X

PHILOSOPHY: PLATO

Plato was essentially a poet-the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive.-SHELLEY.

Must do my Plato. I'm never well without that.—RUSKIN (1876).

AMONG the young aristocrats who associated with Socrates was one in birth, temperament, genius and life, very different from his master. Yet so deep was the impression made on Plato (427-347) by his teacher that Socrates is the hero of nearly all his dialogues of himself we hear only incidentally. He was twenty-eight when Socrates was put to death. He went abroad, travelled for twelve years, returned to Athens, bought a house and garden in a public park called the Academy, and there for forty-one years, in the company of pupils and friends, studied and lectured in most branches of thought, but with a special bias towards mathematics and astronomy. Socrates had a mission to Athens, and talked in its public places to any one who would listen. Plato's school in the Academy is more like a private university for teaching and research: it lasted for nearly 800 years after his death. His teaching was interrupted by one experiment in practical politics. At the age of sixty he was asked to undertake the education of the young prince of Syracuse; his attempt to train a model ruler failed, not entirely through Plato's fault. We have probably twenty-seven dialogues from his hand. Of these, the following are most suited to the general reader the Apology (Socrates' defence at his trial), Phaedo (his death-bed discussion of immortality), Symposium and Phaedrus (dealing with beauty and love), Gorgias and Protagoras (two discussions turning on whether pleasure is the good), Critias, a picture of a prehistoric Golden Age, and the Republic.1

The greatness of Socrates lies largely in a unique force of personality and character, that of Plato in his thought and writings. With his great work in logic, metaphysics, and mathematics, we will not concern ourselves. Yet his philosophy starts

In dealing with the philosophers, I have not attempted to give a complete sketch of their views, but have quoted characteristic passages from them.

in a logical problem; how, in the changing, manifold world around us, are we to attain knowledge? How do we know that these pieces of wood of different shapes, which we call tables, are tables? In virtue of what do we call beautiful the countless different things to which we apply the word? The reply is : we have this knowledge in virtue of a general idea' of a table, and a general idea of beauty; these ideas' exist not on earth, or for our senses, but for our minds, and, to Plato's mind, have a higher reality than the fleeting objects of sense.

That is a standing problem of technical philosophy-the question what knowledge is. But in Plato it grows into something much wider. It raises the questions; What is the Soul? What should men pursue-money, power, the various material things which we live among, or something else? Why do we take pleasure in beauty-a beautiful face, violets scattered along a hedge foot, the words of a great poet? What value have these beautiful things? These are real problems, and if the reader will first give his own answer to them, he will better appreciate Plato's. For Plato, Soul controls the world and is the supreme reality. It exists, entirely pure, as God; but it is also present in all living things, more dominant in some than others, though in all mixed with and impeded by earthly elements. It lives not by food and drink or the material things which surround it, but by intercourse with unseen spiritual realities, wisdom, truth, beauty, and the other supreme ideas. Its problem in life is to keep these before its mind, escaping to them from the material world, which affords glimpses of them, and especially, through beautiful things, of beauty. Our soul before birth saw the unseen world of Eternal Being where reside God and the eternal' ideas' of beauty, truth, goodness, and all that exists on earth. To this world it must return by memory and the use of reason so far as, among the shadows of earth, it can.

Plato was the first to propound this view of the world, which has influenced poets and religious teachers more deeply perhaps than any philosophic theory. We hear its echoes alike in Wordsworth and Shelley, and it has coloured many a passage of English poetry. S. Paul expresses essentially the same doctrine, when he talks of living in the Spirit and not in the Flesh, and says, ' We look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.' In the following passage Plato puts this doctrine in the form of a 'myth' or

fable, describing the human soul as a chariot, in which reason, the charioteer, drives two horses, one of animal desire, the other of the nobler, 'spirited' emotions. The myth describes our soul's adventures before birth, and how the soul comes to decline from its heavenly state to a lower life on earth. It explains the spiritual value of truth, wisdom, beauty, and why beauty moves us, recalling to the soul the heavenly world from which it came.

F the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever

O

a theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be composite-a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. I will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature.

The inanimate world is in the charge of Soul, which pervades the whole heaven, in divers forms appearing ;-when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight, at last settles on the solid ground—there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creature. And now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her wings!

The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards, into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the mighty lord

holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia1 alone abides at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro, along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own work; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained :—and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the Very Being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding Reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution she beholds Justice, and Temperance, and Knowledge Absolute; and beholding the other True Existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home; and there the charioteer,

1 The goddess of the hearth. The twelve' are the chief gods of the Greek pantheon.

putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink.

Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding True Being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of True Being, go away, and feed upon Opinion.1 The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of Truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of Truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow and fails to behold the Truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of Truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which has seen Truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a great athlete, or a physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth

1 As opposed to Knowledge.