[68]The want of coherence, or of reference to any common and distinct End, among the bundle of established Νόμιμα is noted by Aristotle, Polit. vii. 2, 1324, b. 5: διὸ καὶ τῶν πλείστων νομίμων χύδην, ὡς εἰπεῖν κειμένων παρὰ τοῖς πλείστοις, ὅμως, εἴ πού τι πρὸς ἓν οἱ νόμοι βλέπουσι, τοῦ κρατεῖν στοχάζονται Κρήτῃ πρὸς τοὺς πολέμους συντέτακται σχεδὸν ἢ τε παιδεία καὶ τὸ τῶν νόμων πλῆθος.
Custom and education surround all prohibitions with the like sanctity — both those most essential to the common security, and those which emanate from capricious or local antipathy — in the minds of docile citizens.
| Ἶσόν τοι κυάμους τε φαγεῖν, κεφαλάς τε τοκήων. |
Aristotle dissents from Plato on the point of always vesting the governing functions in the same hands. He considers such a provision dangerous and intolerable to the governed.
Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 1264, b. 6.
[69] Plato, Polit. p. 306 A. βασιλικὴ συμπλοκή, &c.
Schleiermacher in his Introduction to the Politikus (pp. 254-256) treats this βασιλικὴ συμπλοκὴ as a poor and insignificant function, for the political Artist determined and installed by so elaborate a method and classification. But the dialogue was already so long that Plato could not well lengthen it by going into fuller details. Socher points out (Ueber Platon’s Schrift. p. 274) discrepancies between the Politikus on one side, and Protagoras and Gorgias on the other — which I think are really discoverable, though I do not admit the inference which he draws from them.
Such is the concluding declaration of the accomplished Eleatic expositor, to Sokrates and the other auditors. But this suggests to us another question, when we revert to some of the Platonic dialogues handled in the preceding pages. What are Virtue, Courage, Temperance? In the Menon, the Platonic Sokrates had proclaimed, that he did not himself know what virtue was: that he had never seen any one else who did know: that it was impossible to say how virtue could be communicated, until you knew what virtue was — and impossible to determine any one of the parts of virtue, until virtue had been determined as a whole. In the Charmidês, Sokrates had affirmed that he did not know what Temperance was; he then tested several explanations thereof, propounded by Charmides and Kritias: but ending only in universal puzzle and confessed ignorance. In the Lachês, he had done the same with Courage: not without various expressions of regret for his own ignorance, and of surprise at those who talked freely about generalities which they had never probed to the bottom. Perplexed by these doubts and difficulties — which perplexed yet more all his previous hearers, the modest beauty of Charmides and the mature dignity of Nikias and Laches — Sokrates now finds himself in presence of the Eleate, who talks about Virtue, Temperance, Courage, &c., as matters determinate and familiar. Here then would have been the opportunity for Sokrates to reproduce all his unsolved perplexities, and to get them cleared up by the divine Stranger who is travelling on a mission of philosophy. The third dialogue, to be called the Philosophus, which Plato promises as sequel to the Sophistês and Politikus, would have been well employed in such a work of elucidation.
Purpose of the difficulties in Plato’s Dialogues of Search — To stimulate the intellect of the hearer. His exposition does not give solutions.
This, I say, is what we might have expected, if Plato had corresponded to the picture drawn by admiring commentators: if he had merely tied knots in one dialogue, in order to untie them in another. But we find nothing of the kind, nor is such a picture of Plato correct. The dialogue Philosophus does not exist, and probably was never written. Respecting the embarrassments of the Menon, Lachês, Charmidês, Alkibiadês I., Protagoras, Euthyphron — Sokrates says not a word — οὐδὲ γρύ — to urge them upon the attention of the Eleate: who even alludes with displeasure to contentious disputants as unfair enemies. For the right understanding of these mysterious but familiar words — Virtue, Courage, Temperance — we are thrown back upon the common passive, unscientific, unreasoning, consciousness: or upon such measure and variety of it as each of us may have chanced to imbibe from the local atmosphere, unassisted by any special revelation from philosophy. At any rate, the Eleate furnishes no interpretative aid. He employs the words, as if the hearers understood them of course, without the slightest intimation that any difficulty attaches to them. Plato himself ignores all the difficulties, when he is putting positive exposition into the mouth of the Eleate. Puzzles and perplexities belong to the Dialogues of Search; in which they serve their purpose, if they provoke the intellect of the hearer to active meditation and effort, for the purpose of obtaining a solution.