The Republic
on the truths which are acknowledged by the few, not on the opinions of
the many. He is aware of the importance of ‘classifying according to
nature,’ and will try to ‘separate the limbs of science without
breaking them’ (Phaedr.). There is no part of truth, whether great or
small, which he will dishonour; and in the least things he will discern
the greatest (Parmen.). Like the ancient philosopher he sees the world
pervaded by analogies, but he can also tell ‘why in some cases a single
instance is sufficient for an induction’ (Mill’s Logic), while in other
cases a thousand examples would prove nothing. He inquires into a
portion of knowledge only, because the whole has grown too vast to be
embraced by a single mind or life. He has a clearer conception of the
divisions of science and of their relation to the mind of man than was
possible to the ancients. Like Plato, he has a vision of the unity of
knowledge, not as the beginning of philosophy to be attained by a study
of elementary mathematics, but as the far-off result of the working of
many minds in many ages. He is aware that mathematical studies are
preliminary to almost every other; at the same time, he will not reduce
all varieties of knowledge to the type of mathematics. He too must have
a nobility of character, without which genius loses the better half of
greatness. Regarding the world as a point in immensity, and each
individual as a link in a never-ending chain of existence, he will not
think much of his own life, or be greatly afraid of death.
Adeimantus objects first of all to the form of the Socratic reasoning,
thus showing that Plato is aware of the imperfection of his own method.
He brings the accusation against himself which might be brought against
him by a modern logician—that he extracts the answer because he knows
how to put the question. In a long argument words are apt to change
their meaning slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions
inferred with rather too much certainty or universality; the variation
at each step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes
considerable. Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or
algebraic formulae to logic. The imperfection, or rather the higher and
more elastic nature of language, does not allow words to have the
precision of numbers or of symbols. And this quality in language
impairs the force of an argument which has many steps.
The objection, though fairly met by Socrates in this particular
instance, may be regarded as implying a reflection upon the Socratic
mode of reasoning. And here, as elsewhere, Plato seems to intimate that
the time had come when the negative and interrogative method of
Socrates must be superseded by a positive and constructive one, of
which examples are given in some of the later dialogues. Adeimantus
further argues that the ideal is wholly at variance with facts; for
experience proves philosophers to be either useless or rogues. Contrary
to all expectation Socrates has no hesitation in admitting the truth of
this, and explains the anomaly in an allegory, first characteristically
depreciating his own inventive powers. In this allegory the people are
distinguished from the professional politicians, and, as elsewhere, are
spoken of in a tone of pity rather than of censure under the image of
‘the noble captain who is not very quick in his perceptions.’
The uselessness of philosophers is explained by the circumstance that
mankind will not use them. The world in all ages has been divided
between contempt and fear of those who employ the power of ideas and
know no other weapons. Concerning the false philosopher, Socrates
argues that the best is most liable to corruption; and that the finer
nature is more likely to suffer from alien conditions. We too observe
that there are some kinds of excellence which spring from a peculiar
delicacy of constitution; as is evidently true of the poetical and
imaginative temperament, which often seems to depend on impressions,
and hence can only breathe or live in a certain atmosphere. The man of
genius has greater pains and greater pleasures, greater powers and
greater weaknesses, and often a greater play of character than is to be
found in ordinary men. He can assume the disguise of virtue or
disinterestedness without having them, or veil personal enmity in the
language of patriotism and philosophy,—he can say the word which all
men are thinking, he has an insight which is terrible into the follies
and weaknesses of his fellow-men. An Alcibiades, a Mirabeau, or a
Napoleon the First, are born either to be the authors of great evils in
states, or ‘of great good, when they are drawn in that direction.’
Yet the thesis, ‘corruptio optimi pessima,’ cannot be maintained
generally or without regard to the kind of excellence which is
corrupted. The alien conditions which are corrupting to one nature, may
be the elements of culture to another. In general a man can only
receive his highest development in a congenial state or family, among
friends or fellow-workers. But also he may sometimes be stirred by
adverse circumstances to such a degree that he rises up against them
and reforms them. And while weaker or coarser characters will extract
good out of evil, say in a corrupt state of the church or of society,
and live on happily, allowing the evil to remain, the finer or stronger
natures may be crushed or spoiled by surrounding influences—may become
misanthrope and philanthrope by turns; or in a few instances, like the
founders of the monastic orders, or the Reformers, owing to some
peculiarity in themselves or in their age, may break away entirely from
the world and from the church, sometimes into great good, sometimes
into great evil, sometimes into both. And the same holds in the lesser
sphere of a convent, a school, a family.
Plato would have us consider how easily the best natures are
overpowered by public opinion, and what efforts the rest of mankind
will make to get possession of them. The world, the church, their own
profession, any political or party organization, are always carrying
them off their legs and teaching them to apply high and holy names to
their own prejudices and interests. The ‘monster’ corporation to which
they belong judges right and truth to be the pleasure of the community.
The individual becomes one with his order; or, if he resists, the world
is too much for him, and will sooner or later be revenged on him. This
is, perhaps, a one-sided but not wholly untrue picture of the maxims
and practice of mankind when they ‘sit down together at an assembly,’
either in ancient or modern times.
When the higher natures are corrupted by politics, the lower take
possession of the vacant place of philosophy. This is described in one
of those continuous images in which the argument, to use a Platonic
expression, ‘veils herself,’ and which is dropped and reappears at
intervals. The question is asked,—Why are the citizens of states so
hostile to philosophy? The answer is, that they do not know her. And
yet there is also a better mind of the many; they would believe if they
were taught. But hitherto they have only known a conventional imitation
of philosophy, words without thoughts, systems which have no life in
them; a (divine) person uttering the words of beauty and freedom, the
friend of man holding communion with the Eternal, and seeking to frame
the state in that image, they have never known. The same double feeling
respecting the mass of mankind has always existed among men. The first
thought is that the people are the enemies of truth and right; the
second, that this only arises out of an accidental error and confusion,
and that they do not really hate those who love them, if they could be
educated to know them.
In the latter part of the sixth book, three questions have to be
considered: 1st, the nature of the longer and more circuitous way,
which is contrasted with the shorter and more imperfect method of Book
IV; 2nd, the heavenly pattern or idea of the state; 3rd, the relation
of the divisions of knowledge to one another and to the corresponding
faculties of the soul:
1. Of the higher method of knowledge in Plato we have only a glimpse.
Neither here nor in the Phaedrus or Symposium, nor yet in the Philebus
or Sophist, does he give any clear explanation of his meaning. He would
probably have described his method as proceeding by regular steps to a
system of universal knowledge, which inferred the parts from the whole
rather than the whole from the parts. This ideal logic is not practised
by him in the search after justice, or in the analysis of the parts of
the soul; there, like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues
from experience and the common use of language. But at the end of the
sixth book he conceives another and more perfect method, in which all
ideas are only steps or grades or moments of thought, forming a
connected whole which is self-supporting, and in which consistency is
the test of truth. He does not explain to us in detail the nature of
the process. Like many other thinkers both in ancient and modern times
his mind seems to be filled with a vacant form which he is unable to
realize. He supposes the sciences to have a natural order and connexion
in an age when they can hardly be said to exist. He is hastening on to
the ‘end of the intellectual world’ without even making a beginning of
them.
In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the process of
acquiring knowledge is here confused with the contemplation of absolute
knowledge. In all science a priori and a posteriori truths mingle in
various proportions. The a priori part is that which is derived from
the most universal experience of men, or is universally accepted by
them; the a posteriori is that which grows up around the more general
principles and becomes imperceptibly one with them. But Plato
erroneously imagines that the synthesis is separable from the analysis,
and that the method of science can anticipate science. In entertaining
such a vision of a priori knowledge he is sufficiently justified, or at
least his meaning may be sufficiently explained by the similar attempts
of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and even of Bacon himself, in modern
philosophy. Anticipations or divinations, or prophetic glimpses of
truths whether concerning man or nature, seem to stand in the same
relation to ancient philosophy which hypotheses bear to modern
inductive science. These ‘guesses at truth’ were not made at random;
they arose from a superficial impression of uniformities and first
principles in nature which the genius of the Greek, contemplating the
expanse of heaven and earth, seemed to recognize in the distance. Nor
can we deny that in ancient times knowledge must have stood still, and
the human mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought, if
philosophy had been strictly confined to the results of experience.
2. Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the artist
will fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. Is this a pattern laid
up in heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to gaze with
wondering eye? The answer is, that such ideals are framed partly by the
omission of particulars, partly by imagination perfecting the form
which experience supplies (Phaedo). Plato represents these ideals in a
figure as belonging to another world; and in modern times the idea will
sometimes seem to precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand
of the artist. As in science, so also in creative art, there is a
synthetical as well as an analytical method. One man will have the
whole in his mind before he begins; to another the processes of mind
and hand will be simultaneous.
3. There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato’s divisions of knowledge