[Footnote 514: ][ (return) ] Ibid., bk. x.
[Footnote 515: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xviii.
And now we are prepared to form a clear conception of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Viewed in their relation to the Eternal Reason, as giving the primordial thought and law of all being, these principles are simply εἴδη αὐτὰ καθ᾽ αὑτά--ideas in themselves--the essential qualities or attributes of Him who is the supreme and ultimate Cause of all existence. When regarded as before the Divine imagination, giving definite forms and relations, they are the τύποι, the παραδείγµατα--the types, models, patterns, ideals according to which the universe was fashioned. Contemplated in their actual embodiment in the laws, and typical forms of the material world, they are εἰκόνες--images of the eternal perfections of God. The world of sense pictures the world of reason by a participation (µέθεξις) of the ideas. And viewed as interwoven in the very texture and framework of the soul, they are ὁµοιώµατα--copies of the Divine Ideas which are the primordial laws of knowing, thinking, and reasoning. Ideas are thus the nexus of relation between God and the visible universe, and between the human and the Divine reason. [516] There is something divine in the world, and in the human soul, namely, the eternal laws and reasons of things, mingled with the endless diversity and change of sensible phenomena. These ideas are "the light of the intelligible world;" they render the invisible world of real Being perceptible to the reason of man. "Light is the offspring of the Good, which the Good has produced in his own likeness. Light in the visible world is what the idea of the Good is in the intelligible world. And this offspring of the Good--light--has the same relation to vision and visible things which the Good has to intellect and intelligible things." [517]
[Footnote 516: ][ (return) ] "Now, Idea is, as regards God, a mental operation by him (the notions of God, eternal and perfect in themselves); as regards us, the first things perceptible by mind; as regards Matter, a standard; but as regards the world, perceptible by sense, a pattern; but as considered with reference to itself, an existence."--Alcinous, "Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato," p. 261.
"What general notions are to our minds, he (Plato) held, ideas are to the Supreme Reason (νοῦς ßασιλευς); they are the eternal thoughts of the Divine Intellect, and we attain truth when our thoughts conform with His--when our general notions are in conformity with the ideas."--Thompson, "Laws of Thought," p. 119.
[Footnote 517: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xix.
Science is, then, according to Plato, the knowledge of universal, necessary, unchangeable, and eternal ideas. The simple cognition of the concrete phenomena of the universe is not regarded by him as real knowledge. "Science, or real knowledge, belongs to Being, and ignorance to non-Being." Whilst that which is conversant only "with that which partakes of both--of being and non-being--and which can not be said either to be or not to be"--that which is perpetually "becoming," but never "really is," is "simply opinion, and not real knowledge." [518] And those only are "philosophers" who have a knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere seeming; of the always-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists permanently, in opposition to that which waxes and wanes--is developed and destroyed alternately. "Those who recognize many beautiful things, but who can not see the Beautiful itself, and can not even follow those who would lead them to it, they opine, but do not know. And the same may be said of those who recognize right actions, but do not recognize an absolute righteousness. And so of other ideas. But they who look at these ideas--permanent and unchangeable ideas--these men really know." [519] Those are the true philosophers alone who love the sight of truth, and who have attained to the vision of the eternal order, and righteousness, and beauty, and goodness in the Eternal Being. And the means by which the soul is raised to this vision of real Being (τὸ ὄντως ὄν) is THE SCIENCE OF REAL KNOWLEDGE.
Plato, in the "Theætetus," puts this question by the interlocutor Socrates, "What is Science (᾽Επιστήµη) or positive knowledge?" [520] Theætetus essays a variety of answers, such as, "Science is sensation," "Science is right judgment or opinion," "Science is right opinion with logical definition." These, in the estimation of the Platonic Socrates, are all unsatisfactory and inadequate. But after you have toiled to the end of this remarkable discussion, in which Socrates demolishes all the then received theories of knowledge, he gives you no answer of his own. He abruptly closes the discussion by naïvely remarking that, at any rate, Theætetus will learn that he does not understand the subject; and the ground is now cleared for an original investigation.
[Footnote 518: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. v. ch. xx.
[Footnote 519: ][ (return) ] Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.
[Footnote 520: ][ (return) ] "Theætetus," § 10.