[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.)