A Critical History of Greek Philosophy, W. T. Stace [best books to read for students txt] 📗

of all things in perfection itself means that the universe arises out of that perfect end towards which all things move.

Another matter which requires elucidation here is the place which the conception of God holds in Plato's system. He frequently uses the word God both in the singular and the plural, and seems to slip with remarkable ease from the monotheistic to the polytheistic manner of speaking. In addition to the many gods, we have frequent reference to the one supreme Creator, controller, and ruler of the world, who is further conceived as a Being providentially watching over the lives of men. But in what relation does this supreme God stand to the Ideas, and especially to the Idea of the Good? If God is separate from the highest Idea, then, as Zeller points out, [Footnote 13] only three relations are possible, all of which are {203} equally objectionable. Firstly, God may be the cause or ground of the Idea of the Good. But this destroys the substantiality of the Idea, and indeed, destroys Plato's whole system. The very essence of his philosophy is that the Idea is the ultimate reality, which is self-existent, and owes its being to nothing else. But this theory makes it a mere creature of God, dependent on Him for its existence. Secondly, God may owe His being to the Idea. The Idea may be the ground of God's existence as it is the ground of all else in the universe. But this theory does violence to the idea of God, turning Him into a mere derivative existence, and, in fact, into an appearance. Thirdly, God and the Idea may be co-ordinate in the system as equally primordial independent ultimate realities. But this means that Plato has given two mutually inconsistent accounts of the ultimate reality, or, if not, that his system is a hopeless dualism. As none of these theories can be maintained, it must be supposed that God is identical with the Idea of the Good, and we find certain expressions in the "Philebus" which seem clearly to assert this. But in that case God is not a personal God at all, since the Idea is not a person. The word God, if used in this way, is merely a figurative term for the Idea. And this is the most probable theory, if we reflect that there is in fact no room for a personal God in a system which places all reality in the Idea, and that to introduce such a conception threatens to break up the whole system. Plato probably found it useful to take the popular conceptions about the personality of God or the gods and use them, in mythical fashion, to express his Ideas. Those parts of Plato which speak of God, and the governance of God, {204} are to be interpreted on the same principles as the other Platonic myths.

[Footnote 13: Plato and the Older Academy, chap. vi.]

Before closing our discussion of dialectic, it may be well to consider what place it occupies in the life of man, and what importance is attached to it. Here Plato's answer is emphatic. Dialectic is the crown of knowledge, and knowledge is the crown of life. All other spiritual activities have value only in so far as they lead up to the knowledge of the Idea. All other subjects of intellectual study are merely preparatory to the study of philosophy. The special sciences have no value in themselves, but they have value inasmuch as their definitions and classifications form a preparation for the knowledge of Ideas. Mathematics is important because it is a stepping-stone from the world of sense to the Ideas. Its objects, namely, numbers and geometrical figures, resemble the Ideas in so far as they are immutable, and they resemble sense-objects in so far as they are in space or time. In the educational curriculum of Plato, philosophy comes last. Not everyone may study it. And none may study it till he has been through all the preparatory stages of education, which form a rigorous discipline of the mind before it finally enters upon dialectic. Thus all knowledge ends in dialectic, and that life has not attained its end which falls short of philosophy.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the subordination of all spiritual activities to philosophy is to be found in the doctrine of Eros, or Love. The phrase "platonic love" is on the lips of many, but, as a rule, something very different from Plato's own doctrine is meant. According to him, love is always concerned with beauty, and his teaching on the subject is expounded {205} chiefly in the "Symposium," He believed that before birth the soul dwelt disembodied in the pure contemplation of the world of Ideas. Sinking down into a body, becoming immersed in the world of sense, it forgets the Ideas. The sight of a beautiful object reminds it of that one Idea of beauty of which the object is a copy. This accounts for the mystic rapture, the emotion, the joy, with which we greet the sight of the beautiful. Since Plato had expressly declared that there are Ideas of the ugly as well as of the beautiful, that there are Ideas, for example, of hair, filth, and dirt, and since these Ideas are just as divine and perfect as the Idea of the beautiful, we ought, on this theory, to greet the ugly, the filthy, and the nauseating, with a ravishment of joy similar to that which we experience in the presence of beauty. Why this is not the case Plato omitted to explain. However, having learned to love the one beautiful object, the soul passes on to the love of others. Then it perceives that it is the same beauty which reveals itself in all these. It passes from the love of beautiful forms to the love of beautiful souls, and from that to the love of beautiful sciences. It ceases to be attached to the many objects, as such, that is to say, to the sensuous envelopes of the Idea of beauty. Love passes into the knowledge of the Idea of beauty itself, and from this to the knowledge of the world of Ideas in general. It passes in fact into philosophy.

In this development there are two points which we cannot fail to note. In the first place, emotional love is explained as being simply the blind groping of reason towards the Idea. It is reason which has not yet recognized itself as such. It appears, therefore, in the {206} guise of feeling. Secondly, the later progress of the soul's love is simply the gradual recognition of itself by reason. When the soul perceives that the beauty in all objects is the same, that it is the common element amid the many, this is nothing but the process of inductive reasoning. And this development ends at last in the complete rational cognition of the world of Ideas, in a word, philosophy. Love is but an instinctive reason. The animal has no feeling of the beautiful, just because it has no reason. Love of the beautiful is founded upon the nature of man, not as a percipient or feeling being, but as a rational being. And it must end in the complete recognition of reason by itself, not in the feeling and intuition, but in the rational comprehension, of the Idea.

One can imagine what Plato's answer would be to the sort of vulgarians and philistines who want to know what the use of philosophy is, and in what way it is "practical." To answer such a question is for Plato impossible, because the question itself is illegitimate. For a thing to have a use involves that it is a means towards an end. Fire has use, because it may be made a means towards the cooking of food. Money is useful, because it is a means to the acquisition of goods. That which is an end in itself, and not a means towards any further end, cannot possibly have any use. To suggest that philosophy ought to have use is, therefore, to put the cart before the horse, to invert the whole scale of values. It suggests that philosophy is a means towards some further end, instead of being the absolute end to which all other things are means. Philosophy is not for anything. Everything else is for it. And, if this seems an exaggerated or unpractical view, we may at least {207} remember that this is the view taken by the religious consciousness of man. Religion makes the supreme end of life the knowledge of, and communion with, God. God is for religion what the Idea is for philosophy. God is a figurative name for the Idea. To place the end of life in the knowledge of the Absolute, or the Idea, is therefore the teaching both of philosophy and religion.

4. Physics, or the Theory of Existence.

Dialectic is the theory of reality, physics the theory of existence, dialectic of that which lies behind things as their ground, physics of the things which are thus grounded. That is to say, physics is concerned with phenomena and appearances, things which exist in space and time, as opposed to the timeless and non-spatial Ideas. Things of this kind are both corporeal and incorporeal. Physics falls therefore into two parts, the doctrine of the outward corporeality, the world, with its incorporeal essence, the World-Soul, and the doctrine of the incorporeal soul of man.

(a) The Doctrine of the World.

If, in the dialectic, Plato has given an account of the nature of the first principle and ground of all things, the problem now arises of explaining how the actual universe of things arises out of that ground, how it is derived from the first principle. In other words, the Ideas being the absolute reality, how does the world of sense, and, in general, the existent universe, arise out of the Ideas? Faced with this problem, the system of Plato broke down. The things of sense are, we are told, "copies" or "imitations" of the Ideas. {208} They "participate" in the Ideas. So far, so good. But why should there be any copies of the Ideas? Why should the Ideas give rise to copies of themselves, and how is the production of these copies effected? To these questions Plato has no answer, and he therefore has recourse to the use of myths. Poetic description here takes the place of scientific explanation.

This poetic description of the origin of the world is to be found in the "Timaeus." We have seen that the Ideas are absolute Being, and that things of sense are half real and half unreal. They are partly real because they participate in Being. They are partly unreal because they participate in not-being. There must be, therefore, a principle of absolute not-being. This, in Plato's opinion, is matter. Things of sense are copies of the Ideas fashioned out of, or stamped upon, matter. But Plato does not understand by matter what we, in modern times, understand by it. Matter, in our sense, is always some particular kind of matter. It is brass, or wood, or iron, or stone. It is matter which has determinate character and quality. But the possession of specific character means that it is matter with the copy of Ideas already stamped upon it. Since iron exists in great quantities in the world, and there is a common element in all the various pieces of iron, by virtue of which all are classed together, there must be a concept of iron. There is, therefore, an Idea of iron in the world of Ideas. And the iron which we find in the earth must be matter which is already formed into a copy of this Idea. It participates in the Idea of iron. The same remarks apply to any other particular kind of matter. In fact, all form, all the specific characters and