Meno
definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular
account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his
Dialogues interpreted without regard to their poetical environment. It
is due also to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school;
and the erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed
by the realism of the schoolmen. This popular view of the Platonic ideas
may be summed up in some such formula as the following: 'Truth consists
not in particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of
God, or in some far-off heaven. These were revealed to men in a former
state of existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (anamnesis) or
association from sensible things. The sensible things are not
realities, but shadows only, in relation to the truth.' These unmeaning
propositions are hardly suspected to be a caricature of a great theory
of knowledge, which Plato in various ways and under many figures of
speech is seeking to unfold. Poetry has been converted into dogma; and
it is not remarked that the Platonic ideas are to be found only in about
a third of Plato's writings and are not confined to him. The forms which
they assume are numerous, and if taken literally, inconsistent with one
another. At one time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among
the abstractions of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly
from one to the other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same
passage. The ideas are sometimes described as many, coextensive with
the universals of sense and also with the first principles of ethics; or
again they are absorbed into the single idea of good, and subordinated
to it. They are not more certain than facts, but they are equally
certain (Phaedo). They are both personal and impersonal. They are
abstract terms: they are also the causes of things; and they are even
transformed into the demons or spirits by whose help God made the world.
And the idea of good (Republic) may without violence be converted into
the Supreme Being, who 'because He was good' created all things (Tim.).
It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of
thought. They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct
meaning. They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations,
aspirations after an unknown world. They derive their origin from a deep
religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of
curious mental phenomena. They gather up the elements of the previous
philosophies, which they put together in a new form. Their great
diversity shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think.
They have not yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them,
though he also criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others
are always talking about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and
that they are not peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in
his later writings he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them.
As he proceeds he makes for himself new modes of expression more akin to
the Aristotelian logic.
Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common
meaning or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he
treats of the ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is
the spirit of idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many
names and taken many forms, and has in a measure influenced those
who seemed to be most averse to it. It has often been charged with
inconsistency and fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on
human nature, and has exercised a wonderful charm and interest over
a few spirits who have been lost in the thought of it. It has been
banished again and again, but has always returned. It has attempted to
leave the earth and soar heavenwards, but soon has found that only
in experience could any solid foundation of knowledge be laid. It has
degenerated into pantheism, but has again emerged. No other knowledge
has given an equal stimulus to the mind. It is the science of sciences,
which are also ideas, and under either aspect require to be defined.
They can only be thought of in due proportion when conceived in relation
to one another. They are the glasses through which the kingdoms of
science are seen, but at a distance. All the greatest minds, except when
living in an age of reaction against them, have unconsciously fallen
under their power.
The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and
clearest, and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first
and then comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere,
e.g. in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the
criticism of them in the Parmenides, the personal form which is
attributed to them in the Timaeus, the logical character which they
assume in the Sophist and Philebus, and the allusion to them in the
Laws. In the Cratylus they dawn upon him with the freshness of a
newly-discovered thought.
The Meno goes back to a former state of existence, in which men did and
suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment of them
until their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return to
earth. This is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and poets
bear witness. The souls of men returning to earth bring back a latent
memory of ideas, which were known to them in a former state. The
recollection is awakened into life and consciousness by the sight of the
things which resemble them on earth. The soul evidently possesses such
innate ideas before she has had time to acquire them. This is proved by
an experiment tried on one of Meno's slaves, from whom Socrates elicits
truths of arithmetic and geometry, which he had never learned in this
world. He must therefore have brought them with him from another.
The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses
of Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural
answer to two questions, 'Whence came the soul? What is the origin of
evil?' and prevailed far and wide in the east. It found its way into
Hellas probably through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and
mysteries. It was easier to think of a former than of a future life,
because such a life has really existed for the race though not for the
individual, and all men come into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of
glory,' at any rate able to enter into the inheritance of the past. In
the Phaedrus, as well as in the Meno, it is this former rather than a
future life on which Plato is disposed to dwell. There the Gods, and men
following in their train, go forth to contemplate the heavens, and are
borne round in the revolutions of them. There they see the divine forms
of justice, temperance, and the like, in their unchangeable beauty, but
not without an effort more than human. The soul of man is likened to
a charioteer and two steeds, one mortal, the other immortal. The
charioteer and the mortal steed are in fierce conflict; at length the
animal principle is finally overpowered, though not extinguished, by the
combined energies of the passionate and rational elements. This is one
of those passages in Plato which, partaking both of a philosophical
and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct and inconsistent. The
magnificent figure under which the nature of the soul is described has
not much to do with the popular doctrine of the ideas. Yet there is one
little trait in the description which shows that they are present to
Plato's mind, namely, the remark that the soul, which had seen truths
in the form of the universal, cannot again return to the nature of an
animal.
In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a
previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been
acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from
another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of
association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person
recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from
any part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole. It is also
argued that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous
state of existence because they are more perfect than the sensible forms
of them which are given by experience. But in the Phaedo the doctrine
of ideas is subordinate to the proof of the immortality of the soul.
'If the soul existed in a previous state, then it will exist in a future
state, for a law of alternation pervades all things.' And, 'If the ideas
exist, then the soul exists; if not, not.' It is to be observed, both
in the Meno and the Phaedo, that Socrates expresses himself with
diffidence. He speaks in the Phaedo of the words with which he has
comforted himself and his friends, and will not be too confident that
the description which he has given of the soul and her mansions is
exactly true, but he 'ventures to think that something of the kind is
true.' And in the Meno, after dwelling upon the immortality of the
soul, he adds, 'Of some things which I have said I am not altogether
confident' (compare Apology; Gorgias). From this class of uncertainties
he exempts the difference between truth and appearance, of which he is
absolutely convinced.
In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two ways, which though not
contradictory are different. In the tenth book they are represented as
the genera or general ideas under which individuals having a common name
are contained. For example, there is the bed which the carpenter makes,
the picture of the bed which is drawn by the painter, the bed existing
in nature of which God is the author. Of the latter all visible beds
are only the shadows or reflections. This and similar illustrations or
explanations are put forth, not for their own sake, or as an exposition
of Plato's theory of ideas, but with a view of showing that poetry and
the mimetic arts are concerned with an inferior part of the soul and a
lower kind of knowledge. On the other hand, in the 6th and 7th books
of the Republic we reach the highest and most perfect conception, which
Plato is able to attain, of the nature of knowledge. The ideas are now
finally seen to be one as well as many, causes as well as ideas, and to
have a unity which is the idea of good and the cause of all the rest.
They seem, however, to have lost their first aspect of universals under
which individuals are contained, and to have been converted into forms
of another kind, which are inconsistently regarded from the one side as
images or ideals of justice, temperance, holiness and the like; from the
other as hypotheses, or mathematical truths or principles.
In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato's works immediately follows
the Republic, though probably written some time afterwards, no mention
occurs of the doctrine of ideas. Geometrical forms and arithmetical
ratios furnish the laws according to which the world is created. But
though the conception of the ideas as genera or species is forgotten or
laid aside, the distinction of the visible and intellectual is as
firmly maintained as ever. The IDEA of good likewise disappears and is
superseded by the conception of a personal God, who works according to
a final cause or principle of goodness which he himself is. No doubt is
expressed by Plato, either in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of
the truths which he conceives to be the first and highest. It is not the
existence of God or the idea of good which he approaches in a tentative
or hesitating manner, but the investigations of physiology. These he
regards, not seriously, as a part of philosophy, but as an innocent
recreation (Tim.).