It is an excellent feature in the didactic theories of Plato, that they distinguish so pointedly between the passive and active conditions of the intellect; and that they postulate as indispensable, an habitual and cultivated mental activity, worked up by slow, long-continued, colloquy. To read or hear, and then to commit to memory, are in his view elegant recreations, but nothing more. But while, on this point, Plato’s didactic theories deserve admiration, we must remark on the other hand that they are pitched so high as to exceed human force, and to overpass all possibility of being realised.[127] They mark out an idéal, which no person ever attained, either then or since — like the Platonic theory of rhetoric. To be master of any subject, in the extent and perfection required for sustaining and administering a Sokratic cross-examination — is a condition which scarce any one can ever fulfil: certainly no one, except upon a small range of subjects. Assuredly, Plato himself never fulfilled it.
[127] A remark made by Sextus Empiricus (upon another doctrine which he is discussing) may be applied to this view of Plato — τὸ δὲ λέγειν ὅτι τῇ διομαλισμῷ τῶν πράξεων καταλαμβάνομεν τὸν ἔχοντα τὴν περὶ τὸν βίον τέχνην, ὑπερφθεγγομένων ἔστι τὴν ἀνθρώπων φύσιν, καὶ εὐχομένων μᾶλλον ἢ ἀληθῆ λεγόντων (Pyrrh. Hyp. iii. 244).
No one has ever been found competent to solve the difficulties raised by Sokrates, Arkesilaus, Karneades, and the negative vein of philosophy.
Such a cross-examination involved the mastery of all the openings for doubt, difficulty, deception, or refutation, bearing on the subject: openings which a man is to profit by, if assailant — to keep guarded, if defendant. Now when we survey the Greek negative philosophy, as it appears in Plato, Aristotle, and Sextus Empiricus — and when we recollect that between the second and the third of these names, there appeared three other philosophers equally or more formidable in the same vein, all whose arguments have perished (Arkesilaus, Karneades, Ænesidêmus) — we shall see that no man has ever been known competent both to strike and parry with these weapons, in a manner so skilful and ready as to amount to knowledge in the Platonic sense. But in so far as such knowledge is attainable or approachable, Plato is right in saying that it cannot be attained except by long dialectic practice. Reading books, and hearing lectures, are undoubtedly valuable aids, but insufficient by themselves. Modern times recede from it even more than ancient. Regulated oral dialectic has become unknown; the logical and metaphysical difficulties — which negative philosophy required to be solved before it would allow any farther progress — are now little heeded, amidst the multiplicity of observed facts, and theories adapted to and commensurate with those facts. This change in the character of philosophy is doubtless a great improvement. It is found that by acquiescing provisionally in the axiomata media, and by applying at every step the control of verification, now rendered possible by the multitude of ascertained facts — the sciences may march safely onward: notwithstanding that the logical and metaphysical difficulties, the puzzles (ἀπορίαι) involved in philosophia prima and its very high abstractions, are left behind unsolved and indeterminate. But though the modern course of philosophy is preferable to the ancient, it is not for that reason to be considered as satisfactory. These metaphysical difficulties are not diminished either in force or relevancy, because modern writers choose to leave them unnoticed. Plato and Aristotle were quite right in propounding them as problems, the solution of which was indispensable to the exigencies and consistent schematism of the theorising intelligence, as well as to any complete discrimination between sufficient and insufficient evidence. Such they still remain, overlooked yet not defunct.
Plato’s idéal philosopher can only be realised under the hypothesis of a pre-existent and omniscient soul, stimulated into full reminiscence here.
Now all these questions would be solved by the idéal philosopher whom Plato in the Phædrus conceives as possessing knowledge: a person who shall be at once a negative Sokrates in excogitating and enforcing all the difficulties — and an affirmative match for Sokrates, as respondent in solving them: a person competent to apply this process to all the indefinite variety of individual minds, under the inspirations of the moment. This is a magnificent idéal. Plato affirms truly, that those teachers who taught rhetoric and philosophy by writing, could never produce such a pupil: and that even the Sokratic dialectic training, though indispensable and far more efficacious, would fail in doing so, unless in those few cases where it was favoured by very superior capacity — understood by him as superhuman, and as a remnant from the pre-existing commerce of the soul with the world of Forms or Ideas. The foundation therefore of the whole scheme rests upon Plato’s hypothesis of an antecedent life of the soul, proclaimed by Sokrates here in his second or panegyrical discourse on Eros. The rhetorical teachers, with whom he here compares himself and whom he despises as aiming at low practical ends — might at any rate reply that they avoided losing themselves in such unmeasured and unwarranted hypotheses.
Different proceeding of Plato in the Timæus.
One remark yet remains to be made upon the doctrine here set forth by Plato: that no teaching is possible by means of continuous discourse spoken or written — none, except through prolonged and varied oral dialectic.[128] To this doctrine Plato does not constantly conform in his practice: he departs from it on various important occasions. In the Timæus, Sokrates calls upon the philosopher so named for an exposition on the deepest and most mysterious cosmical subjects. Timæus delivers the exposition in a continuous harangue, without a word of remark or question addressed by any of the auditors: while at the beginning of the Kritias (the next succeeding dialogue) Sokrates greatly commends what Timæus had spoken. The Kritias itself too (though unfinished) is given in the form of continuous exposition. Now, as the Timæus is more abstruse than any other Platonic writing, we cannot imagine that Plato, at the time when he composed it, thought so meanly about continuous exposition, as a vehicle of instruction, as we find him declaring in the Phædrus. I point this out, because it illustrates my opinion that the different dialogues of Plato represent very different, sometimes even opposite, points of view: and that it is a mistake to treat them as parts of one preconceived and methodical system.
[128] The historical Sokrates would not allow his oral dialectic process to be called teaching. He expressly says “I have never been the teacher of any one” (Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 33 A, 19 E): and he disclaimed the possession of knowledge. Aristotle too considers teaching as a presentation of truths, ready made and supposed to be known, by the teacher to learners, who are bound to believe them, δεῖ γὰρ πιστεύειν τὸν μανθάνοντα. The Platonic Sokrates, in the Phædrus and Symposion, differs from both; he recognises no teaching except the perpetual generation of new thoughts and feelings, by means of stimulating dialectic colloquy, and the revival in the mind thereby of the experience of an antecedent life, during which some communion has been enjoyed with the world of Ideas or Forms.
Opposite tendencies co-existent in Plato’s mind — Extreme of the Transcendental or Absolute — Extreme of specialising adaptation to individuals and occasions.