It is to be remarked, however, that there was more than one Grecian philosopher who described the Summum Bonum as consisting in absence of pain (ἀλυπία); even without the large measure of intelligence which Sokrates here promises, and without any positive pleasure. These men would of course have accepted the second alternative put by Sokrates, which Protarchus here refuses. They took their standard of comparison from the actualities of human life around them, which exhibited pain and suffering universal, frequent, and unavoidable. They conceived that if painlessness could be obtained, it was as much as could reasonably be demanded, and that pleasure might be dispensed with. In laying down any theory about the Summum Bonum, the preliminary question ought always to be settled — What are the conditions of human life which are to be assumed as peremptory and unalterable? What circumstances are we at liberty to suppose to be suppressed, modified, or reversed? According as these fundamental postulates are given in a larger or narrower sense, the ideal Summum Bonum will be shaped differently. This preliminary requisite to the investigation was little considered by the ancient philosophers.
It is agreed on both sides, That the Good must be a Tertium Quid. But Sokrates undertakes to show, That Intelligence is more cognate with it than Pleasure.
Difficulties about Unum et Multa. How can the One be Many? How can the Many be One? The difficulties are greatest about Generic Unity — how it is distributed among species and individuals.
Sokrates then undertakes to show, that of these two elements, intelligence is the most efficacious and the most contributory to the Summum Bonum — pleasure the least so. But as a preparation for this enquiry, he adverts to that which has just been agreed between them respecting both Pleasure and Intelligence — That each of them is Unum, and each of them at the same time Multa et Diversa. Here (argues Sokrates) we find opened before us the embarrassing question respecting the One and the Many. Enquirers often ask — “How can the One be Many? How can the Many be One? How can the same thing be both One and Many?” They find it difficult to understand how you, Protarchus, being One person, are called by different names — tall, heavy, white, just, &c.: or how you are affirmed to consist of many different parts and members. To this difficulty, however (says Sokrates), the reply is easy. You, and other particular men, belong to the generated and the perishable. You partake of many different Ideas or Essences, and your partaking of one among them does not exclude you from partaking also of another distinct and even opposite. You partake of the Idea or Essence of Unity — also of Multitude — of tallness, heaviness, whiteness, humanity, greatness, littleness, &c. You are both great and little, heavy and light, &c. In regard to generated and perishable things, we may understand this. But in regard to the ungenerated, imperishable, absolute Essences, the difficulty is more serious. The Self-existent or Universal Man, Bull, Animal — the Self-existent Beautiful, Good — in regard to these Unities or Monads there is room for great controversy. First, Do such unities or monads really and truly exist? Next, assuming that they do exist, how do they come into communion with generated and perishable particulars, infinite in number? Is each of them dispersed and parcelled out among countless individuals? or is it found, whole and entire, in each individual, maintaining itself as one and the same, and yet being parted from itself? Is the Universal Man distributed among all individual men, or is he one and entire in each of them? How is the Universal Beautiful (The Self-Beautiful — Beauty) in all and each beautiful thing? How does this one monad, unchangeable and imperishable, become embodied in a multitude of transitory individuals, each successively generated and perishing? How does this One become Many, or how do these Many become One?[11]
[11] Plato, Philêbus, p. 15 B.
Active disputes upon this question at the time.
These (says Sokrates) are the really grave difficulties respecting the identity of the One and the Many: difficulties which have occasioned numerous controversies, and are likely to occasion many more. Youthful speculators, especially, are fond of trying their first efforts of dialectical ingenuity in arguing upon this paradox — How the One can be Many, and the Many One.[12]
[12] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 15-16.
In reading the difficulties thus started by Sokrates, we perceive them to be the same as those which we have seen set forth in the dialogue called Parmenidês, where they are put into the mouth of the philosopher so-called; as objections requiring to be removed by Sokrates, before the Platonic theory of self-existent Ideas, universal, eternal and unchangeable, can be admitted. We might expect that Plato having so emphatically and repeatedly announced his own sense of the difficulty, would proceed to suggest some mode of replying to it. But this he never does. In the Parmenidês, he does not even promise any explanation; in the Philêbus, he seems to promise one, but all the explanation which he gives ignores or jumps over the difficulty, enjoining us to proceed as if no such difficulty existed.
Order of Nature — Coalescence of the Finite with the Infinite. The One — The Finite Many — The Infinite Many.