propositions made subjects of conscious analysis.

A farther remark which may be made, bearing upon most of the dialogues, relates to matter and not to manner. Everywhere (both in the Dialogues of Search and in those of exposition) the process of generalisation is kept in view and brought into conscious notice, directly or indirectly. The relation of the universal to its particulars, the contrast of the constant and essential with the variable and accidental, are turned and returned in a thousand different ways. The principles of classification, with the breaking down of an extensive genus into species and sub-species, form the special subject of illustration in two of the most elaborate Platonic dialogues, and are often partially applied in the rest. To see the One in the Many, and the Many in the One, is represented as the great aim and characteristic attribute of the real philosopher. The testing of general terms, and of abstractions already embodied in familiar language, by interrogations applying them to many concrete and particular cases — is one manifestation of the Sokratic cross-examining process, which Plato multiplies and diversifies without limit. It is in his writings and in the conversation of Sokrates, that general terms and propositions first become the subject of conscious attention and analysis, and Plato was well aware that he was here opening the new road towards formal logic, unknown to his predecessors, unfamiliar even to his contemporaries. This process is indeed often overlaid in his writings by exuberant poetical imagery and by transcendental hypothesis: but the important fact is, that it was constantly present to his own mind and is impressed upon the notice of his readers.

The Dialogues must be reviewed as distinct compositions by the same author, illustrating each other, but without assignable inter-dependence.

After these various remarks, having a common bearing upon all, or nearly all, the Platonic dialogues, I shall proceed to give some account of each dialogue separately. It is doubtless both practicable and useful to illustrate one of them by others, sometimes in the way of analogy, sometimes in that of contrast. But I shall not affect to handle them as contributories to one positive doctrinal system — nor as occupying each an intentional place in the gradual unfolding of one preconceived scheme — nor as successive manifestations of change, knowable and determinable, in the views of the author. For us they exist as distinct imaginary conversations, composed by the same author at unknown times and under unknown specialities of circumstance. Of course it is necessary to prefer some one order for reviewing the Dialogues, and for that purpose more or less of hypothesis must be admitted; but I shall endeavour to assume as little as possible.

Order of the Dialogues, chosen for bringing them under separate review. Apology will come first; Timæus, Kritias, Leges, Epinomis last.

The order which I shall adopt for considering the dialogues coincides to a certain extent with that which some other expositors have adopted. It begins with those dialogues which delineate Sokrates, and which confine themselves to the subjects and points of view belonging to him, known as he is upon the independent testimony of Xenophon. First of all will come the Platonic Apology, containing the explicit negative programme of Sokrates, enunciated by himself a month before his death, when Plato was 28 years of age.

Last of all, I shall take those dialogues which depart most widely from Sokrates, and which are believed to be the products of Plato’s most advanced age — Timæus, Kritias, and Leges, with the sequel, Epinomis. These dialogues present a glaring contrast to the searching questions, the negative acuteness, the confessed ignorance, of Sokrates: Plato in his old age has not maintained consistency with his youth, as Sokrates did, but has passed round from the negative to the affirmative pole of philosophy.

Kriton and Euthyphron come immediately after Apology. The intermediate dialogues present no convincing grounds for any determinate order.

Between the Apology and the dialogues named as last — I shall examine the intermediate dialogues according as they seem to approximate or recede from Sokrates and the negative dialectic. Here, however, the reasons for preference are noway satisfactory. Of the many dissentient schemes, professing to determine the real order in which the Platonic dialogues were composed, I find a certain plausibility in some, but no conclusive reason in any. Of course the reasons in favour of each one scheme, count against all the rest. I believe (as I have already said) that none of Plato’s dialogues were composed until after the death of Sokrates: but at what dates, or in what order, after that event, they were composed, it is impossible to determine. The Republic and Philêbus rank among the constructive dialogues, and may suitably be taken immediately before Timæus: though the Republic belongs to the highest point of Plato’s genius, and includes a large measure of his negative acuteness combined with his most elaborate positive combinations. In the Sophistês and Politikus, Sokrates appears only in the character of a listener: in the Parmenidês also, the part assigned to him, instead of being aggressive and victorious, is subordinate to that of Parmenidês and confined to an unsuccessful defence. These dialogues, then, occupy a place late in the series. On the other hand, Kriton and Euthyphron have an immediate bearing upon the trial of Sokrates and the feelings connected with it. I shall take them in immediate sequel to the Apology.

For the intermediate dialogues, the order is less marked and justifiable. In so far as a reason can be given, for preference as to former and later, I shall give it when the case arises.

CHAPTER IX.

APOLOGY OF SOKRATES.

Adopting the order of precedence above described, for the review of the Platonic compositions, and taking the point of departure from Sokrates or the Sokratic point of view, I begin with the memorable composition called the Apology.

The Apology is the real defence delivered by Sokrates before the Dikasts, reported by Plato, without intentional transformation.

I agree with Schleiermacher[1] — with the more recent investigations of Ueberweg — and with what (until recent times) seems to have been the common opinion, — that this is in substance the real defence pronounced by Sokrates; reported, and of course drest up, yet not intentionally transformed, by Plato.[2] If such be the case, it is likely to have been put together shortly after the trial, and may thus be ranked among the earliest of the Platonic compositions: for I have already intimated my belief that Plato composed no dialogues under the name of Sokrates, during the lifetime of Sokrates.

[1] Zeller is of opinion that the Apology, as well as the Kriton, were put together at Megara by Plato, shortly after the death of Sokrates. (Zeller, De Hermodoro Ephesio, p. 19.)

Schleiermacher, Einl. zur Apologie, vol. ii. pp. 182-185. Ueberweg, Ueber die Aechtheit der Plat. Schrift. p. 246.

Steinhart thinks (Einleitung, pp. 236-238) that the Apology contains more of Plato, and less of Sokrates: but he does not make his view very clear to me. Ast, on the contrary, treats the Apology as spurious and unworthy of Plato. (Ueber Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 477, seq.) His arguments are rather objections against the merits of the composition, than reasons for believing it not to be the work of Plato. I dissent from them entirely: but they show that an acute critic can make out a plausible case, satisfactory to himself, against any dialogue. If it be once conceded that the question of genuine or spurious is to be tried upon such purely internal grounds of critical admiration and complete harmony of sentiment, Ast might have made out a case even stronger against the genuineness of the Phædrus, Symposion, Philêbus, Parmenidês.

[2] See chapter lxviii. of my History of Greece.

The reader will find in that chapter a full narrative of all the circumstances known to us respecting both the life and the condemnation of Sokrates.

A very admirable account may also be seen of the character of Sokrates, and his position with reference to the Athenian people, in the article entitled Sokrates und Sein Volk, Akademischer Vortrag, by Professor Hermann Köchly; a lecture delivered at Zurich in 1855, and published with enlargements in 1859.

Professor Köchly’s article (contained in a volume entitled Akademische Vorträge, Zurich, 1859) is eminently deserving of perusal. It not only contains a careful summary of the contemporary history, so far as Sokrates is concerned, but it has farther the great merit of fairly estimating that illustrious man in reference to the actual feeling of the time, and to the real public among whom he moved. I feel much satisfaction in seeing that Professor Köchly’s picture, composed without any knowledge of my History of Greece, presents substantially the same view of Sokrates and his contemporaries as that which is taken in my sixty-eighth chapter.

Köchly considers that the Platonic Apology preserves the Sokratic character more faithfully than any of Plato’s writings; and that it represents what Sokrates said, as nearly as the “dichterische Natur” of Plato would permit (Köchly, pp. 302-364.)

Even if it be Plato’s own composition, it comes naturally first in the review of his dialogues.

Such, in my judgment, is the most probable hypothesis respecting the Apology. But even if we discard this hypothesis; if we treat the Apology as a pure product of the Platonic imagination (like the dialogues), and therefore not necessarily connected in point of time with the event to which it refers — still there are good reasons for putting it first in the order of review. For it would then be Plato’s own exposition, given more explicitly and solemnly than anywhere else, of the Sokratic point of view and life-purpose. It would be an exposition embodying that union of generalising impulse, mistrust of established common-places, and aggressive cross-examining ardour — with eccentric religious persuasion, as well as with perpetual immersion in the crowd of the palæstra and the market-place: which immersion was not less indispensable to Sokrates than repugnant to the feelings of Plato himself. An exposition, lastly, disavowing all that taste for cosmical speculation, and that transcendental dogmatism, which formed one among the leading features of Plato as distinguished from Sokrates. In whichever way we look at the Apology, whether as a real or as an imaginary defence, it contains more of pure Sokratism than any other composition of Plato, and as such will occupy the first place in the arrangement which I adopt.[3]

[3] Dionysius Hal. regards the Apology, not as a report of what Sokrates really said, nor as approximating thereunto, but as a pure composition of Plato himself, for three purposes combined:—1. To defend and extol Sokrates. 2. To accuse the Athenian public and Dikasts. 3. To furnish a picture of what a philosopher ought to be. — All these purposes are to a certain extent included and merged in a fourth, which I hold to be the true one, — to exhibit what Sokrates was and had been, in relation to the Athenian public.

The comparison drawn by Dionysius between the Apology and the oration De Coronâ of Demosthenes, appears to me unsuitable. The two are altogether disparate, in spirit, in purpose, and in execution. (See Dion. H. Ars Rhet. pp. 295-298: De Adm. Vi Dic. Demosth. p. 1026.)

In my History of Greece, I have already spoken of this impressive discourse as it concerns the relations between Sokrates himself and the Dikasts to whom he addressed it. I here regard it only as it concerns Plato; and as it forms a convenient point of departure for entering upon and appreciating the Platonic dialogues.

General character of the Apology — Sentiments entertained towards Sokrates at Athens.

The Apology of Sokrates is not a dialogue but a continuous discourse addressed to the Dikasts, containing nevertheless a few questions and answers interchanged between him and the accuser Melêtus in open court. It is occupied, partly, in rebutting the counts of the indictment (viz., 1. That Sokrates did not believe in the Gods or in the Dæmons generally recognised by his countrymen: 2. That he was a corruptor of youth[4]) — partly in setting forth those proceedings of his life out of which such charges had grown, and by which he had become obnoxious to a wide-spread feeling of personal hatred. By his companions, by those who best knew him, and by a considerable number of ardent young men, he was greatly esteemed and admired: by the general public, too, his acuteness as well as his self-sufficing and independent character, were appreciated with a certain respect. Yet he was at the same time disliked, as an aggressive disputant who “tilted at all he met” — who raised questions novel as well as perplexing, who pretended to special intimations from the Gods — and whose views no one could distinctly make out.[5] By the eminent citizens of all varieties — politicians, rhetors, Sophists, tragic and comic poets, artisans, &c. — he had made himself both hated and feared.[6] He emphatically denies the accusation of general disbelief in the Gods, advanced by Melêtus: and he affirms generally (though less distinctly) that the Gods in whom he believed, were just the same as those in whom the whole city believed. Especially does he repudiate the idea, that he could be so absurd as to doubt the divinity of Helios and Selênê, in which all the world believed;[7] and to adopt the heresy of Anaxagoras, who degraded these Divinities into physical masses. Respecting his general creed, he thus puts himself within the pale of Athenian orthodoxy. He even invokes that very sentiment (with some doubt whether the Dikasts will believe him[8]) for the justification of the obnoxious and obtrusive peculiarities of his life; representing himself as having acted under the mission of the Delphian God, expressly transmitted from the oracle.

[4] Xenoph. Mem. i. 1, 1. Ἀδικεῖ Σωκράτης, οὓς μὲν ἑ πόλις νομίζει θεοὺς οὐ νομίζων· ἕτερα δὲ καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων· ἀδικεῖ δὲ καὶ τοὺς νέους διαφθείρων.

Plato, Apolog. c. 3, p. 19 B. Σωκράτης ἀδικεῖ καὶ περιεργάζεται, ζητῶν τά τε ὑπὸ γῆς καὶ τὰ ἐπουράνια, καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιῶν, καὶ ἄλλους ταὐτὰ ταῦτα διδάσκων.

The reading of Xenophon was conformable to the copy of the indictment preserved in the Metrôon at Athens in the time of Favorinus. There were three distinct accusers — Melêtus, Anytus, and Lykon. Plat. Apol. p. 23-24 B.

[5] Plato, Apol. c. 28, p. 38 A; c. 23, p. 35 A.

[6] Plato, Apol. c. 8-9, pp. 22-23. ἐκ ταυτησὶ δὴ τὴς ἐξετάσεως πολλαὶ μὲν ἀπέχθειαί μοι γεγόνασι καὶ οἶαι χαλεπώταται καὶ βαρύταται, ὥστε πολλὰς διαβολὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν γεγονέναι, ὄνομα δὲ τοῦτο λέγεσθαι, σοφὸς εἶναι.

[7] Plato, Apol. c. 14, p. 26 D. ὦ θαυμάσιε Μέλητε, ἱνα τί ταῦτα λέγεις; οὐδὲ ἥλιον οὐδὲ σελήνην ἄρα νομίζω θεοὺς εἶναι, ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι;

[8] Plato, Apol. c. 5, p. 20 D.

Declaration from the Delphian oracle respecting the wisdom of Sokrates, interpreted by him as a mission to cross-examine the citizens generally — The oracle is proved to be true.

According to his statement, his friend and earnest admirer Chærephon, had asked the question at the oracle of Delphi, whether any one was wiser than Sokrates? The reply of the oracle declared, that no one was wiser. On hearing this declaration from an infallible authority, Sokrates was greatly perplexed: for he was conscious to himself of not being wise upon any matter, great or small.[9] He at length concluded that the declaration of the oracle could be proved true, only on the hypothesis that other persons were less wise than they seemed to be or fancied themselves. To verify this hypothesis, he proceeded to cross-examine the most eminent persons in many different walks — political men, rhetors, Sophists, poets, artisans. On applying his Elenchus, and putting to them testing interrogations, he found them all without exception destitute of any real wisdom, yet fully persuaded that they were wise, and incapable of being shaken in that persuasion. The artisans indeed did really know each his own special trade; but then, on account of this knowledge, they believed themselves to be wise on other great matters also. So also the poets were great in their own compositions; but on being questioned respecting these very compositions, they were unable to give any rational or consistent explanations: so that they plainly appeared to have written beautiful verses, not from any wisdom of their own, but through inspiration from the Gods, or spontaneous promptings of nature. The result was, that these men were all proved to possess no more real wisdom than Sokrates: but he was aware of his own deficiency; while they were fully convinced of their own wisdom, and could not be made sensible of the contrary. In this way Sokrates justified the certificate of superiority vouchsafed to him by the oracle. He, like all other persons, was destitute of wisdom; but he was the only one who knew, or could be made to feel, his own real mental condition. With others, and most of all with the most conspicuous men, the false persuasion of their own wisdom was universal and inexpugnable.[10]

[9] Plato, Apol. c. 6, p. 21 B. ταῦτα γὰρ ἐγὼ ἀκούσας ἐνεθυμούμην οὑτωσί, Τί ποτε λέγει ὁ θεὸς καὶ τί ποτε αἰνίττεται; ἐγὼ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε μέγα οὔτε σμικρὸν ξύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ σοφὸς ὤν· τί οὖν ποτε λέγει φάσκων ἐμὲ σοφώτατον εἶναι; οὐ γὰρ δήπου ψεύδεταί γε· οὐ γὰρ θέμις αὐτῷ. Καὶ πολὺν μὲν χρόνον ἠπόρουν, &c.

[10] Plato, Apolog. c. 8-9, pp. 22-23.

False persuasion of wisdom is universal — the God alone is wise.

This then was the philosophical mission of Sokrates, imposed upon him by the Delphian oracle, and in which he passed the mature portion of his life: to cross-examine every one, to expose that false persuasion of knowledge which every one felt, and to demonstrate the truth of that which the oracle really meant by declaring the superior wisdom of Sokrates. “People suppose me to be wise myself (says Sokrates) on those matters on which I detect and prove the non-wisdom of others.[11] But that is a mistake. The God alone is wise: and his oracle declares human wisdom to be worth little or nothing, employing the name of Sokrates as an example. He is the wisest of men, who, like Sokrates, knows well that he is in truth worthless so far as wisdom is concerned.[12] The really disgraceful ignorance is — to think that you know what you do not really know.”[13]

[11] Plato, Apol. c. 9, p. 23 A. οἴονται γάρ με ἑκάστοτε οἱ παρόντες ταῦτα αὐτὸν εἶναι σοφόν, ἃ ἂν ἄλλον ἐξελέγξω.

[12] Plato, Apol. c. 9, p. 23 A; c. 17, p. 28 E.

[13] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 29 B. καὶ τοῦτο πῶς οὐκ ἀμαθία ἐστὶν αὐτὴ ἡ ἐπονείδιστος, ἡ τοῦ οἴεσθαι εἰδέναι ἃ οὐκ οἶδεν;

Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the cross-examining mission imposed upon him by the God.

“The God has marked for me my post, to pass my life in the search for wisdom, cross-examining myself as well as others: I shall be disgraced, if I desert that post from fear either of death or of any other evil.”[14] “Even if you Dikasts acquit me, I shall not alter my course: I shall continue, as long as I hold life and strength, to exhort and interrogate in my usual strain, telling every one whom I meet[15] — You, a citizen of the great and intelligent Athens, are you not ashamed of busying yourself to procure wealth, reputation, and glory, in the greatest possible quantity; while you take neither thought nor pains about truth, or wisdom, or the fullest measure of goodness for your mind? If any one denies the charge, and professes that he does take thought for these objects, — I shall not let him off without questioning, cross-examining, and exposing him.[16] And if he appears to me to affirm that he is virtuous without being so in reality, I shall reproach him for caring least about the greater matter, and most about the smaller. This course I shall pursue with every one whom I meet, young or old, citizen or non-citizen: most of all with you citizens, because you are most nearly connected with me. For this, you know, is what the God commands, and I think that no greater blessing has ever happened to the city than this ministration of mine under orders from the God. For I go about incessantly persuading you all, old as well as young, not to care about your bodies, or about riches, so much as about acquiring the largest measure of virtue for your minds. I urge upon you that virtue is not the fruit of wealth, but that wealth, together with all the other things good for mankind publicly and privately, are the fruits of virtue.[17] If I am a corruptor of youth, it is by these discourses that I corrupt them: and if any one gives a different version of my discourses, he talks idly. Accordingly, men of Athens, I must tell you plainly: decide with Anytus, or not, — acquit me or not — I shall do nothing different from what I have done, even if I am to die many times over for it.”

[14] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 28 E.

[15] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 29 D. οὐ μὴ παύσωμαι φιλοσοφῶν καὶ ὑμῖν παρακελευόμενός τε καὶ ἐνδεικνύμενος, ὅτῳ ἂν ἀεὶ ἐντυγχάνω ὑμῶν, λέγων οἷάπερ εἴωθα, &c.

[16] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 29 E. καὶ ἐάν τις ὑμῶν ἀμφισβητήσῃ καὶ φῇ ἐπιμελεῖσθαι, οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀφήσω αὐτὸν οὐδ’ ἄπειμι, ἀλλ’ ἐρήσομαι αὐτὸν καὶ ἐξετάσω καὶ ἐλέγξω, καὶ ἐάν μοι μὴ δοκῇ κεκτῆσθαι ἀρετήν, φάναι δέ, ὀνειδιῶ, &c.

[17] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 30, B. λέγων ὅτι οὐκ ἐκ χρημάτων ἀρετὴ γίγνεται, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρετῆς χρήματα καὶ τἄλλα ἀγαθὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἅπαντα καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ.

He had devoted his life to the execution of this mission, and he intended to persevere in spite of obloquy or danger.

Such is the description given by Sokrates of his own profession and standing purpose, imposed upon him as a duty by the Delphian God. He neglected all labour either for profit, or for political importance, or for the public service; he devoted himself, from morning till night, to the task of stirring up the Athenian public, as the gadfly worries a large and high-bred but over-sleek horse:[18] stimulating them by interrogation, persuasion, reproach, to render account of their lives and to seek with greater energy the path of virtue. By continually persisting in such universal cross-examination, he had rendered himself obnoxious to the Athenians generally;[19] who were offended when called upon to render account, and when reproached that they did not live rightly. Sokrates predicts that after his death, younger cross-examiners, hitherto kept down by his celebrity, would arise in numbers,[20] and would pursue the same process with greater keenness and acrimony than he had done.

[18] Plato, Apol. c. 18, p. 30 E. ἀτεχνῶς, εἰ καὶ γελοιότερον εἰπεῖν, προσκείμενον τῇ πόλει ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ὥσπερ ἵππῳ μεγάλῳ μὲν καὶ γενναίῳ, ὑπὸ μεγέθους δὲ νωθεστέρῳ καὶ δεομένῳ ἐγείρεσθαι ὑπὸ μύωπός τινος· οἷον δή μοι δοκεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἐμὲ τῇ πόλει προστεθεικέναι τοιοῦτόν τινα, ὃς ὑμᾶς ἐγείρων καὶ πείθων καὶ ὀνειδίζων ἕνα ἕκαστον οὐδὲν παύομαι τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην πανταχοῦ προσκαθίζων. Also c. 26, p. 36 D.

[19] Plato, Apol. c. 6, p. 21 D; c. 16, p. 28 A; c. 30, p. 39 C.

[20] Plato, Apol. c. 30, p. 39 C. νῦν γὰρ τοῦτο εἴργασθε (i.e. ἐμὲ ἀπεκτόνατε) οἰόμενοι ἀπαλλάξεσθαι τοῦ διδόναι ἔλεγχον τοῦ βίου. τὸ δὲ ὑμῖν πολὺ ἐναντίον ἀποβήσεται, ὡς ἐγό φημι. πλείους ἔσονται ὑμᾶς οἱ ἐλέγχοντες, οὗς νῦν ἐγὼ κατεῖχον, ὑμεῖς δὲ οὐκ ᾐσθάνεσθε· καὶ χαλεπώτεροι ἔσονται ὅσῳ νεώτεροί εἰσι, καὶ ὑμεῖς μᾶλλον ἀγανακτήσετε, &c.

I have already remarked (in chapter lxviii. of my general History of Greece relating to Sokrates) that this prediction was not fulfilled.

He disclaims the function of a teacher — he cannot teach, for he is not wiser than others. He differs from others by being conscious of his own ignorance.

While Sokrates thus extols, and sanctifies under the authority of the Delphian God, his habitual occupation of interrogating, cross-examining, and stimulating to virtue, the Athenians indiscriminately — he disclaims altogether the function of a teacher. His disclaimer on this point is unequivocal and emphatic. He cannot teach others, because he is not at all wiser than they. He is fully aware that he is not wise on any point, great or small — that he knows nothing at all, so to speak.[21] He can convict others, by their own answers, of real though unconscious ignorance, or (under another name) false persuasion of knowledge: and because he can do so, he is presumed to possess positive knowledge on the points to which the exposure refers. But this presumption is altogether unfounded: he possesses no such positive knowledge. Wisdom is not to be found in any man, even among the most distinguished: Sokrates is as ignorant as others; and his only point of superiority is, that he is fully conscious of his own ignorance, while others, far from having the like consciousness, confidently believe themselves to be in possession of wisdom and truth.[22] In this consciousness of his own ignorance Sokrates stands alone; on which special ground he is proclaimed by the Delphian God as the wisest of mankind.

[21] Plato, Apol. c. 6, p. 21 B. ἐγὼ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε μέγα οὔτε σμικρὸν ξύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ σοφὸς ὤν, &c. c. 8, p. 22 D. ἐμαυτῷ γὰρ ξυνῄδειν οὐδὲν ἐπισταμένῳ, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν.

[22] Plato, Apol. c. 9, p. 23 A-B. Οὗτος ὑμῶν, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, σοφώτατός ἐστιν, ὅστις ὥσπερ Σωκράτης ἔγνωκεν ὅτι οὐδενὸς ἄξιός ἐστι τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πρὸς σοφίαν.

He does not know where competent teachers can be found. He is perpetually seeking for them, but in vain.

Being thus a partner in the common ignorance, Sokrates cannot of course teach others. He utterly disclaims having ever taught, or professed to teach. He would be proud indeed, if he possessed the knowledge of human and social virtue: but he does not know it himself, nor can he find out who else knows it.[23] He is certain that there cannot be more than a few select individuals who possess the art of making mankind wiser or better — just as in the case of horses, none but a few practised trainers know how to make them better, while the handling of these or other animals, by ordinary men, certainly does not improve the animals, and generally even makes them worse.[24] But where any such select few are to be found, who alone can train men — Sokrates is obliged to inquire from others; he cannot divine for himself.[25] He is perpetually going about, with the lantern of cross-examination, in search of a wise man: but he can find only those who pretend to be wise, and whom his cross-examination exposes as pretenders.[26]

[23] Plato, Apol. c. 4, p. 20 B-C. τίς τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρετῆς, τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης τε καὶ πολιτικῆς, ἐπιστήμων ἐστίν; … ἐγὼ γοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκαλλυνόμην τε καὶ ἡβρυνόμην ἂν, εἰ ἠπιστάμην ταῦτα· ἀλλ’ οὐ γὰρ ἐπίσταμαι, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι.

c. 21, p. 33 A. ἐγὼ δὲ διδάσκαλος μὲν οὐδενὸς πώποτ’ ἐγενόμην. c. 4, p. 19 E.

[24] Plato, Apol. c. 12, p. 25 B.

[25] Plato, Apol. c. 4, p. 20.

[26] Plato, Apol. c. 9, p. 23 B. ταῦτ’ οὖν ἐγὼ μὲν ἔτι καὶ νῦν περιιὼν ζητῶ καὶ ἐρευνῶ κατὰ τὸν θεόν, καὶ τῶν ἀστων καὶ τῶν ξένων ἂν τινα οἴωμαι σοφὸν εἶναι· καὶ ἐπειδάν μοι μὴ δοκῇ, τῷ θεῷ βοηθῶν ἐνδείκνυμαι ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι σοφός. c. 32, p. 41 B.

This then is the mission and vocation of Sokrates — 1. To cross-examine men, and to destroy that false persuasion of wisdom and virtue which is so widely diffused among them. 2. To reproach them, and make them ashamed of pursuing wealth and glory more than wisdom and virtue.[27]

[27] Plato, Apol. c. 33, p. 41 E.

But Sokrates is not empowered to do more for them. He cannot impart any positive knowledge to heal their ignorance. He cannot teach them what WISDOM OR VIRTUE is.

Impression made by the Platonic Apology on Zeno the Stoic.

Such is the substance of the Platonic Apology of Sokrates. How strong was the impression which it made, on many philosophical readers, we may judge from the fact, that Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, being a native of Kition in Cyprus, derived from the perusal of the Apology his first inducement to come over to Athens, and devote himself to the study and teaching of philosophy in that city.[28] Sokrates depicts, with fearless sincerity, what he regards as the intellectual and moral deficiencies of his countrymen, as well as the unpalatable medicine and treatment which he was enjoined to administer to them. With equal sincerity does he declare the limits within which that treatment was confined.

[28] Themistius, Orat. xxiii. (Sophistês) p. 357, Dindorf. Τὰ δὲ ἀμφὶ Ζήνωνος ἀρίδηλά τέ ἐστι καὶ ᾀδόμενα ὑπὸ πολλων, ὅτι αὐτὸν ἡ Σωκράτους ἀπολογία ἐκ Φοινίκης ἤγαγεν εἰς τὴν Ποικίλην.

This statement deserves full belief: it probably came from Zeno himself, a voluminous writer. The father of Zeno was a merchant who traded with Athens, and brought back books for his son to read, Sokratic books among them. Diogen. Laert. vii. 31.

Respecting another statement made by Themistius in the same page, I do not feel so certain. He says that the accusatory discourse pronounced against Sokrates by Anytus was composed by Polykrates, as a λογογράφος, and paid for. This may be the fact but the words of Isokrates in the Busiris rather lead me to the belief that the κατηγορία Σωκράτους composed by Polykrates was a sophistical exercise, composed to acquire reputation and pupils, not a discourse really delivered in the Dikastery.

Extent of efficacious influence claimed by Sokrates for himself — exemplified by Plato throughout the Dialogues of Search — Xenophon and Plato enlarge it.

But neither of his two most eminent companions can endure to restrict his competence within such narrow limits. Xenophon[29] affirms that Sokrates was assiduous in communicating useful instruction and positive edification to his hearers. Plato sometimes, though more rarely, intimates the same: but for the most part, and in the Dialogues of Search throughout, he keeps Sokrates within the circle of procedure which the Apology claims for him. These dialogues exemplify in detail the aggressive operations, announced therein by Sokrates in general terms as his missionary life-purpose, against contemporaries of note, very different from each other — against aspiring youths, statesmen, generals, Rhetors, Sophists, orthodox pietists, poets, rhapsodes, &c. Sokrates cross-examines them all, and convicts them of humiliating ignorance: but he does not furnish, nor does he profess to be able to furnish, any solution of his own difficulties. Many of the persons cross-examined bear historical names: but I think it necessary to warn the reader, that all of them speak both language and sentiments provided for them by Plato, and not their own.[30]

[29] Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 64, i. 3. 1, i. 4, 2, iv. 2, 40; iv. 3, 4.

[30] It might seem superfluous to give such a warning; but many commentators speak as if they required it. They denounce the Platonic speakers in harsh terms, which have no pertinence, unless supposed to be applied to a real man expressing his own thoughts and feelings.

It is useless to enjoin us, as Stallbaum and Steinhart do, to mark the aristocratical conceit of Menon! — the pompous ostentation and pretensive verbosity of Protagoras and Gorgias! — the exorbitant selfishness of Polus and Kalliklês! — the impudent brutality of Thrasymachus! — when all these persons speak entirely under the prompting of Plato himself.

You might just as well judge of Sokrates by what we read in the Nubes of Aristophanes, or of Meton by what we find in the Aves, as describe the historical characters of the above-named personages out of the Platonic dialogues. They ought to be appreciated as dramatic pictures, drest up by the author for his own purpose, and delivering such opinions as he assigns to them — whether he intends them to be refuted by others, or not.

Assumption by modern critics, that Sokrates is a positive teacher, employing indirect methods for the inculcation of theories of his own.

The disclaimer, so often repeated by Sokrates, — that he possessed neither positive knowledge nor wisdom in his own person, — was frequently treated by his contemporaries as ironical. He was not supposed to be in earnest when he made it. Every one presumed that he must himself know that which he proved others not to know, whatever motive he might have for affecting ignorance.[31] His personal manner and homely vein of illustration seemed to favour the supposition that he was bantering. This interpretation of the character of Sokrates appears in the main to be preferred by modern critics. Of course (they imagine) an able man who cross-questions others on the definitions of Law, Justice, Democracy, &c., has already meditated on the subject, and framed for himself unimpeachable definitions of these terms. Sokrates (they suppose) is a positive teacher and theorist, employing a method, which, though indirect and circuitous, is nevertheless calculated deliberately beforehand for the purpose of introducing and inculcating premeditated doctrines of his own. Pursuant to this hypothesis, it is presumed that the positive theory of Sokrates is to be found in his negative cross-examinations, — not indeed set down clearly in any one sentence, so that he who runs may read — yet disseminated in separate syllables or letters, which may be distinguished, picked out, and put together into propositions, by an acute detective examiner. And the same presumption is usually applied to the Sokrates of the Platonic dialogues: that is, to Plato employing Sokrates as spokesman. Interpreters sift with microscopic accuracy the negative dialogues of Plato, in hopes of detecting the ultimate elements of that positive solution which he is supposed to have lodged therein, and which, when found, may be put together so as to clear up all the antecedent difficulties.

[31] Plato, Apol. c. 5, p. 20 D; c. 9, p. 23 A.

Aristeides the Rhetor furnishes a valuable confirmation of the truth of that picture of Sokrates, which we find in the Platonic Apology. All the other companions of Sokrates who wrote dialogues about him (not preserved to us), presented the same general features. 1. Avowed ignorance. 2. The same declaration of the oracle concerning him. 3. The feeling of frequent signs from τὸ δαιμόνιον.

Ὁμολογεῖται μέν γε λέγειν αὐτὸν (Sokrates) ὡς ἄρα οὐδὲν ἐπίσταιτο, καὶ πάντες τοῦτό φασιν οἱ συγγενόμενοι· ὁμολογεῖται δ’ αὖ καὶ τοῦτο, σοφώτατον εἶναι Σωκράτη τὴν Πυθίαν εἰρηκέναι, &c.

(Aristeides, Orat. xlv. Περὶ Ῥητορικῆς, pp. 23, 24, 25, Dindorf.)

Incorrectness of such assumption — the Sokratic Elenchus does not furnish a solution, but works upon the mind of the respondent, stimulating him to seek for a solution of his own.

I have already said (in the preceding [chapter]) that I cannot take this view either of Sokrates or of Plato. Without doubt, each of them had affirmative doctrines and convictions, though not both the same. But the affirmative vein, with both of them, runs in a channel completely distinct from the negative. The affirmative theory has its roots aliunde, and is neither generated, nor adapted, with a view to reconcile the contradictions, or elucidate the obscurities, which the negative Elenchus has exposed. That exposure does indeed render the embarrassed respondent painfully conscious of the want of some rational, consistent, and adequate theoretical explanation: it farther stimulates him to make efforts of his own for the supply of that want. But such efforts must be really his own; the Elenchus gives no farther help: it furnishes problems, but no solutions, nor even any assurance that the problems as presented, admit of affirmative solutions. Whoever expects that such consummate masters of the negative process as Sokrates and Plato, when they come to deliver affirmative dogmas of their own, will be kept under restraint by their own previous Elenchus, and will take care that their dogmas shall not be vulnerable by the same weapons as they had employed against others — will be disappointed. They do not employ any negative test against themselves. When Sokrates preaches in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, or the Athenian Stranger in the Platonic Leges, they jump over, or suppose to be already solved, the difficulties under the pressure of which other disputants had been previously discredited: they assume all the undefinable common-places to be clearly understood, and all the inconsistent generalities to be brought into harmony. Thus it is that the negative cross-examination, and the affirmative dogmatism, are (both in Sokrates and in Plato) two unconnected operations of thought: the one does not lead to, or involve, or verify, the other.

Value and importance of this process — stimulating active individual minds to theorise each for itself.

Those who depreciate the negative process simply, unless followed up by some new positive doctrine which shall be proof against all such attack — cannot be expected to admire Sokrates greatly, even as he stands rated by himself. Even if I concurred in this opinion, I should still think myself obliged to exhibit him as he really was. But I do not concur in the opinion. I think that the creation and furtherance of individual, self-thinking minds, each instigated to form some rational and consistent theory for itself, is a material benefit, even though no farther aid be rendered to the process except in the way of negative suggestion. That such minds should be made to feel the arbitrary and incoherent character of that which they have imbibed by passive association as ethics and æsthetics, — and that they should endeavour to test it by some rational and consistent standard — would be an improving process, though no one theory could be framed satisfactory to all. The Sokratic Elenchus went directly to this result. Plato followed in the same track, not of pouring new matter of knowledge into the pupil, but of eliciting new thoughts and beliefs out of him, by kindling the latent forces of his intellect. A large proportion of Plato’s dialogues have no other purpose or value. And in entering upon the consideration of these dialogues, we cannot take a better point of departure than the Apology of Sokrates, wherein the speaker, alike honest and decided in his convictions, at the close of a long cross-examining career, re-asserts expressly his devoted allegiance to the negative process, and disclaims with equal emphasis all power over the affirmative.

View taken by Sokrates about death. Other men profess to know what it is, and think it a great misfortune: he does not know.

In that touching discourse, the Universal Cross-Examiner declares a thorough resolution to follow his own individual conviction and his own sense of duty — whether agreeing or disagreeing with the convictions of his countrymen, and whether leading to danger or to death for himself. “Where a man may have posted himself either — under his own belief that it is best, or under orders from the magistrate — there he must stay and affront danger, not caring for death or anything else in comparison with disgrace.”[32] As to death, Sokrates knows very little what it is, nor whether it is good or evil. The fear of death, in his view, is only one case of the prevalent mental malady — men believing themselves to know that of which they really know nothing. If death be an extinction of all sensation, like a perpetual and dreamless sleep, he will regard it as a prodigious benefit compared with life: even the Great King will not be a loser by the exchange.[33] If on the contrary death be a transition into Hades, to keep company with those who have died before — Homer, Hesiod, the heroes of the Trojan war, &c. — Sokrates will consider it supreme happiness to converse with and cross-examine the potentates and clever men of the past — Agamemnon, Odysseus, Sisyphus; thus discriminating which of them are really wise, and which of them are only unconscious pretenders. He is convinced that no evil can ever happen to the good man; that the protection, of the Gods can never be wanting to him, whether alive or dead.[34] “It is not lawful for a better man to be injured by a worse. He may indeed be killed, or banished, or disfranchised; and these may appear great evils, in the eye of others. But I do not think them so. It is a far greater evil to do what Melêtus is now doing — trying to kill a man unjustly.”[35]

[32] Plato, Apol. c. 16, p. 28 D.

[33] Plato, Apol. c. 17, p. 29 A. c. 32, p. 40 D. καὶ εἴτε δὴ μηδεμία αἴσθησίς ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ οἷον ὕπνος, ἐπειδάν τις καθεύδων μηδ’ ὄναρ μηδὲν ὁρᾷ, θαυμάσιον κέρδος ἂν εἴη ὁ θάνατος.

Ast remarks (Plat. Leb. und Schrift. p. 488) that the language of doubt and uncertainty in which Sokrates here speaks of the consequences of death, is greatly at variance with the language which he is made to hold in Phædon. Ast adduces this as one of his arguments for disallowing the authenticity of the Apology. I do not admit the inference. I am prepared for divergence between the opinions of Sokrates in different dialogues; and I believe, moreover, that the Sokrates of the Phædon is spokesman chosen to argue in support of the main thesis of that dialogue. But it is impossible to deny the variance which Ast points out, and which is also admitted by Stallbaum. Steinhart indeed (Einleitung, p. 246) goes the length of denying it, in which I cannot follow him. The sentiment of Sokrates in the Apology embodies the same alternative uncertainty, as what we read in Marcus Antoninus, v. 33. Τί οὖν; περιμένεις ἵλεως τὴν εἴτε σβέσιν εἴτε μετάστασιν, &c.

[34] Plato, Apol. c. 32, p. 41 A-B.

[35] Plato, Apol. c. 18, p. 30 D.

Reliance of Sokrates on his own individual reason, whether agreeing or disagreeing with others.

Sokrates here gives his own estimate of comparative good and evil. Death, banishment, disfranchisement, &c., are no great evils: to put another man to death unjustly, is a great evil to the doer: the good man can suffer no evil at all. These are given as the judgments of Sokrates, and as dissentient from most others. Whether they are Sokratic or Platonic opinions, or common to both — we shall find them reappearing in various other Platonic dialogues, hereafter to be noticed. We have also to notice that marked feature in the character of Sokrates[36] — the standing upon his own individual reason and measure of good and evil: nay, even pushing his confidence in it so far, as to believe in a divine voice informing and moving him. This reliance on the individual reason is sometimes recognised, at other times rejected, in the Platonic dialogues. Plato rejects it in his comments (contained in the dialogue Theætêtus) on the doctrine of Protagoras: he rejects it also in the constructive dialogues, Republic and Leges, where he constitutes himself despotic legislator, prescribing a standard of orthodox opinion; he proclaims it in the Gorgias, and implies it very generally throughout the negative dialogues.

[36] Plat. Apol. c. 16, p. 28 D. οὗ ἄν τις ἑαυτὸν τάξῃ ἢ ἡγησάμενος βέλτιον εἶναι ἢ ὑπ’ ἄρχοντος ταχθῇ, ἐνταῦθα δεῖ, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, μένοντα κινδυνεύειν, &c.

Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 8, 11 φρόνιμος δέ, ὥστε μὴ διαμαρτάνειν κρίνων τὰ βελτίω καὶ τὰ χείρω, μηδὲ ἄλλου προσδέεσθαι, ἀλλ’ αὐτάρχης εἶναι πρὸς τὴν τούτων γνῶσιν, &c.

Compare this with Memor. i. 1, 3-4-5, and the Xenophontic Apology, 4, 5, 13, where this αὐταρκεία finds for itself a justification in the hypothesis of a divine monitor without.

The debaters in the treatise of Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, upon the question of the Sokratic δαιμόνιον, insist upon this resolute persuasion and self-determination as the most indisputable fact in the case (c. 11, p. 581 C) Αἱ δὲ Σωκράτους ὁρμαὶ τὸ βέβαιον ἔχουσαι καὶ σφοδρότητα φαίνονται πρὸς ἅπαν, ὡς ἂν ἐξ ὀρθῆς καὶ ἰσχυρᾶς ἀφειμέναι κρίεως καὶ ἀρχῆς. Compare p. 589 E. The speculations of the speakers upon the οὐσία and δύναμις τοῦ Σωκράτους δαιμονίου, come to little result.

There is a curious passage in Plutarch’s life of Coriolanus (c. 32), where he describes the way in which the Gods act upon the minds of particular men, under difficult and trying circumstances. They do not inspire new resolutions or volitions, but they work upon the associative principle, suggesting new ideas which conduct to the appropriate volition — οὐδ’ ὁρμὰς ἐνεργαζόμενον, ἀλλὰ φαντασίας ὁρμῶν ἀγωγούς, &c.

Formidable efficacy of established public beliefs, generated without any ostensible author.

Lastly, we find also in the Apology distinct notice of the formidable efficacy of established public impressions, generated without any ostensible author, circulated in the common talk, and passing without examination from one man to another, as portions of accredited faith. “My accusers Melêtus and Anytus (says Sokrates) are difficult enough to deal with: yet far less difficult than the prejudiced public, who have heard false reports concerning me for years past, and have contracted a settled belief about my character, from nameless authors whom I cannot summon here to be confuted.”[37]

[37] Plato, Apol. c. 2, p. 18 C-D.

It is against this ancient, established belief, passing for knowledge — communicated by unconscious contagion without any rational process — against the “[procès jugé mais non plaidé]”, whereby King Nomos governs — that the general mission of Sokrates is directed. It is against the like belief, in one of its countless manifestations, that he here defends himself before the Dikastery.

CHAPTER X.

KRITON.

General purpose of the Kriton.

The dialogue called Kriton is, in one point of view, a second part or sequel — in another point of view, an antithesis or corrective — of the Platonic Apology. For that reason, I notice it immediately after the Apology: though I do not venture to affirm confidently that it was composed immediately after: it may possibly have been later, as I believe the Phædon also to have been later.[1]

[1] Steinhart affirms with confidence that the Kriton was composed immediately after the Apology, and shortly after the death of Sokrates (Einleitung, p. 303). The fact may be so, but I do not feel thus confident of it when I look to the analogy of the later Phædon.

Subject of the dialogue — interlocutors.

The Kriton describes a conversation between Sokrates and his friend Kriton in the prison, after condemnation, and two days before the cup of hemlock was administered. Kriton entreats and urges Sokrates (as the sympathising friends had probably done frequently during the thirty days of imprisonment) to make his escape from the prison, informing him that arrangements have already been made for enabling him to escape with ease and safety, and that money as well as good recommendations will be provided, so that he may dwell comfortably either in Thessaly, or wherever else he pleases. Sokrates ought not, in justice to his children and his friends, to refuse the opportunity offered, and thus to throw away his life. Should he do so, it will appear to every one as if his friends had shamefully failed in their duty, when intervention on their part might easily have saved him. He might have avoided the trial altogether: even when on trial, he might easily have escaped the capital sentence. Here is now a third opportunity of rescue, which if he declines, it will turn this grave and painful affair into mockery, as if he and his friends were impotent simpletons.[2] Besides the mournful character of the event, Sokrates and his friends will thus be disgraced in the opinion of every one.

[2] Plato, Krito. c. 5, p. 45 E. ὡς ἔγωγε καὶ ὑπὲρ σοῦ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τῶν σῶν ἐπιτηδείων αἰσχύνομαι, μὴ δόξῃ ἅπαν τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸ περὶ σὲ ἀνανδρίᾳ τινὶ τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ πεπρᾶχθαι, καὶ ἡ εἴσοδος τῆς δίκης εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον, ὡς εἰσῆλθες, ἐξὸν μὴ εἰσελθεῖν, καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ ἀγὼν τῆς δίκης ὡς ἐγένετο, καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον δὴ τουτί, ὥσπερ καταγέλως τῆς πράξεως, κακίᾳ τινὶ καὶ ἀνανδρίᾳ τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ διαπεφευγέναι ἡμᾶς δοκεῖν, οἱτινές σε οὐχὶ ἐσώσαμεν οὐδὲ σὺ σαυτόν, οἷόν τε ὂν καὶ δυνατόν, εἴ τι καὶ σμικρὸν ἡμῶν ὄφελος ἦν.

This is a remarkable passage, as evincing both the trial and the death of Sokrates, even in the opinion of his own friends, might have been avoided without anything which they conceived dishonourable to his character.

Professor Köchly puts this point very forcibly in his Vortrag, referred to in my notes on the Platonic Apology, [p. 410 seq.]

Answer of Sokrates to the appeal made by Kriton.

“Disgraced in the opinion of every one,” replies Sokrates? That is not the proper test by which the propriety of your recommendation must be determined. I am now, as I always have been, prepared to follow nothing but that voice of reason which approves itself to me in discussion as the best and soundest.[3] We have often discussed this matter before, and the conclusions on which we agreed are not to be thrown aside because of my impending death. We agreed that the opinions general among men ought not to be followed in all cases, but only in some: that the good opinions, those of the wise men, were to be followed — the bad opinions, those of the foolish men, to be disregarded. In the treatment and exercise of the body, we must not attend to the praise, the blame, or the opinion of every man, but only to those of the one professional trainer or physician. If we disregard this one skilful man, and conduct ourselves according to the praise or blame of the unskilful public, our body will become corrupted and disabled, so that life itself will not be worth having.

[3] Plato, Krito. c. 6, p. 46 B. ὡς ἐγὼ οὐ μόνον νῦν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀεὶ τοιοῦτος, οἷος τῶν ἐμῶν μηδενὶ ἄλλῳ πείθεσθαι ἢ τῷ λόγῳ, ὃς ἄν μοι λογιζομένῳ βέλτιστος φαίνηται.

He declares that the judgment of the general public is not worthy of trust: he appeals to the judgment of the one Expert, who is wise on the matter in debate.

In like manner, on the question what is just and unjust, honourable or base, good or evil, to which our present subject belongs — we must not yield to the praise and censure of the many, but only to that of the one, whoever he may be, who is wise on these matters.[4] We must be afraid and ashamed of him more than of all the rest. Not the verdict of the many, but that of the one man skilful about just and unjust, and that of truth itself, must be listened to. Otherwise we shall suffer the like debasement and corruption of mind as of body in the former case. Life will become yet more worthless. True — the many may put us to death. But what we ought to care for most, is, not simply to live, but to live well, justly, honourably.[5]

[4] Plato, Krito. c. 7, p. 47 C-D. καὶ δὴ καὶ περὶ τῶν δικαίων καὶ ἀδίκων, καὶ αἰσχρῶν καὶ καλῶν, καὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν, περὶ ὧν νῦν ἡ βουλὴ ἡμῖν ἐστιν, πότερον τῇ τῶν πολλῶν δόξῃ δεῖ ἡμᾶς ἕπεσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι αὐτήν, ἢ τῇ τοῦ ἑνός, εἴ τίς ἐστιν ἐπαΐων, ὃν δεῖ καὶ αἰσχύνεσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ ξύμπαντας τοὺς ἄλλους;

c. 8, p. 48 A. Οὐκ ἄρα πάνυ ἡμῖν οὕτω φροντιστέον ὅ, τι ἐροῦσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ ὃ, τι ὁ ἐπαΐων περὶ τῶν δικαίων καὶ ἀδίκων, ὁ εἶς, καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ ἀλήθεια.

[5] Plato, Krito. c. 7-8, pp. 47-48.

Sokrates thus proceeds:—

The point to be decided, therefore, with reference to your proposition, Kriton, is, not what will be generally said if I decline, but whether it will be just or unjust — right or wrong — if I comply; that is, if I consent to escape from prison against the will of the Athenians and against the sentence of law.

Principles laid down by Sokrates for determining the question with Kriton. Is the proceeding recommended just or unjust? Never in any case to act unjustly.

To decide the point, I assume this principle, which we have often before agreed upon in our reasonings, and which must stand unshaken now.[6]

We ought not in any case whatever to act wrong or unjustly. To act so is in every case both bad for the agent and dishonourable to the agent, whatever may be its consequences. Even though others act wrong to us, we ought not to act wrong to them in return. Even though others do evil to us, we ought not to do evil to them in return.[7]

[6] Plato, Krito. c. 9, p. 48 E. ὅρα δὲ δὴ τῆς σκέψεως τὴν ἀρχήν, &c.

[7] Plato, Krito. c. 10, p. 49 B. Οὐδὲ ἀδικούμενον ἄρα ἀνταδικεῖν, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ οἴονται, ἐπειδή γε οὐδαμῶς δεῖ ἀδικεῖν, &c.

Sokrates admits that few will agree with him, and that most persons hold the opposite opinion: but he affirms that the point is cardinal.

This is the principle which I assume as true, though I know that very few persons hold it, or ever will hold it. Most men say the contrary — that when other persons do wrong or harm to us, we may do wrong or harm to them in return. This is a cardinal point. Between those who affirm it, and those who deny it, there can be no common measure or reasoning. Reciprocal contempt is the sentiment with which, by necessity, each contemplates the other’s resolutions.[8]

[8] Plato, Krito. c. 10, p. 49 D. Οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι ὀλίγοις τισὶ ταῦτα καὶ δοκεῖ καὶ δόξει· Ὁῖς οὖν οὕτω δέδοκται καὶ οἷς μή, τούτοις οὐκ ἔστι κοινὴ βουλή, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη τούτους ἀλλήλων καταφρονεῖν, ὁρωντας τὰ ἀλλήλων βουλεύματα. Σκόπει δὴ οὖν καὶ σὺ εὖ μάλα, πότερον κοινωνεῖς καὶ ξυνδοκεῖ σοι· καὶ ἀρχώμεθα ἐντεῦθεν βουλευόμενοι, ὡς οὐδέποτε ὀρθῶς ἔχοντος οὔτε τοῦ ἀδικεῖν οὔτε τοῦ ἀνταδικεῖν, οὔτε κακῶς πάσχοντα ἀμύνεσθαι ἀντιδρῶντα κακῶς.

Compare the opposite impulse, to revenge yourself upon your country from which you believe yourself to have received wrong, set forth in the speech of Alkibiades at Sparta after he had been exiled by the Athenians. Thucyd. vi. 92. τό τε φιλόπολι οὐκ ἐν ᾧ ἀδικοῦμαι ἔχω, ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ ἀσφαλῶς ἐπολιτεύθην.

Pleading supposed to be addressed by the Laws of Athens to Sokrates, demanding from him implicit obedience.

Sokrates then delivers a well-known and eloquent pleading, wherein he imagines the Laws of Athens to remonstrate with him on his purpose of secretly quitting the prison, in order to evade a sentence legally pronounced. By his birth, and long residence in Athens, he has entered into a covenant to obey exactly and faithfully what the laws prescribe. Though the laws should deal unjustly with him, he has no right of redress against them — neither by open disobedience, nor force, nor evasion. Their rights over him are even more uncontrolled and indefeasible than those of his father and mother. The laws allow to every citizen full liberty of trying to persuade the assembled public: but the citizen who fails in persuading, must obey the public when they enact a law adverse to his views. Sokrates having been distinguished beyond all others for the constancy of his residence at Athens, has thus shown that he was well satisfied with the city, and with those laws without which it could not exist as a city. If he now violates his covenants and his duty, by breaking prison like a runaway slave, he will forfeit all the reputation to which he has pretended during his long life, as a preacher of justice and virtue.[9]

[9] Plato, Krito. c. 11-17, pp. 50-54.

Purpose of Plato in this pleading — to present the dispositions of Sokrates in a light different from that which the Apology had presented — unqualified submission instead of defiance.

This striking discourse, the general drift of which I have briefly described, appears intended by Plato — as far as I can pretend to guess at his purpose — to set forth the personal character and dispositions of Sokrates in a light different from that which they present in the Apology. In defending himself before the Dikasts, Sokrates had exalted himself into a position which would undoubtedly be construed by his auditors as disobedience and defiance to the city and its institutions. He professed to be acting under a divine mission, which was of higher authority than the enactments of his countrymen: he warned them against condemning him, because his condemnation would be a mischief, not to him, but to them and because by doing so they would repudiate and maltreat the missionary sent to them by the Delphian God as a valuable present.[10] In the judgment of the Athenian Dikasts, Sokrates by using such language had put himself above the laws; thus confirming the charge which his accusers advanced, and which they justified by some of his public remarks. He had manifested by unmistakable language the same contempt for the Athenian constitution as that which had been displayed in act by Kritias and Alkibiades,[11] with whom his own name was associated as teacher and companion.[12] Xenophon in his Memorabilia recognises this impression as prevalent among his countrymen against Sokrates, and provides what he thinks a suitable answer to it. Plato also has his way of answering it; and such I imagine to be the dramatic purpose of the Kriton.

[10] Plato, Apol. c. 17-18, p. 29-30.

[11] This was among the charges urged against Sokrates by Anytus and the other accusers (Xen. Mem. i. 2, 9. ὑπερορᾷν ἐποίει τῶν καθεστώτων νόμων τοὺς συνόντας). It was also the judgment formed respecting Sokrates by the Roman censor, the elder Cato; a man very much like the Athenian Anytus, constitutional and patriotic as a citizen, devoted to the active duties of political life, but thoroughly averse to philosophy and speculative debate, as Anytus is depicted in the Menon of Plato. — Plutarch, Cato c. 23, a passage already cited in a [note] on the chapter next but one preceding.

The accusation of “putting himself above the laws,” appears in the same way in the Nubes of Aristophanes, 1035-1400, &c.:—

ὡς ἡδὺ καινοῖς πράγμασιν καὶ δεξιοῖς ὁμιλεῖν καὶ τῶν καθεστώτων νόμων ὑπερ φρονεῖν δύνασθαι.

Compare the rhetor Aristeides — Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 133; vol. iii. p. 480, Dindorf.

[12] The dramatic position of Sokrates has been compared by Köchly, p. 382, very suitably with that of Antigoné, who, in burying her deceased brother, acts upon her own sense of right and family affections, in defiance of an express interdict from sovereign authority. This tragical conflict of obligations, indicated by Aristotle as an ethical question suited for dialectic debate (Topic. i. p. 105, b. 22), was handled by all the three great tragedians; and has been ennobled by Sophokles in one of his best remaining tragedies. The Platonic Apology presents many points of analogy with the Antigoné, while the Platonic Kriton carries us into an opposite vein of sentiment. Sokrates after sentence, and Antigoné after sentence, are totally different persons. The young maiden, though adhering with unshaken conviction to the rectitude of her past disobedience, cannot submit to the sentence of death without complaint and protestation. Though above all fear she is clamorous in remonstrances against both the injustice of the sentence and the untimely close of her career: so that she is obliged to be dragged away by the officers (Soph. Antig. 870-877; compare 497-508, with Plato, Krito. p. 49 C; Apolog. p. 28 D, 29 C). All these points enhance the interest of the piece, and are suited to a destined bride in the flower of her age. But an old philosopher of seventy years of age has no such attachment to life remaining. He contemplates death with the eye of calm reason: he has not only silenced “the child within us who fears death” (to use the remarkable phrase of Plato, Phædon, p. 77 E), but he knows well that what remains to him of life must be short; that it will probably be of little value, with diminished powers, mental as well as bodily; and that if passed in exile, it will be of no value at all. To close his life with dignity is the best thing which can happen to him. While by escape from the prison he would have gained little or nothing; he is enabled, by refusing the means of escape, to manifest an ostentatious deference to the law, and to make peace with the Athenian authorities after the opposition which had been declared in his Apology. Both in the Kriton and in the Phædon, Sokrates exhibits the specimen of a man adhering to previous conviction, unaffected by impending death, and by the apprehensions which that season brings upon ordinary minds; estimating all things then as before, with the same tranquil and independent reason.

Harangue of Sokrates delivered in the name of the Laws, would have been applauded by all the democratical patriots of Athens.

This dialogue puts into the mouth of Sokrates a rhetorical harangue forcible and impressive, which he supposes himself to hear from personified Nomos or Athens, claiming for herself and her laws plenary and unmeasured obedience from all her citizens, as a covenant due to her from each. He declares his own heartfelt adhesion to the claim. Sokrates is thus made to express the feelings and repeat the language of a devoted democratical patriot. His doctrine is one which every Athenian audience would warmly applaud — whether heard from speakers in the assembly, from litigants in the Dikastery, or from dramatists in the theatre. It is a doctrine which orators of all varieties (Perikles, Nikias, Kleon, Lysis, Isokrates, Demosthenes, Æschines, Lykurgus) would be alike emphatic in upholding: upon which probably Sophists habitually displayed their own eloquence, and tested the talents of their pupils. It may be considered as almost an Athenian common-place. Hence it is all the better fitted for Plato’s purpose of restoring Sokrates to harmony with his fellow-citizens. It serves as his protestation of allegiance to Athens, in reply to the adverse impressions prevalent against him. The only singularity which bestows special pertinence on that which is in substance a discourse of venerated common-place, is — that Sokrates proclaims and applies his doctrine of absolute submission, under the precise circumstances in which many others, generally patriotic, might be disposed to recede from it — where he is condemned (unjustly, in his own persuasion) to suffer death — yet has the opportunity to escape. He is thus presented as a citizen not merely of ordinary loyalty but of extraordinary patriotism. Moreover his remarkable constancy of residence at Athens is produced as evidence, showing that the city was eminently acceptable to him, and that he had no cause of complaint against it.[13]

[13] Plato, Krito. c. 14, p. 52 B. οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε τῶν ἄλλων Ἀθηναίων ἁπάντων διαφερόντως ἐν αὐτῇ ἐπεδήμεις, εἰ μή σοι διαφερόντως ἤρεσκε· c. 12, p. 50 D. φέρε γάρ, τί ἐγκαλῶν ἡλῖν τε καὶ τῇ πόλει ἐπιχειρεῖς ἡμᾶς ἀπολλύναι;

The harangue insists upon topics common to Sokrates with other citizens, overlooking the specialties of his character.

Throughout all this eloquent appeal addressed by Athens to her citizen Sokrates, the points insisted on are those common to him with other citizens: the marked specialties of his character being left unnoticed. Such are the points suitable to the purpose (rather Xenophontic than Platonic, herein) of the Kriton; when Sokrates is to be brought back within the pale of democratical citizenship, and exculpated from the charge of incivism. But when we read the language of Sokrates both in the Apology and in the Gorgias, we find a very different picture given of the relations between him and Athens. We find him there presented as an isolated and eccentric individual, a dissenter, not only departing altogether from the character and purposes general among his fellow-citizens, but also certain to incur dangerous antipathy, in so far as he publicly proclaimed what he was. The Kriton takes him up as having become a victim to such antipathy: yet as reconciling himself with the laws by voluntarily accepting the sentence; and as persuaded to do so, moreover, by a piece of rhetoric imbued with the most genuine spirit of constitutional democracy. It is the compromise of his long-standing dissent with the reigning orthodoxy, just before his death. Ἐν εὐφημίᾳ χρὴ τελευτᾷν.[14]

[14] Plato, Phædon, p. 117 D.

Still Sokrates is represented as adopting the resolution to obey, from his own conviction; by a reason which weighs with him, but which would not weigh with others.

Still, however, though adopting the democratical vein of sentiment for this purpose, Sokrates is made to adopt it on a ground peculiar to himself. His individuality is thus upheld. He holds the sentence pronounced against him to have been unjust, but he renounces all use of that plea, because the sentence has been legally pronounced by the judicial authority of the city, and because he has entered into a covenant with the city. He entertains the firm conviction that no one ought to act unjustly, or to do evil to others, in any case; not even in the case in which they have done injustice or evil to him. “This (says Sokrates) is my conviction, and the principle of my reasoning. Few persons do accept it, or ever will: yet between those who do accept it, and those who do not — there can be no common counsel: by necessity of the case, each looks upon the other, and upon the reasonings of the other, with contempt.”[15]

[15] Plato, Kriton c. 10, p. 49 D.; see p. 428, [note i].

The harangue is not a corollary from this Sokratic reason, but represents feelings common among Athenian citizens.

This general doctrine, peculiar to Sokrates, is decisive per se, in its application to the actual case, and might have been made to conclude the dialogue. But Sokrates introduces it as a foundation to the arguments urged by the personified Athenian Nomos:—which, however, are not corollaries from it, nor at all peculiar to Sokrates, but represent sentiments held by the Athenian democrats more cordially than they were by Sokrates. It is thus that the dialogue Kriton embodies, and tries to reconcile, both the two distinct elements — constitutional allegiance, and Sokratic individuality.

Emphatic declaration of the authority of individual reason and conscience, for the individual himself.

Apart from the express purpose of this dialogue, however, the general doctrine here proclaimed by Sokrates deserves attention, in regard to the other Platonic dialogues which we shall soon review. The doctrine involves an emphatic declaration of the paramount authority of individual reason and conscience; for the individual himself — but for him alone. “This (says Sokrates) is, and has long been my conviction. It is the basis of the whole reasoning. Look well whether you agree to it: for few persons do agree to it, or ever will: and between those who do and those who do not, there can be no common deliberation: they must of necessity despise each other.”[16] Here we have the Protagorean dogma, Homo Mensura — which Sokrates will be found combating in the Theætêtus — proclaimed by Sokrates himself. As things appear to me, so they are to me: as they appear to you, so they are to you. My reason and conscience is the measure for me: yours for you. It is for you to see whether yours agrees with mine.

[16] Plato, Kriton c. 10, p. 49 D.; see p. 428, [note i].

I shall revert to this doctrine in handling other Platonic dialogues, particularly the Theætêtus.

The Kriton is rhetorical, not dialectical. Difference between Rhetoric and Dialectic.

I have already observed that the tone of the Kriton is rhetorical, not dialectical — especially the harangue ascribed to Athens. The business of the rhetorician is to plant and establish some given point of persuasion, whether as to a general resolution or a particular fact, in the bosoms of certain auditors before him: hence he gives prominence and emphasis to some views of the question, suppressing or discrediting others, and especially keeping out of sight all the difficulties surrounding the conclusion at which he is aiming. On the other hand, the business of the dialectician is, not to establish any foreknown conclusion, but to find out which among all supposable conclusions are untenable, and which is the most tenable or best. Hence all the difficulties attending every one of them must be brought fully into view and discussed: until this has been done, the process is not terminated, nor can we tell whether any assured conclusion is attainable or not.

Now Plato, in some of his dialogues, especially the Gorgias, greatly depreciates rhetoric and its purpose of persuasion: elsewhere he employs it himself with ability and effect. The discourse which we read in the Kriton is one of his best specimens: appealing to pre-established and widespread emotions, veneration for parents, love of country, respect for covenants — to justify the resolution of Sokrates in the actual case: working up these sentiments into fervour, but neglecting all difficulties, limits, and counter-considerations: assuming that the familiar phrases of ethics and politics are perfectly understood and indisputable.

The Kriton makes powerful appeal to the emotions, but overlooks the ratiocinative difficulties, or supposes them to be solved.

But these last-mentioned elements — difficulties, qualifications, necessity for definitions even of the most hackneyed words — would have been brought into the foreground had Sokrates pursued the dialectical path, which (as we know both from Xenophon and Plato) was his real habit and genius. He was perpetually engaged (says Xenophon[17]) in dialectic enquiry. “What is the Holy, what is the Unholy? What is the Honourable and the Base? What is the Just and the Unjust? &c.” Now in the rhetorical appeal embodied in the Kriton, the important question, What is the Just and the Unjust (i.e. Justice and Injustice in general), is assumed to be already determined and out of the reach of dispute. We are called upon to determine what is just and unjust in a particular case, as if we already knew what justice and injustice meant generally: to inquire about modifications of justice, before we have ascertained its essence. This is the fundamental assumption involved in the rhetorical process; which assumption we shall find Plato often deprecating as unphilosophical and preposterous.

[17] Xenoph. Mem. i. 1, 16. Αὐτὸς δὲ περὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπείων ἀεὶ διελέγετο, σκοπῶν, τί εὐσεβές, τί ἀσεβές· τί καλόν, τί αἰσχρόν· τί δίκαιον, τί ἄδικον· τί σωφροσύνη, τί μανία· τί ἀνδρεία, τί δειλία· τί πόλις, τί πολιτικός· τί ἀρχὴ ἀνθρώπων, τί ἀρχικὸς ἀνθρώπων, &c.

We see in Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 40-46, iv. 2, 37, in the Platonic dialogue Minos and elsewhere, the number of dialectic questions which Sokrates might have brought to bear upon the harangue in the Kriton, had it been delivered by any opponent whom he sought to perplex or confute. What is a law? what are the limits of obedience to the laws? Are there no limits (as Hobbes is so much denounced for maintaining)? While the oligarchy of Thirty were the constituted authority at Athens, they ordered Sokrates himself, together with four other citizens, to go and arrest a citizen whom they considered dangerous to the state, the Salaminian Leon. The other four obeyed the order; Sokrates alone disobeyed, and takes credit for having done so, considering Leon to be innocent. Which was in the right here? the four obedient citizens, or the one disobedient? Might not the four have used substantially the same arguments to justify their obedience, as those which Sokrates hears from personified Athens in the Kriton? We must remember that the Thirty had come into authority by resolutions passed under constitutional forms, when fear of foreign enemies induced the people to sanction the resolutions proposed by a party among themselves. The Thirty also ordered Sokrates to abstain from discourse with young men; he disobeyed (Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 3). Was he right in disobeying?

I have indicated briefly these questions, to show how completely the rhetorical manner of the Kriton submerges all those difficulties, which would form the special matter of genuine Sokratic dialectics.

Schleiermacher (Einleit. zum Kriton, pp. 233, 234) considers the Kriton as a composition of special occasion — Gelegenheitsschrift — which I think is true; but which may be said also, in my judgment, of every Platonic dialogue. The term, however, in Schleiermacher’s writing, has a peculiar meaning, viz. a composition for which there is no place in the regular rank and file of the Platonic dialogues, as he marshals them. He remarks the absence of dialectic in the Kriton, and he adduces this as one reason for supposing it not to be genuine.

But it is no surprise to me to find Plato rhetorical in one dialogue, dialectical in others. Variety, and want of system, seem to me among his most manifest attributes.

The view taken of the Kriton by Steinhart (Einleit. pp. 291-302), in the first page of his very rhetorical Introduction, coincides pretty much with mine.

So far indeed Sokrates goes in this dialogue, to affirm a positive analogy. That Just and Honourable are, to the mind, what health and strength are to the body:—Unjust and Base, what distemper and weakness are to the body. And he follows this up by saying, that the general public are incompetent to determine what is just or honourable — as they are incompetent to decide what is wholesome or unwholesome. Respecting both one and the other, you must consult some one among the professional Experts, who alone are competent to advise.[18]

[18] Plato, Kriton, c. 7, p. 47 D. τοῦ ἑνὸς, εἴ τίς ἐστιν ἐπαΐων, &c.

Incompetence of the general public or ἰδιῶται — appeal to the professional Expert.

Both these two doctrines will be found recurring often, in our survey of the dialogues. The first of the two is an obscure and imperfect reply to the great Sokratic problem — What is Justice? What is Injustice? but it is an analogy useful to keep in mind, as a help to the exposition of many passages in which Plato is yet more obscure. The second of the two will also recur frequently. It sets out an antithesis of great moment in the Platonic dialogues — “The one specially instructed, professional, theorizing, Expert — versus (the ἰδιῶται of the time and place, or) common sense, common sentiment, intuition, instinct, prejudice,” &c. (all these names meaning the same objective reality, but diversified according as the speaker may happen to regard the particular case to which he is alluding). This antithesis appears as an answer when we put the question — What is the ultimate authority? where does the right of final decision reside, on problems and disputes ethical, political, æsthetical? It resides (Sokrates here answers) with some one among a few professional Experts. They are the only persons competent.

Procedure of Sokrates after this comparison has been declared — he does not name who the trustworthy Expert is.

I shall go more fully into this question elsewhere. Here I shall merely notice the application which Sokrates makes (in the Kriton) of the general doctrine. We might anticipate that after having declared that none was fit to pronounce upon the Just and the Unjust, except a professional Expert, — he would have proceeded to name some person corresponding to that designation — to justify the title of that person to confidence by such evidences as Plato requires in other dialogues — and then to cite the decision of the judge named, on the case in hand. This is what Sokrates would have done, if the case had been one of health or sickness. He would have said “I appeal to Hippokrates, Akumenus, &c., as professional Experts on medicine: they have given proof of competence by special study, successful practice, writing, teaching, &c.: they pronounce so and so”. He would not have considered himself competent to form a judgment or announce a decision of his own.

Sokrates acts as the Expert himself: he finds authority in his own reason and conscience.

But here, when the case in hand is that of Just and Unjust, the conduct of Sokrates is altogether different. He specifies no professional Expert, and he proceeds to lay down a dogma of his own; in which he tells us that few or none will agree, though it is fundamental, so that dissenters on the point must despise each other as heretics. We thus see that it is he alone who steps in to act himself the part of professional Expert, though he does not openly assume the title. The ultimate authority is proclaimed in words to reside with some unnamed Expert: in fact and reality, he finds it in his own reason and conscience. You are not competent to judge for yourself: you must consult the professional Expert: but your own reason and conscience must signify to you who the Expert is.

The analogy here produced by Plato of questions about health and sickness — is followed out only in its negative operation; as it serves to scare away the multitude, and discredit the Vox Populi. But when this has been done, no oracular man can be produced or authenticated. In other dialogues, we shall find Sokrates regretting the absence of such an oracular man, but professing inability to proceed without him. In the Kriton, he undertakes the duty himself; unmindful of the many emphatic speeches in which he had proclaimed his own ignorance, and taken credit for confessing it without reserve.

CHAPTER XI.

EUTHYPHRON.

The dialogue called Euthyphron, over and above its contribution to the ethical enquiries of Plato, has a certain bearing on the character and exculpation of Sokrates. It will therefore come conveniently in immediate sequel to the Apology and the Kriton.

Situation supposed in the dialogue — interlocutors.

The indictment by Melêtus against Sokrates is assumed to have been formally entered in the office of the King Archon. Sokrates has come to plead to it. In the portico before that office, he meets Euthyphron: a man of ultra-pious pretensions, possessing special religious knowledge (either from revelation directly to himself, or from having been initiated in the various mysteries consecrated throughout Greece), delivering authoritative opinions on doubtful theological points, and prophesying future events.[1]

[1] Plato, Euthyphr. c. 2, p. 3 D; compare Herodot. ii. 51.

What brings you here, Sokrates (asks Euthyphron), away from your usual haunts? Is it possible that any one can have preferred an indictment against you?

Indictment by Melêtus against Sokrates — Antipathy of the Athenians towards those who spread heretical opinions.

Yes (replies Sokrates), a young man named Melêtus. He takes commendable interest in the training of youth, and has indicted me as a corruptor of youth. He says that I corrupt them by teaching belief in new gods, and unbelief in the true and ancient Gods.

Euthyph. — I understand: it is because you talk about the Dæmon or Genius often communicating with you, that Melêtus calls you an innovator in religion. He knows that such calumnies find ready admission with most minds.[2] So also, people laugh at me, when I talk about religion, and when I predict future events in the assembly. It must be from jealousy; because all that I have predicted has come true.

[2] Plato, Euthyph. c. 2, p. 3 B: φησὶ γάρ με ποιητὴν εἶναι θεῶν καὶ ὡς καινοὺς ποιοῦντα θεούς, τοὺς δ’ ἀρχαίους οὐ νομίζοντα, ἐγράψατο τούτων αὐτῶν ἕνεκα, ὥς φησιν. c. 5, p. 5 A: αὐτοσχεδιάζοντα καὶ καινοτομοῦντα περὶ τῶν θείων ἐξαμαρτάνειν.

Sokr. — To be laughed at is no great matter. The Athenians do not care much when they regard a man as overwise, but as not given to teach his wisdom to others: but when they regard him besides, as likely to make others such as he is himself, they become seriously angry with him — be it from jealousy, as you say, or from any other cause. You keep yourself apart, and teach no one; for my part, I delight in nothing so much as in teaching all that I know. If they take the matter thus seriously, the result may be very doubtful.[3]

[3] Plato, Euthyphr. c. 3, p. 3 C.-D. Ἀθηναίοις γὰρ οὐ σφόδρα μέλει, ἄν τινα δεινὸν οἴωνται εἶναι, μὴ μέντοι διδασκαλικὸν τῆς αὐτοῦ σοφίας· ὃν δ’ ἂν καὶ ἄλλους οἴωνται ποιεῖν τοιούτους, θυμοῦνται, εἶτ’ οὖν φθόνῳ, ὡς σὺ λέγεις, εἴτε δι’ ἄλλο τι.

Euthyphron recounts that he is prosecuting an indictment for murder against his own father — Displeasure of his friends at the proceeding.

Sokrates now learns what is Euthyphron’s business at the archontic office. Euthyphron is prosecuting an indictment before the King Archon, against his own father; as having caused the death of a dependent workman, who in a fit of intoxication had quarrelled with and killed a fellow-servant. The father of Euthyphron, upon this occurrence, bound the homicide hand and foot, and threw him into a ditch: at the same time sending to the Exêgêtês (the canonical adviser, supposed to be conversant with the divine sanctions, whom it was customary to consult when doubts arose about sacred things) to ask what was to be done with him. The incident occurred at Naxos, and the messenger was sent to the Exêgêtês at Athens: before he could return, the prisoner had perished, from hunger, cold, and bonds. Euthyphron has indicted his father for homicide, as having caused the death of the prisoner: who (it would appear) had remained in the ditch, tied hand and foot, without food, and with no more than his ordinary clothing, during the time occupied in the voyage from Naxos to Athens, in obtaining the answer of the Exêgêtês, and in returning to Naxos.

My friends and relatives (says Euthyphron) cry out against me for this proceeding, as if I were mad. They say that my father did not kill the man:[4] that even if he had, the man had committed murder: lastly, that however the case may have been, to indict my own father is monstrous and inexcusable. Such reasoning is silly. The only point to be considered is, whether my father killed the deceased justly or unjustly. If justly there is nothing to be said; if unjustly, then my father becomes a man tainted with impiety and accursed. I and every one else, who, knowing the facts, live under the same roof and at the same table with him, come under the like curse; unless I purify myself by bringing him to justice. The course which I am now taking is prescribed by piety or holiness. My friends indeed tell me that it is unholy for a son to indict his father. But I know better than they, what holiness is and I should be ashamed of myself if I did not.[5]

[4] According to the Attic law every citizen was bound, in case any one of his relatives (μέχρις ἀνεψιαδῶν) or any member of his household (οἰκέτης) had been put to death, to come forward as prosecutor and indict the murderer. This was binding upon the citizen alike in law and in religion.

Demosthen. cont. Euerg. et Mnesibul. p. 1161. Jul. Pollux, viii. 118.

Euthyphron would thus have been considered as acting with propriety, if the person indicted had been a stranger.

[5] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 4, p. 4. Respecting the μίασμα, which a person who had committed criminal homicide was supposed to carry about with him wherever he went, communicating it both to places and to companions, see Antiphon. Tetralog. i. 2, 5, 10; iii. s. 7, p. 116; and De Herodis Cæde s. 81, p. 139. The argument here employed by Euthyphron is used also by the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias, 480 C-D. If a man has committed injustice, punishment is the only way of curing him. That he should escape unpunished is the worst thing that can happen to him. If you yourself, or your father, or your friend, have committed injustice, do not seek to avert the punishment either from yourself or them, but rather invoke it. This is exactly what Euthyphron is doing, and what the Platonic Sokrates (in dialogue Euthyphron) calls in question.

Euthyphron expresses full confidence that this step of his is both required and warranted by piety or holiness. Sokrates asks him — What is Holiness?

I confess myself (says Sokrates) ignorant respecting the question,[6] and I shall be grateful if you will teach me: the rather as I shall be able to defend myself better against Melêtus. Tell me what is the general constituent feature of Holiness? What is that common essence, or same character, which belongs to and distinguishes all holy or pious acts?[7]

[6] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 6 B. τί γὰρ καὶ φήσομεν, οἵ γε καὶ αὐτοὶ ὁμολογοῦμεν περὶ αὐτῶν μηδὲν εἰδέναι;

[7] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 5 D. Among the various reasons (none of them valid in my judgment) given by Ueberweg (Untersuch. p. 251) for suspecting the authenticity of the Euthyphron, one is that τὸ ἀνόσιον is reckoned as an εἶδος as well as τὸ ὅσιον. Ueberweg seems to think this absurd, since he annexes to the word a note of admiration. But Plato expressly gives τὸ ἄδικον as an εἶδος, along with τὸ δίκαιον (Repub. v. 476 A); and one of the objections taken against his theory by Aristotle was, that it would assume substantive Ideas corresponding to negative terms — τῶν ἀποφάσεων ἰδέας. See Aristot. Metaphys. A. 990, b. 13, with the Scholion of Alexander, p. 565, a. 81, r.

Euthyphron alludes to the punishment of Uranus by his son Kronus and of Kronus by his son Zeus.

It is holy (replies Euthyphron) to do what I am now doing: to bring to justice the man who commits impiety, either by homicide or sacrilege or any other such crime, whoever he be — even though it be your own father. The examples of the Gods teach us this. Kronus punished his father Uranus for wrong-doing: Zeus, whom every one holds to be the best and justest of the Gods, did the like by his father Kronus. I only follow their example. Those who blame my conduct contradict themselves when they talk about the Gods and about me.[8]

[8] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 5-6.

We see here that Euthyphron is made to follow out the precept delivered by the Platonic Sokrates in the Theætêtus and elsewhere — to make himself as like to the Gods as possible — (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν. Theætêt. p. 176 B; compare Phædrus, 252 C) — only that he conceives the attributes and proceedings of the Gods differently from Sokrates.

Sokrates intimates his own hesitation in believing these stories of discord among the Gods. Euthyphron declares his full belief in them, as well as in many similar narratives, not in so much circulation.

Do you really confidently believe these stories (asks Sokrates), as well as many others about the discord and conflicts among the Gods, which are circulated among the public by poets and painters? For my part, I have some repugnance in believing them;[9] it is for reason probably, I am now to be indicted, and proclaimed as doing wrong. If you tell me that you are persuaded of their truth, I must bow to your superior knowledge. I cannot help doing so, since for my part I pretend to no knowledge whatever about them.

[9] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 6 A. Ἀρά γε τοῦτ’ ἔστιν, οὖ ἕνεκα τὴν γραφὴν φεύγω, ὅτι τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπειδάν τις περὶ τῶν θεῶν λέγῃ, δυσχερῶς πως ἀποδέχομαι; δι’ ἃ δὴ, ὡς ἔοικε, φήσει τίς με ἐξαμαρτάνειν.

I am persuaded that these narratives are true (says Euthyphron): and not only they, but many other narratives yet more surprising, of which most persons are ignorant. I can tell you some of them, if you like to hear. You shall tell me another time (replies Sokrates): now let me repeat my question to you respecting holiness.[10]

[10] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 6 C.

Bearing of this dialogue on the relative position of Sokrates and the Athenian public.

Before we pursue this enquiry respecting holiness, which is the portion of the dialogue bearing on the Platonic ethics, I will say one word on the portion which has preceded, and which appears to bear on the position and character of Sokrates. He (Sokrates) has incurred odium from the Dikastery and the public, because he is heretical and incredulous. “He does not believe in those Gods in whom the city believes, but introduces religious novelties” — to use the words of the indictment preferred against him by Melêtus. The Athenian public felt the same displeasure and offence in hearing their divine legends, such as those of Zeus and Kronus,[11] called in question or criticised in an ethical spirit different from their own — as is felt by Jews or Christians when various narratives of the Old Testament are criticised in an adverse spirit, and when the proceedings ascribed to Jehovah are represented as unworthy of a just and beneficent god. We read in Herodotus what was the sentiment of pious contemporaries respecting narratives of divine matters. Herodotus keeps back many of them by design, and announces that he will never recite them except in case of necessity: while in one instance, where he has been betrayed into criticism upon a few of them, as inconsiderate and incredible, he is seized with misgivings, and prays that Gods and heroes will not be offended with him.[12] The freethinkers, among whom Sokrates was numbered, were the persons from whom adverse criticism came. It is these men who are depicted by orthodox opponents as committing lawless acts, and justifying themselves by precedents drawn from the proceedings or Zeus.[13] They are, besides, especially accused of teaching children to despise or even to ill-use their parents.[14]

[11] I shall say more about [Plato’s views] on the theological legends generally believed by his countrymen, when I come to the language which he puts into the mouth of Sokrates in the second and third books of the Republic. Eusebius considers it matter of praise when he says “that Plato rejected all the opinions of his country-men concerning the Gods and exposed their absurdity” — ὅπως τε πάσας τὰς πατρίους περὶ τῶν θεῶν ὑπολήψεις ἠθέτει, καὶ τὴν ἀτοπίαν αὐτῶν διήλεγχεν (Præp. Evan. xiii. 1) — the very same thing which is averred in the indictment laid by Melêtus against Sokrates.

[12] Herodot. ii. 65: τῶν δὲ εἵνεκεν ἀνεῖται τὰ ἱρὰ, εἰ λέγοιμι, καταβαίην ἂν τῷ λόγῳ ἐς τὰ θεῖα πρήγματα, τὰ ἐγὼ φεύγω μάλιστα ἀπηγεέσθαι. τὰ δὲ καὶ εἴρηκα αὐτῶν ἐπιψαύσας, ἀναγκαίη καταλαμβανόμενος εἶπον.… 45. Λέγουσι δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα ἀνεπισκέπτως οἱ Ἕλληνες· εὐήθης δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ὅδε ὁ μῦθος ἐστι, τὸν περὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλέος λέγουσι.… ἔτι δὲ ἕνα ἐόντα τὸν Ἡρακλέα, καὶ ἔτι ἄνθρωπον, ὡς δή φασι, κῶς φύσιν ἔχει πολλὰς μυριάδας φονεῦσαι; καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν εἰποῦσι, καὶ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἡρώων εὐμένεια εἴη.

About the ἱροὶ λόγοι which he keeps back, see cap. 51, 61, 62, 81, 170, &c.

[13] Aristoph. Nubes, 905-1080.

[14] Aristoph. Nubes, 994-1333-1444. Xenophon, Mem. i. 2, 49. Σωκράτης — τοὺς πατέρας προπηλακίζειν ἐδίδασκε (accusation by Melêtus).

Dramatic moral set forth by Aristophanes against Sokrates and the freethinkers, is here retorted by Plato against the orthodox champion.

Now in the dialogue here before us, Plato retorts this attack. Euthyphron possesses in the fullest measure the virtues of a believer. He believes not only all that orthodox Athenians usually believed respecting the Gods, but more besides.[15] His faith is so implicit, that he proclaims it as accurate knowledge, and carries it into practice with full confidence; reproaching other orthodox persons with inconsistency and short-coming, and disregarding the judgment of the multitude, as Sokrates does in the Kriton.[16] Euthyphron stands forward as the champion of the Gods, determined not to leave unpunished the man who has committed impiety, let him be who he may.[17] These lofty religious pretensions impel him, with full persuasion of right, to indict his own father for homicide, under the circumstances above described. Now in the eyes of the Athenian public, there could hardly be any act more abhorrent, than that of a man thus invoking upon his father the severest penalties of law. It would probably be not less abhorrent than that of a son beating his own father. When therefore we read, in the Nubes of Aristophanes, the dramatic moral set forth against Sokrates, “See the consequences to which free-thinking and the new system of education lead[18] — the son Pheidippides beating his own father, and justifying the action as right, by citing the violence of Zeus towards his father Kronus” — we may take the Platonic Euthyphron as an antithesis to this moral, propounded by a defender of Sokrates, “See the consequences to which consistent orthodoxy and implicit faith conduct. The son Euthyphron indicts his own father for homicide; he vindicates the step as conformable to the proceedings of the gods; he even prides himself on it as championship on their behalf, such as all religious men ought to approve.”[19]

[15] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 6 B. καὶ ἔτι γε τούτων θαυμασιώτερα, ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ οὐκ ἴσασιν.

Euthyphron belonged to the class described in Euripides, Hippol. 45:—

Ὅσοι μεν οὖν γραφάς τε τῶν παλαιτέρων Ἔχοισιν, αὐτοί τ’ εἰσὶν ἐν μούσαις ἀεί, Ἴσασιν, &c.

Compare also Euripid. Herakleidæ, 404.

[16] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 4, p. 5 A; c. 6, p. 6 A.

[17] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 6, p. 5 E. μὴ ἐπιτρέπειν τῷ ἀσεβοῦντι μηδ’ ἂν ὁστισοῦν τυγχάνῃ ὦν.

[18] Aristoph. Nubes, 937. τὴν καινὴν παίδευσιν, &c.

[19] Schleiermacher (Einleitung zum Euthyphron, vol. ii. pp. 51-54) has many remarks on the Euthyphron in which I do not concur; but his conception of its “unverkennbare apologetische Absicht” is very much the same as mine. He describes Euthyphron as a man “der sich besonders auf das Göttliche zu verstehen vorgab, und die rechtglaubigen aus den alten theologischen Dichtern gezogenen Begriffe tapfer vertheidigte. Diesen nun gerade bei der Anklage des Sokrates mit ihm in Berührung, und durch den unsittlichen Streich, den sein Eifer für die Frömmigkeit veranlasste, in Gegensatz zu bringen — war ein des Platon nicht unwürdiger Gedanke” (p. 54). But when Schleiermacher affirms that the dialogue was indisputably composed (unstreitig) between the indictment and the trial of Sokrates, — and when he explains what he considers the defects of the dialogue, by the necessity of finishing it in a hurry (p. 53), I dissent from him altogether, though Steinhart adopts the same opinion. Nor can I perceive in what way the Euthyphron is (as he affirms) either “a natural out-growth of the Protagoras,” or “an approximation and preparation for the Parmenidês” (p. 52). Still less do I feel the force of his reasons for hesitating in admitting it to be a genuine work of Plato.

I have given my reasons, in a preceding [chapter], for believing that Plato composed no dialogues at all during the lifetime of Sokrates. But that he should publish such a dialogue while the trial of Sokrates was impending, is a supposition altogether inadmissible, in my judgment. The effect of it would be to make the position of Sokrates much worse on his trial. Herein I agree with Ueberweg (Untersuch. p. 250), though I do not share his doubts of the authenticity of the dialogue.

The confident assertion of Stallbaum surprises me. “Constat enim Platonem eo tempore, quo Socrati tantum erat odium conflatum, ut ei judicii immineret periculum, complures dialogos composuisse; in quibus id egit, ut viri sanctissimi adversarios in eo ipso genere, in quo sibi plurimum sapere videbantur, inscitiæ et ignorantiæ coargueret. Nam Euthyphronem novimus, ad vates ignorantiæ rerum gravissimarum convincendos, esse compositum; ut in quo eos ne pietatis quidem notionem tenere ostenditur. In Menone autem id agitur, ut sophistas et viros civiles non scientiâ atque arte, sed cœco quodam impetu mentis et sorte divinâ duci demonstretur: quod quidem ita fit, ut colloquium ex parte cum Anyto, Socratis accusatore, habeatur.… Nam Menonem quidem et Euthyphronem Plato eo confecit tempore, quo Socratis causa haud ita pridem in judicio versabatur, nec tamen jam tanta ei videbatur imminere calamitas, quanta postea consecuta est. Ex quo sané verisimiliter colligere licet Ionem, cujus simile argumentum et consilium est, circa idem tempus literis consignatum esse.” Stallbaum, Prolegom. ad Platonis Ionem, pp. 288-289, vol. iv. [Comp. Stallb. ibid., 2nd ed. pp. 339-341].

“Imo uno exemplo Euthyphronis, boni quidem hominis ideoque ne Socrati quidem inimici, sed ejusdem superstitiosi, vel ut hodie loquuntur, orthodoxi, qualis Athenis vulgò esset religionis conditio, declarare instituit. Ex quo nobis quidem clarissimé videtur apparere Platonem hoc unum spectavisse, ut judices admonerentur, ne populari superstitioni in sententiis ferendis plus justo tribuerent.” Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Euthyphron. T. vi. p. 146.

Steinhart also (in his Einleitung, p. 190) calls Euthyphron “ein rechtgläubiger von reinsten Wasser — ein ueberfrommer, fanatischer, Mann,” &c.

In the two preceding pages Stallbaum defends himself against objections made to his view, on the ground that Plato, by composing such dialogues at this critical moment, would increase the unpopularity and danger of Sokrates, instead of diminishing it. Stallbaum contends (p. 145) that neither Sokrates nor Plato nor any of the other Sokratic men, believed that the trial would end in a verdict of guilty: which is probably true about Plato, and would have been borne out by the event if Sokrates had made a different defence. But this does not assist the conclusion which Stallbaum wishes to bring out; for it is not the less true that the dialogues of Plato, if published at that moment, would increase the exasperation against Sokrates, and the chance, whatever it was, that he would be found guilty. Stallbaum refers by mistake to a passage in the Platonic Apology (p. 36 A), as if Sokrates there expressed his surprise at the verdict of guilty, anticipating a verdict of acquittal. The passage declares the contrary: Sokrates expresses his surprise that the verdict of guilty had passed by so small a majority as five; he had expected that it would pass by a larger majority.

Sequel of the dialogue — Euthyphron gives a particular example as the reply to a general question.

I proceed now with that which may be called the Platonic purpose in the dialogue — the enquiry into the general idea of Holiness. When the question was first put to Euthyphron, What is the Holy? — he replied, “That which I am now doing.” Sokr. That may be: but many other things besides are also holy. — Euthyph. Certainly. — Sokr. Then your answer does not meet the question. You have indicated one particular holy act, among many. But the question asked was — What is Holiness generally? What is that specific property, by the common possession of which all holy things are entitled to be called holy? I want to know this general Idea, in order that I may keep it in view as a type wherewith to compare each particular case, thus determining whether the case deserves to be called holy or not.[20]

[20] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 7, p. 6 E.

Here we have a genuine specimen of the dialectic interrogatory in which Xenophon affirms[21] Sokrates to have passed his life, and which Plato prosecutes under his master’s name. The question is generalised much more than in the Kriton.

[21] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 16.

Such mistake frequent in dialectic discussion.

It is assumed that there is one specific Idea or essence — one objective characteristic or fact — common to all things called Holy. The purpose of the questioner is: to determine what this Idea is: to provide a good definition of the word. The first mistake made by the respondent is, that he names simply one particular case, coming under the general Idea. This is a mistake often recurring, and often corrected in the Platonic dialogues. Even now, such a mistake is not unfrequent: and in the time of Plato, when general ideas, and the definition of general terms, had been made so little the subject of direct attention, it was doubtless perpetually made. When the question was first put, its bearing would not be properly conceived. And even if the bearing were properly conceived, men would find it easier then, and do find it easier now, to make answer by giving one particular example than to go over many examples, and elicit what is common to all.

First general answer given by Euthyphron — that which is pleasing to the Gods is holy. Comments of Sokrates thereon.

Euthyphron next replies — That which is pleasing to the Gods is holy: that which is not pleasing, or which is displeasing to the Gods, is unholy. — Sokr. That is the sort of answer which I desired to have: now let us examine it. We learn from the received theology, which you implicitly believe, that there has been much discord and quarrel among the Gods. If the Gods quarrel, they quarrel about the same matters as men. Now men do not quarrel about questions of quantity — for such questions can be determined by calculation and measurement: nor about questions of weight — for there the balance may be appealed to. The questions about which you and I and other men quarrel are, What is just or unjust, honourable or base, good or evil? Upon these there is no accessible standard. Some men feel in one way, some in another; and each of us fights for his own opinions.[22] We all indeed agree that the wrong-doer ought to be punished: but we do not agree who the wrong-doer is, nor what is wrong-doing. The same action which some of us pronounce to be just, others stigmatise as unjust.[23]

[22] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 8, p. 7 C-D. Περὶ τίνος δὲ δὴ διενεχθέντες καὶ ἐπὶ τίνα κρίσιν οὐ δυνάμενοι ἀφικέσθαι ἐχθροί γε ἂν ἀλλήλοις εἶμεν καὶ ὀργιζοίμεθα; ἴσως οὐ πρόχειρόν σοί ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ λέγοντος σκόπει, εἰ τάδ’ ἐστὶ τό τε δίκαιον καὶ τὸ ἄδικον, καὶ καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρόν, καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακόν. Ἆρ’ οὐ ταῦτα ἐστι περὶ ὧν διενεχθέντες καὶ οὐ δυνάμενοι ἐπὶ ἰκανὴν κρίσιν αὐτῶν ἐλθεῖν ἐχθροὶ ἀλλήλοις γιγνόμεθα, ὅταν γιγνώμεθα, καὶ ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι πάντες;

[23] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 9, p. 8 D. Οὐκ ἄρα ἐκεῖνό γε ἀμφισβητοῦσιν, ὡς οὐ τὸν ἀδικοῦντα δεῖ διδόναι δίκην· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο ἴσως ἀμφισβητοῦσι, τὸ τίς ἐστιν ὁ ἀδικων καὶ τί δρῶν, καὶ πότε; Πράξεώς τινος περὶ διαφερόμενοι, οἱ μὲν δικαίως φασὶν αὐτὴν πεπρᾶχθαι, οἱ δὲ ἀδίκως.

So likewise the quarrels of the Gods must turn upon these same matters — just and unjust, right and wrong, good and evil. What one God thinks right, another God thinks wrong. What is pleasing to one God, is displeasing to another. The same action will be both pleasing and displeasing to the Gods.

According to your definition of holy and unholy, therefore, the same action may be both holy and unholy. Your definition will not hold, for it does not enable me to distinguish the one from the other.[24]

[24] In regard to Plato’s ethical enquiries generally, and to what we shall find in future dialogues, we must take note of what is here laid down, that mankind are in perpetual dispute, and have not yet any determinate standard for just and unjust, right and wrong, honourable and base, good and evil. Plato had told us, somewhat differently, in the Kriton, that on these matters, though the judgment of the many was not to be trusted, yet there was another trustworthy judgment, that of the one wise man. This point will recur for future comment.

Euthyph. — I am convinced that there are some things which all the Gods love, and some things which all the Gods hate. That which I am doing, for example — indicting my father for homicide — belongs to the former category. Now that which all the Gods love is the holy: that which they all hate, is the unholy.[25]

[25] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 11, p. 9.

To be loved by the Gods is not the essence of the Holy — they love it because it is holy. In what then does its essence consist? Perplexity of Euthyphron.

Sokr. — Do the Gods love the holy, because it is holy? Or is it holy for this reason, because they do love it? Euthyph. — They love it because it is holy.[26] Sokr. — Then the holiness is one thing; the fact of being loved by the Gods is another. The latter fact is not of the essence of holiness: it is true, but only as an accident and an accessory. You have yet to tell me what that essential character is, by virtue of which the holy comes to be loved by all the Gods, or to be the subject of various other attributes.[27]

[26] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 12, p. 10 A-D. The manner in which Sokrates conducts this argument is over-subtle. Οὐκ ἄρα διότι ὁρώμενον γέ ἐστι διὰ τοῦτο ὁρᾶται, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον διότι ὁρᾶται, διὰ τοῦτο ὁρώμενον· οὐδὲ διότι ἀγόμενόν ἐστι, διὰ τοῦτο ἄγεται, ἀλλὰ διότι ἄγεται, διὰ τοῦτο ἀγόμενον· οὐδὲ διότι φερόμενον, φέρεται, ἀλλὰ διότι φέρεται, φερόμενον.

The difference between the meaning of φέρεται and φερόμενόν ἐστι is not easy to see. The former may mean to affirm the beginning of an action, the latter the continuance: but in this case the inference would not necessarily follow.

Compare Aristotel. Physica, p. 185, b. 25, with the Scholion of Simplikius, p. 330, a. 2nd ed. Bekk. where βαδίζων ἔστι is recognised as equivalent to βαδίζει.

[27] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 13, p. 11 A. κινδυνεύεις, ἐρωτώμενος τὸ ὅσιον, ὅ, τί ποτ’ ἔστιν, τὴν μὲν οὐσίαν μοι αὐτοῦ οὐ βούλεσθαι δηλῶσαι, πάθος δέ τι περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγειν, ὅ, τι πέπονθε τοῦτο τὸ ὅσιον, φιλεῖσθαι ὑπὸ πάντων τῶν θεῶν· ὅ, τι δὲ ὂν, οὔπω εἶπες.… πάλιν εἰπὲ ἐξ ἀρχῆς, τί ποτε ὂν τὸ ὅσιον εἴτε φιλεῖται ὑπὸ θεῶν, εἴτε ὅτι δὴ πάσχει.

Euthyph. — I hardly know how to tell you what I think. None of my explanations will stand. Your ingenuity turns and twists them in every way. Sokr. — If I am ingenious, it is against my own will;[28] for I am most anxious that some one of the answers should stand unshaken. But I will now put you in the way of making a different answer. You will admit that all which is holy is necessarily just. But is all that is just necessarily holy?

[28] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 13, p. 11 D. ἄκων εἰμὶ σοφός, &c.

Sokrates suggests a new answer. The Holy is one branch or variety of the Just. It is that branch which concerns ministration by men to the Gods.

Euthyphron does not at first understand the question. He does not comprehend the relation between two words, generic and specific with reference to each other: the former embracing all that the latter embraces, and more besides (denoting more objects, connoting fewer attributes). This is explained by analogies and particular examples, illustrating a logical distinction highly important to be brought out, at a time when there were no treatises on Logic.[29] So much therefore is made out — That the Holy is a part, or branch, of the Just. But what part? or how is it to be distinguished from other parts or branches of the just? Euthyphron answers. The holy is that portion or branch of the Just which concerns ministration to the Gods: the remaining branch of the Just is, what concerns ministration to men.[30]

[29] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 13-14, p. 12.

[30] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 14, p. 12 E. τὸ μέρος τοῦ δικαίου εἶναι εὐσεβές τε καὶ ὅσιον, τὸ περὶ τὴν τῶν θεῶν θεραπείαν· τὸ δὲ περὶ τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὸ λοιπὸν εἶναι τοῦ δικαίου μέρος.

Ministration to the Gods? How? To what purpose?

Sokr. — What sort of ministration? Other ministrations, to horses, dogs, working cattle, &c., are intended for the improvement or benefit of those to whom they are rendered:—besides, they can only be rendered by a few trained persons. In what manner does ministration, called holiness, benefit or improve the Gods? Euthyph. — In no way: it is of the same nature as that which slaves render to their masters. Sokr. — You mean, that it is work done by us for the Gods. Tell me — to what end does the work conduce? What is that end which the Gods accomplish, through our agency as workmen? Physicians employ their slaves for the purpose of restoring the sick to health: shipbuilders put their slaves to the completion of ships. But what are those great works which the Gods bring about by our agency? Euthyph. — Their works are numerous and great. Sokr. — The like may be said of generals: but the summary and main purpose of all that generals do is — to assure victory in war. So too we may say about the husbandman: but the summary of his many proceedings is, to raise corn from the earth. State to me, in like manner, the summary of that which the Gods perform through our agency.[31]

[31] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 16, pp. 13, 14.

Holiness — rectitude in sacrifice and prayer — right traffic between men and the Gods.

Euthyph. — It would cost me some labour to go through the case fully. But so much I tell you in plain terms. If a man, when sacrificing and praying, knows what deeds and what words will be agreeable to the Gods, that is holiness: this it is which upholds the security both of private houses and public communities. The contrary is unholiness, which subverts and ruins them.[32] Sokr. — Holiness, then, is the knowledge of rightly sacrificing and praying to the Gods; that is, of giving to them, and asking from them. To ask rightly, is to ask what we want from them: to give rightly, is to give to them what they want from us. Holiness will thus be an art of right traffic between Gods and men. Still, you must tell me how the Gods are gainers by that which we give to them. That we are gainers by what they give, is clear enough; but what do they gain on their side?

[32] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 16, p. 14 B. Compare this third unsuccessful answer of Euthyphron with the third answer assigned to Hippias (Hipp. Maj. 291 C-E). Both of them appear lengthened, emphatic, as if intended to settle a question which had become vexatious.

This will not stand — the Gods gain nothing — they receive from men marks of honour and gratitude — they are pleased therewith — the Holy, therefore, must be that which is pleasing to the Gods.

Euthyph. — The Gods gain nothing. The gifts which we present to them consist in honour, marks of respect, gratitude. Sokr. — The holy, then, is that which obtains favour from the Gods; not that which gainful to them, nor that which they love. Euthyph. — Nay: I think they love it especially. Sokr. — Then it appears that the holy is what the Gods love? Euthyph. — Unquestionably.

This is the same explanation which was before declared insufficient. A fresh explanation is required from Euthyphron. He breaks off the dialogue.

Sokr. — But this is the very same explanation which we rejected a short time ago as untenable.[33] It was agreed between us, that to be loved by the Gods was not of the essence of holiness, and could not serve as an explanation of holiness: though it might be truly affirmed thereof as an accompanying predicate. Let us therefore try again to discover what holiness is. I rely upon you to help me, and I am sure that you must know, since under a confident persuasion that you know, you are indicting your own father for homicide.

[33] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 19, p. 15 C. μέμνησαι γάρ που, ὅτι ἐν τῷ ἐμπροσθεν τό τε ὅσιον καὶ τὸ θεοφιλὲς οὐ ταὐτὸν ἡμῖν ἐφάνη, ἀλλ’ ἕτερα ἀλλήλων.

Euthyph. — “The investigation must stand over to another time, I have engagements now which call me elsewhere.”

Sokratic spirit of the dialogue — confessed ignorance applying the Elenchus to false persuasion of knowledge.

So Plato breaks off the dialogue. It is conceived in the truly Sokratic spirit:—an Elenchus applied to implicit and unexamined faith, even though that faith be accredited among the public as orthodoxy: warfare against the confident persuasion of knowledge, upon topics familiar to every one, and on which deep sentiments and confused notions have grown up by association in every one’s mind, without deliberate study, systematic teaching, or testing cross-examination. Euthyphron is a man who feels unshaken confidence in his own knowledge, and still more in his own correct religious belief. Sokrates appears in his received character as confessing ignorance, soliciting instruction, and exposing inconsistencies and contradiction in that which is given to him for instruction.

The questions always difficult, often impossible to answer. Sokrates is unable to answer them, though he exposes the bad answers of others.

We must (as I have before remarked) take this ignorance on the part of the Platonic Sokrates not as assumed, but as very real. In no part of the Platonic writings do we find any tenable definition of the Holy and the Unholy, such as is here demanded from Euthyphron. The talent of Sokrates consists in exposing bad definitions, not in providing good ones. This negative function is all that he claims for himself — with deep regret that he can do no more. “Sokrates” (says Aristotle[34]) “put questions, but gave no answers: for he professed not to know.” In those dialogues where Plato makes him attempt more (there also, against his own will and protest, as in the Philêbus and Republic), the affirmative Sokrates will be found only to stand his ground because no negative Sokrates is allowed to attack him. I insist upon this the rather, because the Platonic commentators usually present the dialogues in a different light, as if such modesty on the part of Sokrates was altogether simulated: as if he was himself,[35] from the beginning, aware of the proper answer to his own questions, but refrained designedly from announcing it: nay, sometimes, as if the answers were in themselves easy, and as if the respondents who failed must be below par in respect of intelligence. This is an erroneous conception. The questions put by Sokrates, though relating to familiar topics, are always difficult: they are often even impossible to answer, because they postulate and require to be assigned a common objective concept which is not to be found. They only appear easy to one who has never attempted the task of answering under the pressure of cross-examination. Most persons indeed never make any such trial, but go on affirming confidently as if they knew, without trial. It is exactly against such illusory confidence of knowledge that Sokrates directs his questions: the fact belongs to our days no less than to his.[36]

[34] Aristotel. Sophist. Elench. p. 183, b. 7. ἐπεὶ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Σωκράτης ἠρώτα καὶ οὐκ ἀπεκρίνετο· ὡμολόγει γὰρ οὐκ εἰδέναι.

[35] See Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Euthyphron. p. 140.

[36] Adam Smith observes, in his Essay on the Formation of Languages (p. 20 of the fifth volume of his collected Works), “Ask a man what relation is expressed by the preposition of: and if he has not beforehand employed his thoughts a good deal upon these subjects, you may safely allow him a week to consider of his answer.”

The Platonic problem assumes, not only that he shall give an answer, but that it shall be an answer which he can maintain against the Elenchus of Sokrates.

Objections of Theopompus to the Platonic procedure.

The assumptions of some Platonic commentators — that Sokrates and Plato of course knew the answers to their own questions — that an honest and pious man, of ordinary intelligence, has the answer to the question in his heart, though he cannot put it in words — these assumptions were also made by many of Plato’s contemporaries, who depreciated his questions as frivolous and unprofitable. The rhetor and historian Theopompus (one of the most eminent among the numerous pupils of Isokrates, and at the same time unfriendly to Plato, though younger in age), thus criticised Plato’s requirement, that these familiar terms should be defined: “What! (said he) have none of us before your time talked about the Good and the Just? Or do you suppose that we cannot follow out what each of them is, and that we pronounce the words as empty and unmeaning sounds?”[37] Theopompus was the scholar of Isokrates, and both of them probably took the same view, as to the uselessness of that colloquial analysis which aims at determining the definition of familiar ethical or political words.[38] They considered that Plato and Sokrates, instead of clearing up what was confused, wasted their ingenuity in perplexing what was already clear. They preferred the rhetorical handling (such as we noticed in the Kriton) which works upon ready-made pre-established sentiments, and impresses a strong emotional conviction, but presumes that all the intellectual problems have already been solved.

[37] Epiktêtus, ii. 17, 5-10. Τὸ δ’ ἐξαπατῶν τοὺς πολλοὺς τοῦτ’ ἔστιν, ὅπερ καὶ Θεόπομπον τὸν ῥήτορα ὅς που καὶ Πλάτωνι ἐγκαλεῖ ἐπὶ τῷ βούλεσθαι ἕκαστα ὁρίζεσθαι. Τί γὰρ λέγει; Οὐδεὶς ἡμῶν πρὸ σοῦ ἔλεγεν ἀγαθὸν ἢ δίκαιον; ἢ μὴ παρακολουθοῦντες τί ἐστι τούτων ἕκαστον, ἀσήμως καὶ κενῶς ἐφθεγγόμεθα τὰς φωνάς;

Respecting Theopompus, compare Dionys. Hal. Epistol. ad Cn. Pompeium de Platone, p. 757; also De Præcip. Historicis, p. 782.

[38] Isokrates, Helen. Encom. Or. x. init. De Permut. Or. xv. sect. 90.

These passages do not name Sokrates and Plato, but have every appearance of being intended to allude to them.

Objective view of Ethics, distinguished by Sokrates from the subjective.

All this shows the novelty of the Sokratic point of view: the distinction between the essential constituent and the objective accidental accompaniment,[39] and the search for a definition corresponding to the former: which search was first prosecuted by Sokrates (as Aristotle[40] points out) and was taken up from him by Plato. It was Sokrates who first brought conspicuously into notice the objective intellectual, scientific view of ethics — as distinguished from the subjective, emotional, incoherent, and uninquiring. I mean that he was the first who proclaimed himself as feeling the want of such an objective view, and who worked upon other minds so as to create the like want in them: I do not mean that he provided satisfaction for this requirement.

[39] This distinction is pointedly noticed in the Euthyphron, p. 11 A.

[40] Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 2, M. 1078, b. 28.

Subjective unanimity coincident with objective dissent.

Undoubtedly (as Theopompus remarked) men had used these ethical terms long before the time of Sokrates, and had used them, not as empty and unmeaning, but with a full body of meaning (i.e. emotional meaning). Strong and marked emotion had become associated with each term; and the same emotion, similar in character, though not equal in force — was felt by the greater number of different minds. Subjectively and emotionally, there was no difference between one man and another, except as to degree. But it was Sokrates who first called attention to the fact as a matter for philosophical recognition and criticism, — that such subjective and emotional unanimity does not exclude the widest objective and intellectual dissension.[41]

[41] It is this distinction between the subjective and the objective which is implied in the language of Epiktêtus, when he proceeds to answer the objection cited from Theopompus ([note 1 p. 451]): Τίς γὰρ σοι λέγει, Θεόπομπε, ὅτι ἐννοίας οὐκ εἶχομεν ἑκάστου τούτων φυσικάς καὶ προλήψεις; Ἀλλ’ οὐχ οἷον τε ἐφαρμόζειν τὰς προλήψεις ταῖς καταλλήλοις οὐσίαις, μὴ διαρθρώσαντα αὐτάς, καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο σκεψάμενον, ποίαν τινὰ ἑκάστῃ αὐτῶν οὐσίαν ὑποτακτέον.

To the same purpose Epiktêtus, in another passage, i. 22, 4-9: Αὐτὴ ἐστιν ἡ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, καὶ Σύρων, καὶ Αἰγυπτίων, καὶ Ῥωμαίων μάχη· οὐ περὶ τοῦ, ὅτι τὸ ὅσιον πάντων προτιμητέον, καὶ ἐν παντὶ μεταδιωκτέον — ἀλλὰ πότερόν ἐστιν ὅσιον τοῦτο, τὸ χοιρείου φαγεῖν, ἢ ἀνόσιον.

Again, Origen also, in a striking passage of his reply to Celsus (v. p. 263, ed. Spencer; i. p. 614 ed. Delarue), observes that the name Justice is the same among all Greeks (he means, the name with the emotional associations inseparable from it), but that the thing designated was very different, according to those who pronounced it:—λεκτέον, ὅτι τὸ τῆς δικαιοσύνης ὄνομα ταὐτον μὲν ἔστιν παρὰ πᾶσιν Ἕλλησιν· ἤδη δὲ ἀποδείκνυται ἄλλη μὲν ἡ κατ’ Ἐπίκουρον δικαιοσύνη, ἄλλη δὲ ἡ κατὰ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, ἀρνουμένων τὸ τριμερὲς τῆς ψυχῆς, ἄλλη δὲ κατὰ τοὺς ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος, ἰδιοπραγίαν τῶν μερῶν τῆς ψυχῆς φάσκοντας εἶναι τὴν δικαιοσύνην. Οὕτω δὲ καὶ ἄλλη μὲν ἡ Ἐπικούρου ἀνδρία, &c.

“Je n’aime point les mots nouveaux” (said Saint Just, in his Institutions, composed during the sitting of the French Convention, 1793), “je ne connais que le juste et l’injuste: ces mots sont entendus par toutes les consciences. Il faut ramener toutes les définitions à la conscience: l’esprit est un sophiste qui conduit les vertus à l’échafaud.” (Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française, t. xxxv. p. 277.) This is very much the language which honest and vehement ἰδιῶται of Athens would hold towards Sokrates and Plato.

Cross-examination brought to bear upon this mental condition by Sokrates — position of Sokrates and Plato in regard to it.

As the Platonic Sokrates here puts it in the Euthyphron — all men agree that the person who acts unjustly must be punished; but they dispute very much who it is that acts unjustly — which of his actions are unjust — or under what circumstances they are so. The emotion in each man’s mind, as well as the word by which it is expressed, is the same:[42] but the person, or the acts, to which it is applied by each, although partly the same, are often so different, and sometimes so opposite, as to occasion violent dispute. There is subjective agreement, with objective disagreement. It is upon this disconformity that the Sokratic cross-examination is brought to bear, making his hearers feel its existence, for the first time, and dispelling their fancy of supposed knowledge as well as of supposed unanimity. Sokrates required them to define the general word — to assign some common objective characteristic, corresponding in all cases to the common subjective feeling represented by the word. But no man could comply with his requirement, nor could he himself comply with it, any more than his respondents. So far Sokrates proceeded, and no farther, according to Aristotle. He never altogether lost his hold on particulars: he assumed that there must be something common to them all, if you could but find out what it was, constituting the objective meaning of the general term. Plato made a step beyond him, though under the name of Sokrates as spokesman. Not being able (any more than Sokrates) to discover or specify any real objective characteristic, common to all the particulars — he objectivised[43] the word itself: that is, he assumed or imagined a new objective Ens of his own, the Platonic Idea, corresponding to the general word: an idea not common to the particulars, but existing apart from them in a sphere of its own — yet nevertheless lending itself in some inexplicable way to be participated by all the particulars. It was only in this way that Plato could explain to himself how knowledge was possible: this universal Ens being the only object of knowledge: particulars being an indefinite variety of fleeting appearances, and as such in themselves unknowable. The imagination of Plato created a new world of Forms, Ideas, Concepts, or objects corresponding to general terms: which he represents as the only objects of knowledge, and as the only realities.

[42] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 8, C-D, Euripides, Phœnissæ, 499 —

εἰ πᾶσι ταὐτὸ καλὸν ἔφυ, σοφόν θ’ ἄμα, οὐκ ἦν ἂν ἀμφιλεκτὸς ἀνθρώποις ἔρις· νῦν δ’ οὐθ’ ὅμοιον οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἴσον βρότοις, πλὴν ὀνομάσαι· τὸ δ’ ἔργον οὐκ ἔστιν τόδε.

Hobbes expresses, in the following terms, this fact of subjective similarity co-existent with great objective dissimilarity among mankind.

“For the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whoever looketh into himself and considereth what he does when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c., and upon what grounds, he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c., not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, &c., for these the constitution individual, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded as they are with lying, dissembling, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.” Introduction to Leviathan.

[43] Aristot. Metaphys. M. 1078, b. 30, 1086, b. 4.

The Holy — it has an essential characteristic — what is this? — not the fact that it is loved by the Gods — this is true, but is not its constituent essence.

In the Euthyphron, however, we have not yet passed into this Platonic world, of self-existent Forms — objects of conception — concepts detached from sensible particulars. We are still with Sokrates and with ordinary men among the world of particulars, only that Sokrates introduced a new mode of looking at all the particulars, and searched among them for some common feature which he did not find. The Holy (and the Unholy) is a word freely pronounced by every speaker, and familiarly understood by every hearer, as if it denoted something one and the same in all these particulars.[44] What is that something — the common essence or idea? Euthyphron cannot tell; though he agrees with Sokrates that there must be such essence. His attempts to explain it prove failures.

[44] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 5 D, 6 E.

The definition of the Holy — that it is what the Gods love — is suggested in this dialogue, but rejected. The Holy is not Holy because the Gods love it: on the contrary, its holiness is an independent fact, and the Gods love it because it is Holy. The Holy is thus an essence, per se, common to, or partaken by, all holy persons and things.

Views of the Xenophontic Sokrates respecting the Holy — different from those of the Platonic Sokrates — he disallows any common absolute general type of the Holy — he recognises an indefinite variety of types, discordant and relative.

So at least the Platonic Sokrates here regards it. But the Xenophontic Sokrates, if we can trust the Memorabilia, would not have concurred in this view: for we read that upon all points connected with piety or religious observance, he followed the precept which the Pythian priestess delivered as an answer to all who consulted the Delphian oracle on similar questions — You will act piously by conforming to the law of the city. Sokrates (we are told) not only acted upon this precept himself, but advised his friends to do the like, and regarded those who acted otherwise as foolish and over-subtle triflers.[45] It is plain that this doctrine disallows all supposition of any general essence, called the Holy, to be discovered and appealed to, as type in cases of doubt; and recognises the equal title of many separate local, discordant, and variable types, each under the sanction of King Nomos. The procedure of Sokrates in the Euthyphron would not have been approved by the Xenophontic Sokrates. It is in the spirit of Plato, and is an instance of that disposition which he manifests yet more strongly in the Republic and elsewhere, to look for his supreme authority in philosophical theory and not in the constituted societies around him: thus to innovate in matters religious as well as political — a reproach to him among his own contemporaries, an honour to him among various subsequent Christian writers. Plato, not conforming to any one of the modes of religious belief actually prevalent in his contemporary world, postulates a canon, suitable to the exigencies of his own mind, of that which the Gods ought to love and must love. In this respect, as in others, he is in marked contrast with Herodotus — a large observer of mankind, very pious in his own way, curious in comparing the actual practices consecrated among different nations, but not pretending to supersede them by any canon of his own.

[45] Compare Xen. Mem. i. 3, 1. ἥ τε γὰρ Πυθία νόμῳ πόλεως ἀναιρεῖ ποιοῦντας εὐσεβῶς ἂν ποιεῖν· Σωκράτης τε οὕτως καὶ αὐτὸς ἐποίει καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις παρῄνει, τοὺς δὲ ἄλλως πως ποιοῦντας περιέργους καὶ ματαίους ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι.

The Holy a branch of the Just — not tenable as a definition, but useful as bringing to view the subordination of logical terms.

Though the Holy, and the Unholy, are pronounced to be each an essence, partaken of by all the particulars so-called; yet what that essence is, the dialogue Euthyphron noway determines. Even the suggestion of Sokrates — that the Holy is a branch of the Just, only requiring to be distinguished by some assignable mark from the other branches of the Just — is of no avail, since the Just itself had been previously declared to be one of the matters in perpetual dispute. It procures for Sokrates however the opportunity of illustrating the logical subordination of terms; the less general comprehended in the more general, and requiring to be parted off by some differentia from the rest of what this latter comprehends. Plato illustrates the matter at some length;[46] and apparently with a marked purpose of drawing attention to it. We must keep in mind, that logical distinctions had at that time received neither special attention nor special names — however they may have been unconsciously followed in practice.

[46] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 12.

The Euthyphron represents Plato’s way of replying to the charge of impiety, preferred by Melêtus against Sokrates — comparison with Xenophon’s way of replying.

What I remarked about the Kriton, appears to me also true about the Euthyphron. It represents Plato’s manner of replying to the charge of impiety advanced by Melêtus and his friends against Sokrates, just as the four first chapters of the Memorabilia represent Xenophon’s manner of repelling the same charge. Xenophon joins issue with the accusers, — describes the language and proceedings of Sokrates, so as to show that he was orthodox and pious, above the measure of ordinary men, in conduct, in ritual, and in language; and expresses his surprise that against such a man the verdict of guilty could have been returned by the Dikasts.[47] Plato handles the charge in the way in which Sokrates himself would have handled it, if he had been commenting on the same accusation against another person and as he does in fact deal with Melêtus, in the Platonic Apology. Plato introduces Euthyphron, a very religious man, who prides himself upon being forward to prosecute impiety in whomsoever it is found, and who in this case, under the special promptings of piety, has entered a capital prosecution against his own father.[48] The occasion is here favourable to the Sokratic interrogatories, applicable to Melêtus no less than to Euthyphron. “Of course, before you took this grave step, you have assured yourself that you are right, and that you know what piety and impiety are. Pray tell me, for I am ignorant on the subject: that I may know better and do better for the future.[49] Tell me, what is the characteristic essence of piety as well as impiety?” It turns out that the accuser can make no satisfactory answer: that he involves himself in confusion and contradiction:—that he has brought capital indictments against citizens, without having ever studied or appreciated the offence with which he charges them. Such is the manner in which the Platonic Sokrates is made to deal with Euthyphron, and in which the real Sokrates deals with Melêtus:[50] rendering the questions instrumental to two larger purposes — first, to his habitual crusade against the false persuasion of knowledge — next, to the administering of a logical or dialectical lesson. When we come to the Treatise De Legibus (where Sokrates does not appear) we shall find Plato adopting the dogmatic and sermonising manner of the first chapters of the Xenophontic Memorabilia. Here, in the Euthyphron and in the Dialogues of Search generally, the Platonic Sokrates is something entirely different.[51]

[47] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 4; also iv. 8, 11.

[48] Plato, Euthyphron, p. 5 E.

[49] Compare, even in Xenophon, the conversation of Sokrates with Kritias and Chariklês — Memorab. i. 2, 32-38: and his cross-examination of the presumptuous youth Glaukon, Plato’s brother (Mem. iii. 7).

[50] Plato, Apol. c. 11, p. 24 C. ἀδικεῖν φημὶ Μέλητον, ὅτι σπουδῇ χαριεντίζεται, ῥᾳδίως εἰς ἀγῶνας καθιστὰς ἀνθρώπους, &c.

[51] Steinhart (Einleitung, p. 199) agrees with the opinion of Schleiermacher and Stallbaum, that the Euthyphron was composed and published during the interval between the lodging of the indictment and the trial of Sokrates. K. F. Hermann considers it as posterior to the death of Sokrates.

I concur on this point with Hermann. Indeed I have already given my opinion, that not one of the Platonic dialogues was composed before the death of Sokrates.

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END OF VOL. I.

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Transcriber’s Note

This HTML version was prepared initially for the on-line Grote Project by Ed Brandon from volumes in the Internet Archive. It owes a very great deal (its style sheet) to the Project Gutenberg versions of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica produced by Don Kretz and others. Don provided a revised style for the side-notes to accommodate Grote’s predilection for very long notes. (Even so there are a few occasions where the appearance may yet be bad in some browsers because the side-note extends over more lines than its accompanying paragraph. If there are also footnotes in the paragraph I have had to guess at how much blank space should be inserted for the footnote not to overlap the side-note.) I have modified it in one respect to permit Grote’s use of italics in some side-notes.