Abstraction is thus the process, the instrument of the Platonic dialectic. It is important, however, that we should distinguish between the method of comparative abstraction, as employed in physical inquiry, and that immediate abstraction, which is the special instrument of philosophy. The former proceeds by comparison and generalization, the latter by simple separation. The one yields a contingent general principle as the result of the comparison of a number of individual cases, the other gives an universal and necessary principle by the analysis of a single concrete fact. As an illustration we may instance "the principle of causality." To enable us to affirm "that every event must have a cause," we do not need to compare and generalize a great number of events. "The principle which compels us to pronounce the judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in regard to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications." [582] In the presence of a single event, the universality and necessity of this principle of causality is recognized with just as much clearness and certainty as in the presence of a million events, however carefully generalized.
[Footnote 582: ][ (return) ] Cousin's "The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," pp. 57, 58.
Abstraction, then, it will be seen, creates nothing; neither does it add any new element to the store of actual cognitions already possessed by all human minds. It simply brings forward into a clearer and more definite recognition, that which necessarily belongs to the mind as part of its latent furniture, and which, as a law of thought, has always unconsciously governed all its spontaneous movements. As a process of rational inquiry, it was needful to bring the mind into intelligible and conscious communion with the world of Ideas. These ideas are partially revealed in the sensible world, all things being formed, as Plato believed, according to ideas as models and exemplars, of which sensible objects are the copies. They are more fully manifested in the constitution of the human mind which, by virtue of its kindred nature with the original essence or being, must know them intuitively and immediately. And they are brought out fully by the dialectic process, which disengages them from all that is individual and phenomenal, and sets them forth in their pure and absolute form.
But whilst Plato has certainly exhibited the true method of investigation by which the ideas of reason are to be separated from all concrete phenomena and set clearly before the mind, he has not attempted a complete enumeration of the ideas of reason; indeed, such an enumeration is still the grand desideratum of philosophy. We can not fail, however, in the careful study of his writings, to recognize the grand Triad of Absolute Ideas--ideas which Cousin, after Plato, has so fully exhibited, viz., the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
PLATONIC SCHEME OF IDEAS
I. The idea of ABSOLUTE TRUTH or REALITY (τὸ ἀληθές--τὸ ὄν)--the ground and efficient cause of all existence, and by participating in which all phenomenal existence has only so far a reality, sensible things being merely shadows and resemblances of ideas. This idea is developed in the human intelligence in its relation with the phenomenal world; as,
1. The idea of SUBSTANCE (οὐσία)--the ground of all phenomena, "the being or essence of all things," the permanent reality.--"Timæeus," ch. ix. and xii.; "Republic," bk. vii. ch. xiv.; "Phædo,"§§ 63-67, 73.
2. The idea of CAUSE (αἰτία)--the power or efficiency by which things that "become," or begin to be, are generated or produced.--"Timæus," ch. ix.; "Sophist," § 109; "Philebus," §§ 45, 46.
3. The idea of IDENTITY (αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον)--that which "does not change," "is always the same, simple and uniform, incomposite and indissoluble,"--that which constitutes personality or self-hood.--"Phædo," §§ 61-75; "Timæus," ch. ix.; "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xix. and xx.
4. The idea of UNITY (τὸ ἕν)--one mind or intelligence pervading the universe, the comprehensive conscious thought or plan which binds all parts of the universe in one great whole (τὸ πᾶν)--the principle of order.--"Timæus," ch. xi. and xv.; "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xiii.; "Philebus," §§ 50-51.