The Republic
science of abstractions, or as the science of the evolution of thought;
modern logic, when passing beyond the bounds of mere Aristotelian
forms, may be defined as the science of method. The germ of both of
them is contained in the Platonic dialectic; all metaphysicians have
something in common with the ideas of Plato; all logicians have derived
something from the method of Plato. The nearest approach in modern
philosophy to the universal science of Plato, is to be found in the
Hegelian ‘succession of moments in the unity of the idea.’ Plato and
Hegel alike seem to have conceived the world as the correlation of
abstractions; and not impossibly they would have understood one another
better than any of their commentators understand them (Swift’s Voyage
to Laputa. ‘Having a desire to see those ancients who were most
renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I
proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their
commentators; but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced
to attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and
could distinguish these two heroes, at first sight, not only from the
crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of
the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the
most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made
use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his
voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect
strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of
them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless,
“That these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from
their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame
and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of
these authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to
Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they
deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the
spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the
account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and
he asked them “whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as
themselves?”’). There is, however, a difference between them: for
whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind, which
developes the stages of the idea in different countries or at different
times in the same country, with Plato these gradations are regarded
only as an order of thought or ideas; the history of the human mind had
not yet dawned upon him.
Many criticisms may be made on Plato’s theory of education. While in
some respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others
he is in advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which
prevailed in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered
new ones. He does not see that education is relative to the characters
of individuals; he only desires to impress the same form of the state
on the minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of
literature on the formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates that
of mathematics. His aim is above all things to train the reasoning
faculties; to implant in the mind the spirit and power of abstraction;
to explain and define general notions, and, if possible, to connect
them. No wonder that in the vacancy of actual knowledge his followers,
and at times even he himself, should have fallen away from the doctrine
of ideas, and have returned to that branch of knowledge in which alone
the relation of the one and many can be truly seen—the science of
number. In his views both of teaching and training he might be styled,
in modern language, a doctrinaire; after the Spartan fashion he would
have his citizens cast in one mould; he does not seem to consider that
some degree of freedom, ‘a little wholesome neglect,’ is necessary to
strengthen and develope the character and to give play to the
individual nature. His citizens would not have acquired that knowledge
which in the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the pilgrims from
their experience of evil.
On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and
theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through
life and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of
some kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of
Solon, ‘I grow old learning many things,’ cannot be applied literally.
Himself ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and
delighting in solid geometry (Rep.), he has no difficulty in imagining
that a lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know
how many more men of business there are in the world than real students
or thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes
for his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of
genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,—a life
not for the many, but for the few.
Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to
our own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be
realized, it may have a great effect in elevating the characters of
mankind, and raising them above the routine of their ordinary
occupation or profession. It is the best form under which we can
conceive the whole of life. Nevertheless the idea of Plato is not
easily put into practice. For the education of after life is
necessarily the education which each one gives himself. Men and women
cannot be brought together in schools or colleges at forty or fifty
years of age; and if they could the result would be disappointing. The
destination of most men is what Plato would call ‘the Den’ for the
whole of life, and with that they are content. Neither have they
teachers or advisers with whom they can take counsel in riper years.
There is no ‘schoolmaster abroad’ who will tell them of their faults,
or inspire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the ambition of
a true success in life; no Socrates who will convict them of ignorance;
no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them of sin. Hence
they have a difficulty in receiving the first element of improvement,
which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir them; they
rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects. A few only who have
come across great men and women, or eminent teachers of religion and
morality, have received a second life from them, and have lighted a
candle from the fire of their genius.
The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons
continue to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not
know the way. They ‘never try an experiment,’ or look up a point of
interest for themselves; they make no sacrifices for the sake of
knowledge; their minds, like their bodies, at a certain age become
fixed. Genius has been defined as ‘the power of taking pains’; but
hardly any one keeps up his interest in knowledge throughout a whole
life. The troubles of a family, the business of making money, the
demands of a profession destroy the elasticity of the mind. The waxen
tablet of the memory which was once capable of receiving ‘true thoughts
and clear impressions’ becomes hard and crowded; there is not room for
the accumulations of a long life (Theaet.). The student, as years
advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than adds to his stores.
There is no pressing necessity to learn; the stock of Classics or
History or Natural Science which was enough for a man at twenty-five is
enough for him at fifty. Neither is it easy to give a definite answer
to any one who asks how he is to improve. For self-education consists
in a thousand things, commonplace in themselves,—in adding to what we
are by nature something of what we are not; in learning to see
ourselves as others see us; in judging, not by opinion, but by the
evidence of facts; in seeking out the society of superior minds; in a
study of lives and writings of great men; in observation of the world
and character; in receiving kindly the natural influence of different
times of life; in any act or thought which is raised above the practice
or opinions of mankind; in the pursuit of some new or original enquiry;
in any effort of mind which calls forth some latent power.
If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic education
of after-life, some such counsels as the following may be offered to
him:—That he shall choose the branch of knowledge to which his own mind
most distinctly inclines, and in which he takes the greatest delight,
either one which seems to connect with his own daily employment, or,
perhaps, furnishes the greatest contrast to it. He may study from the
speculative side the profession or business in which he is practically
engaged. He may make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Bacon the
friends and companions of his life. He may find opportunities of
hearing the living voice of a great teacher. He may select for enquiry
some point of history or some unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour
a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as
many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him ‘a pleasure not
to be repented of’ (Timaeus). Only let him beware of being the slave of
crotchets, or of running after a Will o’ the Wisp in his ignorance, or
in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming
the air of a philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers.
Better to build up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from
one thing to another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests
in knowledge, than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be
realized. But perhaps, as Plato would say, ‘This is part of another
subject’ (Tim.); though we may also defend our digression by his
example (Theaet.).
4. We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or the natural
growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political
philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato
and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human
affairs; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of
empires (Plato, Statesman, and Sulpicius’ Letter to Cicero); by them
fate and chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to
have had a great share in political events. The wiser of them like
Thucydides believed that ‘what had been would be again,’ and that a
tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the past. Also they
had dreams of a Golden Age which existed once upon a time and might
still exist in some unknown land, or might return again in the remote
future. But the regular growth of a state enlightened by experience,
progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the citizens
were educated by the fulfilment of political duties, appears never to
have come within the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a state
had never been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them.
Their experience (Aristot. Metaph.; Plato, Laws) led them to conclude
that there had been cycles of civilization in which the arts had been
discovered and lost many times over, and cities had been overthrown and
rebuilt again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and other natural
convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition told them of
many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a remnant. The
world began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of the
fragments of itself. Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown
antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them