Meno
Passing on to the Parmenides, we find in that dialogue not an exposition
or defence of the doctrine of ideas, but an assault upon them, which is
put into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, and might be ascribed to
Aristotle himself, or to one of his disciples. The doctrine which is
assailed takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them to escape
the dialectical difficulties which are urged against it. It is admitted
that there are ideas of all things, but the manner in which individuals
partake of them, whether of the whole or of the part, and in which
they become like them, or how ideas can be either within or without
the sphere of human knowledge, or how the human and divine can have any
relation to each other, is held to be incapable of explanation. And
yet, if there are no universal ideas, what becomes of philosophy?
(Parmenides.) In the Sophist the theory of ideas is spoken of as a
doctrine held not by Plato, but by another sect of philosophers, called
'the Friends of Ideas,' probably the Megarians, who were very distinct
from him, if not opposed to him (Sophist). Nor in what may be termed
Plato's abridgement of the history of philosophy (Soph.), is any mention
made such as we find in the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics,
of the derivation of such a theory or of any part of it from the
Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Heracleiteans, or even from Socrates. In
the Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Platonic Dialogues,
the conception of a personal or semi-personal deity expressed under the
figure of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is retained. The
one and many of the Phaedrus and Theaetetus is still working in the mind
of Plato, and the correlation of ideas, not of 'all with all,' but of
'some with some,' is asserted and explained. But they are spoken of in
a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former
state of existence. The metaphysical conception of truth passes into a
psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final
form of the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own
writings (see especially Laws). In the Laws he harps once more on the
old string, and returns to general notions:--these he acknowledges to
be many, and yet he insists that they are also one. The guardian must be
made to recognize the truth, for which he has contended long ago in the
Protagoras, that the virtues are four, but they are also in some sense
one (Laws; compare Protagoras).
So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the
statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to
harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system,
but the caricature of a system. They are the ever-varying expression
of Plato's Idealism. The terms used in them are in their substance and
general meaning the same, although they seem to be different. They
pass from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to
heaven (jenseits) without regard to the gulf which later theology and
philosophy have made between them. They are also intended to supplement
or explain each other. They relate to a subject of which Plato himself
would have said that 'he was not confident of the precise form of his
own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind
was true.' It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree--the
spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the
material, the one above the many, the mind before the body.
The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times
widens into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear
after many ages in a distant land. It begins to flow again under new
conditions, at first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally
spreading over the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with
ancient philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is
inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born
out of due time; and before men were capable of understanding it. To the
fathers of modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new
and original, but they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past,
coming back by recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers
of the seventeenth century, who to themselves appeared to be working out
independently the enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood
in a new relation to theology and natural philosophy, and for a time
maintained towards both an attitude of reserve and separation. Yet the
similarities between modern and ancient thought are greater far than the
differences. All philosophy, even that part of it which is said to be
based upon experience, is really ideal; and ideas are not only derived
from facts, but they are also prior to them and extend far beyond them,
just as the mind is prior to the senses.
Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in
the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having
arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from
philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to
be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin
of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems of
philosophy.
Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of
logic--arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury. They
were the late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only
part of it which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe.
Philosophies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing
of definitions, the invention of methods still continue to be the main
elements of the reasoning process.
Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions.
It is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described as
a quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the
semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new meaning into them. Unlike
ancient philosophy, it has been unaffected by impressions derived from
outward nature: it arose within the limits of the mind itself. From the
time of Descartes to Hume and Kant it has had little or nothing to do
with facts of science. On the other hand, the ancient and mediaeval
logic retained a continuous influence over it, and a form like that
of mathematics was easily impressed upon it; the principle of ancient
philosophy which is most apparent in it is scepticism; we must doubt
nearly every traditional or received notion, that we may hold fast one
or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal form was a mental
necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from this alone all
other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of
'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion
that being and thought were the same was revived in a new form by
Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection:
it awakened the 'ego' in human nature. The mind naked and abstract has
no other certainty but the conviction of its own existence. 'I think,
therefore I am;' and this thought is God thinking in me, who has also
communicated to the reason of man his own attributes of thought and
extension--these are truly imparted to him because God is true (compare
Republic). It has been often remarked that Descartes, having begun by
dismissing all presuppositions, introduces several: he passes almost
at once from scepticism to dogmatism. It is more important for the
illustration of Plato to observe that he, like Plato, insists that God
is true and incapable of deception (Republic)--that he proceeds from
general ideas, that many elements of mathematics may be found in him. A
certain influence of mathematics both on the form and substance of their
philosophy is discernible in both of them. After making the greatest
opposition between thought and extension, Descartes, like Plato,
supposes them to be reunited for a time, not in their own nature but by
a special divine act (compare Phaedrus), and he also supposes all
the parts of the human body to meet in the pineal gland, that alone
affording a principle of unity in the material frame of man. It is
characteristic of the first period of modern philosophy, that having
begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general notions, Descartes
first falls absolutely under their influence, and then quickly discards
them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts, because they
are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are seen.
The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the
comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say
of abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them,
the less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete
natures.
Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy
is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The
system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that
of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that
between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be
described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction
and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is
overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness
of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which
excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation
of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In
neither of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and
outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, which alone
are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme
opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be
regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance
is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic
philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with
another famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie
eternitatis.' According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they
are conditioned by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human
beings are included in the number of them. Hence there is no reality
in human action and no place for right and wrong. Individuality is
accident. The boasted freedom of the will is only a consciousness of
necessity. Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason towards the
infinite, in which all things repose; and herein lies the secret of
man's well-being. In the exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the
denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) Spinoza approaches
nearer to Plato than in his conception of an infinite substance. As
Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained
that knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to knowledge useful.
Both are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature.
And the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their
ideas to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite
substance and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is
between the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.
Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher
Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between