The writings of Plato obtained an early popularity. Already, during his lifetime, copies of them appear to have been circulated. An iambic line, ἡρώες Ἐπικούρειοι ἐντυγχάνουσιν, proverbially applied, long after the time of Plato, to those who made a traffic of the writings of others, shews that there was an immediate demand for them in Greece. The Hermodorus here referred to, was one of his hearers, who is said to have sold the writings of the philosopher in Sicily for his own profit. The fact of their early circulation is further evidenced, if it be true, as has been stated, that complaints were made by some of the persons whose names appear in the Dialogues, and even by Socrates himself, of the manner in which they had been represented in them by Plato. It is very probable, also, that during the long time in which he was publicly teaching at Athens, and, doubtless, recurring frequently to the same topics of discussion, considerable portions of what he delivered orally, were treasured up in the memory of some who heard them, and afterwards written down, and thus published to the world without having received the finishing touches of the author's hand. The practice, indeed, of thus carrying off the oral lessons of the philosopher is alluded to by Plato himself in passages of his writings, as in the Phaedo, and Theaetetus, and Parmenides; where the dialogue is related by some one remembering what has passed in conversation on a former occasion. This circumstance may, at once, account for the comparative inferiority of some of the Dialogues in point of execution, and for the fact that some have been passed under his name which are not really his; whilst we have, at the same time, a very considerable collection of writings authenticated by testimonies descending from his own times.

It is by no means necessary for our purpose here (which is to obtain a just general view of the character of the philosopher and his writings), to enter into the criticisms by which doubts have been thrown on particular Dialogues, and on different Dialogues by different critics, out of the number commonly included amongst the genuine works of Plato. We may only remark, that these doubts do not rest on external testimony, but are drawn from considerations of the internal character of particular writings, which have been judged inferior to the rest in matter and execution. Nor is it necessary that we should discuss the various theories proposed for connecting the several Dialogues, and tracing in them the gradual formation and development of the philosophical system of the author. This inquiry certainly has its interest; and could we arrive at any clear results in the prosecution of it, it would be valuable, for the light which it would throw on the interpretation of the philosophy of Plato. But though we can discover a connection between several of the Dialogues, like that of a series of discussions on the same subject, it is not possible to decide on the order in which the points discussed presented themselves to the philosopher's mind, or which we are to regard as the more mature expression of his doctrines. This inquiry further demands a decision of the agitated question concerning the double teaching practised in the ancient schools, known by the technical division into esoteric and exoteric, or mystic and popular: the former addressed to the mature disciple, the latter to the novice or general hearer. There are undoubtedly marks of a recognition of this distinction throughout the writings of Plato; and it is also probably referred to by Aristotle, when he speaks of the "unwritten doctrines" of Plato. But we cannot practically employ it in determining the relative value of particular discussions or statements in his writings, without involving ourselves in a maze of theoretic disquisition, and ending at last, perhaps, in absolute scepticism respecting his doctrines.

But there is a particular class of writings attributed to him, which would possess a peculiar interest for us, if we could establish their genuineness; respecting which, however, the severe verdict of modern criticism compels us to hesitate in pronouncing on their genuineness. We mean what are commonly published in the editions of his works as the Epistles of Plato. By some the question has been regarded as settled beyond controversy, against their reception. The style of their composition has been judged to be quite below the character of Plato's mind. The apologetic tone of the chief part of them has also been considered as evidence of their having proceeded from friends or disciples of Plato, vindicating his character from misrepresentations in regard to his intercourse with the court of Syracuse. But though we may allow weight to these considerations, they are not sufficient peremptorily to decide the question against the Epistles; particularly as we have in their favour the authority, not only of Plutarch, who founds much of the narrative in his Life of Dion upon them, but of Cicero, referring to them and quoting them expressly as writings of Plato.

Perhaps no philosophical writer has ever received so early and ample a recompense of his labours, not only in the reception and circulation of his writings, but in the still more glorious tribute of the spread of his philosophy, as Plato has received. We have mentioned the ordinary marks of admiration which accompanied him during his life and after his death. A more enduring monument was reserved for him in the foundation of the school of Alexandria, not many years after his voice had ceased to be

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1 Senec. Ep. lviii. 28. 2 Die mihi, placetne tibi, primum, edere injussu meo? Hoc ne Hermodorus quidem faciebat, is qui Platonis libros solitum est divulgere; ex quo Ἐπικοῦροι Ἐπικοῦρειοι ἐντυγχάνουσιν. (Cicer. Ep. ad Att. xliii. 21.) 3 Athenaeus, xl. 113. Axiomethes is said to have been induced to attend on the teaching of Plato, from having read the Republic. 4 See particularly Corss. p. 245. 5 Aristot. Phys. iv. 2. 6 Mitford, Hist. of Greece, vol. vi.; Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Phil. 7 Mitford, Hist. of Greece, vol. vi.; Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Phil. 8 Tusc. Qe. v. 35; also De Off. i. 7; and De Fin. ii. 14. heard in the groves of the Academia. There, as in a fitting temple, on the confines of the Eastern and Western Worlds, was enshrined the philosophy which had moulded into one the philosophical systems of the East and the West. And though, in the course of things, the infusion of Eastern Philosophy predominated at Alexandria, it was still under the venerated name of Plato that the new system was taught. The disciples of the Alexandrine school were proud to call themselves Platonists, and to regard themselves as interpreters of the teaching of Plato, whilst they altered and disfigured that teaching. Here, then, was erected the proper monument to his fame. Meanwhile, in the Academia, teachers in regular succession transmitted their inheritance of his name, and by the charm of that prolonged a feeble existence. For the spirit which had formed and animated the school had fled with him; and the Middle and New Academics only attested, by their lingering decay, the strength of the foundation on which they had been built. How great the influence of Plato was on the philosophy of the Romans, needs not to be told to those who are even slightly acquainted with the philosophical writings of Cicero. And even when Christianity threw into the shade all systems of man's wisdom, the only philosophy which maintained its credit at the first, was that of Plato. Christian teachers were found, not unwilling to own that there was great accordance between his doctrines and the revealed truth. Whilst, on the one hand, there were disciples of the philosopher who claimed for him all that was excellent in the Christian scheme, there were Christians who asserted, that he had learned his superior wisdom from the elder Scriptures. All this shows the hold which his name still retained over the minds of men at this period. The great father of the Western Church, St Augustin, avows himself a warm admirer of Plato. He concedes the approximation of the Platonists to the Christian doctrines; affirming that all other philosophers must yield to those who had speculated so justly as they had respecting the Chief Good. Afterwards, indeed, we find Aristotle supplanting Plato in favour with the Christian controversialist. The struggle had been for some time between their respective advocates, which of them should obtain the lead in the Christian schools. But Plato, on the whole, had the mastery, though the result of the struggle was an eclectic system, in which the principal differences of the two philosophers were studiously reconciled. In fact, we may consider Platonism as in the ascendency in the Christian schools, until the period of Scholasticism, that is, until the twelfth and the following centuries, when the discipline of argumentation was at its height in the Church, and with it the study of Aristotle's philosophy. Even then the theories of Plato maintained their ground. The speculations pursued by members of the Church continued to be for the most part Platonic in their principles, though they were conducted and modified by the dialectical method of Aristotle.

What, then, was the character of this philosophy, it will naturally be asked, which both rendered it so attractive to those amongst whom it arose, and also secured for it such an immortality? It is a very remarkable circumstance that, as far as we know, Plato should have escaped all censure at Athens on account of his philosophy, when other philosophers, who, like him, became centres of popular attraction, were the objects of extreme persecution. It is the more remarkable, as not only his master experienced such persecution, but his immediate disciple, Aristotle, was forced to fly from Athens to escape the storm with which he was threatened. Coming between these two, and enjoying, at the height of his popularity, an influence perhaps surpassing that of either, he yet was suffered to wear out his life unmolested, amidst the tranquil labours of his school.

The only evidence to the contrary of this is an unauthenticated anecdote, told by Laertius, of Plato's having accompanied Chabrias to the citadel of Athens, and shewn his zeal in support of that general, under the capital charge brought against him. Upon this occasion, it is said, Crotalus, the sycophant, meeting him, observed, "Are you coming to plead for another, as ignorant that the hemlock of Socrates awaits you too?" to which he replied, "When I served my country in the field I underwent dangers, and now in the cause of duty I undergo them for a friend."

But though we may refuse to believe this story, it is quite evident, that the condition of philosophy at Athens was not without its obloquy and danger even in its most flourishing times under Plato. We may gather from many passages of the writings of Plato, that the cause of philosophy still needed defence, and that great caution was required on the part of those who publicly professed the study of it. A re-action indeed had taken place in favour of philosophers, in consequence of the severity with which Socrates had been treated; and the assailants of Socrates suffered retribution from the popular feeling. Still there was in the mass of the Athenian people a strong antipathy to philosophy, from their ignorance of its real nature. They had been taught to regard philosophers as idle and mischievous drivellers, ever proosing about nature and the phenomena of the heavens, and as contemners of the gods. They had seen also how some of those to whom Athens owed her greatest calamities, had been amongst the students of philosophy. Alcibiades, for example, had been a hearer of Socrates; one of singular natural endowments, in the formation of whose mind Socrates had taken especial pains, and who might therefore be regarded as the test of what philosophy could effect. The people had loved him as their spoiled child, in spite of all his follies; but they had felt also the mischief and misery of his wild career of ambition; and they threw the blame on his instructors, and the system in which he had been trained. Again, a great prejudice had been excited in the public mind against philosophy in general, from the many low and mercenary professors of it with which Greece abounded; minute philosophers, patronized by the public for their temporary services in teaching the arts of public life, but who produced ignominy and disgust to the true profession by their unworthy monopoly of its name. Add to this, that popular opinion had been corrupted by the false teaching, which had been so long and extensively at work throughout Greece. Erroneous principles of judgment and conduct had taken root in the public mind; or, to describe the case more correctly, all principles were unsettled, and the state of the public mind was a state of inward anarchy and insubordination. A philosopher, therefore, seriously devoted to his profession, and pursuing it with a single eye to the advancement of truth, was necessarily regarded with suspicion and dislike. For it is a natural propensity of the mind to adhere to what is established, whether it be good or evil, simply because the transition is easy, and no effort of thought is required, no trouble of self-examination imposed, no censure of self exacted; and what is in vesterate in their own minds passes with men for the oddness of truth and nature. A reformer, therefore, is always an object of aversion; and no reform is successfully accomplished, until it has worked its way by subduing the prejudices which it has to encounter at the outset. Not

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1. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, viii. Chapter after chapter is taken up in Eusebius' Preparatio Evangelica, in showing the agreement of Plato with the Scriptures. 2. Diog. Laert., in Vita Plat. 18. 3. 'Ov' i. xapóvovov l. e. d. ádúvovov, &c. &c. Plato, p. 159; Apol. p. 44; Polit. p. 92, et alia. only was the opposition to sound philosophy produced in the minds of the vulgar by this distemper of public opinion; but even the better part of society, the more educated and reflecting members of the community, were infected by it. The majority of these would be deterred from taking up a profession exposing them to so much dislike and risk. Some of them, too, with a view of standing well with the mass of those amongst whom they lived, and promoting their own interest, would avail themselves of the popular clamour against philosophy, cry down the pursuit of it as innovation and danger, and make it their business to exaggerate, instead of counteracting, vulgar prejudices on the subject.

These obstructions to the teaching of philosophy are pointedly referred to by Plato, as existing in his time, and demanding his attention, in order to the success of that mission of reform which he had undertaken. He treats the vulgar prejudice against philosophy as not altogether unreasonable, in consequence of the perverse opinions which had been popularly inculcated; and endeavours to disarm the public hostility, by alleging the causes of the disrepute into which philosophy had unjustly fallen. Alluding, as it seems, particularly to the instance of Alcibiades, he points out, that it is not philosophy which corrupts the young, but the passions of the young and high-spirited which pervert the means of good to the greatest mischief. None but those of the highest order of talent and natural gifts are fully susceptible of its influence; but then these are the very cases, he observes, which are also capable of the most mischief, through their greater susceptibility of the seductions of the world. There cannot but be objections against philosophy, he further observes, as long as the mass of mankind is, as it is found, incapable of appreciating real essential good for its own sake; and as long as those of superior nature, who should be its devoted friends, and examples of its influence, are drawn away from it in pursuit of popular opinion. He endeavours, accordingly, to evince that there is no just ground for alarm, at least in those days, at the power of philosophy. It was now deserted and helpless, fallen amongst those who were not its own people. If disgrace now attached to philosophy, it must be imputed to the unworthy alliance into which it had been forced. The mean artisan, who has made his fortune, now quits his prison, and decks himself out, and aspires to the hand of the daughter of his master in her poverty and destitution. It was no wonder, therefore, that such spurious fruits, of so unsuitable alliance, were then seen in the world, and that the few who clung to the true profession were like strangers in the world, living away from public affairs, as unwilling to join in the general iniquity, and unable to resist it effectually by their single strength.

If Plato thought it necessary thus to apologize for the pursuit of philosophy, it is clear that there was yet reason to apprehend an outbreak of violence against its professors. In fact, however, he appears not only to have escaped all such outrage, but, whilst he propagated, by his oral teaching and his writings, a system of doctrines directly contrary to the impure morality and superstition established around him, to have enjoyed an esteem beyond that which any other teacher on the same ground ever obtained.

The explanation of this is in a great measure to be sought in the circumstances under which his philosophy was formed and matured, and to which it was peculiarly adapted.

What Themistocles admitted truly of himself when he answered, that he should not have achieved his glorious deeds if Athens had not been his country, was as truly applied by Plato to himself, when he enumerated amongst his causes of gratitude to the Gods, that he was born an Athenian. For his philosophy was eminently Athenian. Viewed at least as we have it in his writings, it was the expression, by a master-mind, itself imbued with the spirit of the age, but rising above that spirit by its intrinsic superiority and nobleness, of those tendencies of thought and action, which had been working in Greece, and especially at Athens, the centre of Grecian civilization.

The Peloponnesian war terminated with leaving Athens humbled before the confederacy, which the hatred and jealousy of her power had leagued against her. But the loss of her ascendancy in Greece was not the worst evil brought on Athens by the result of that war. The machinery of faction, by which the war had been principally carried on, produced the most mischievous effects on the character and happiness of the Greeks at large; aggravating the symptoms of evil already existing in the constitutions of the several states, and, not least, in that of Athens. Not only did the insolence of the Athenian democracy gain strength in the result, and rise beyond all bounds, but the excesses in which party spirit had indulged, drew into prominence the selfishness and ferociousness of a demoralized people. Then might be clearly seen the levity and licentiousness of men, who, living amidst constant hazards, had learnt to regard nothing beyond the enjoyment of the passing hour; the cunning and cruelty engendered by mutual distrust; and the wanton contempt of all law and religion, prompted by the sight of the calamities which the tempests of social life scatter indiscriminately on the good and the evil. On this stock of corruption, speculative irreligion, and speculative immorality, had also grown up as its natural offshoots. Men were found hardening themselves against the reproaches of conscience and the fear of retribution, by arguing against the fundamental truths of religion and morals. In religion, it was contended that there were no Gods; or that if the existence of a divine power were conceded, there was no Providence over human affairs; or, lastly, that if there were a Providence, the wrath of the offended Deity was placable by the prayers and sacrifices of the offender. In morals, the question was debated, whether all was not mere matter of institution and convention, and the device of the weak against the stronger power; and whether right might not change with the opinions of men.

This state of things had produced and fostered a spurious race of philosophers, familiarly known by the name of the Sophists; a name, not at first implying that disrespect, by which it afterwards characterized the pretensions of those to whom it was given. For the Sophists evidently were not the primary corruptors of the public mind in Greece, but themselves the offspring of that moral chaos, which resulted from the internal disorders of the country; and which they sustained, as its own children paying the recompense of their nurture to their genuine parent. They were an evidence of the corruption having reached the higher classes of society; for their instructions were sought by those who could pay for them, and who desired to qualify themselves for office and power in the state. Going about from place to place, and domesticating themselves wherever they could obtain a reception, they undertook to render all that flocked to them adepts in the arts of government, and even in virtue. The pretension would have been absurd and extravagant, but for the prevailing looseness of opinion on moral subjects. But when right was understood as nothing more than what happened to be instituted and in fashion, there was an opening to every unprincipled teacher to adapt his moral lessons to the varied requirements of each distinct society.

At no place were these universal teachers more cordially received than at Athens. The anxiety with which an expected visit from any one of greater note among them was expected at Athens, and the zeal with which the young hastened to see and hear the wise man on his arrival, are depicted in lively colours by Plato. At Athens, evidently, if anywhere, the Sophist felt himself at his proper home. There was his readiest market. Herodotus may justly have been surprised at the success of so vulgar a deception at Athens, the seat of literature, as that practised by Pisistratus, when he exhibited to the people a woman of great stature, arrayed in full armour, and pompously borne in a chariot into the city, as the goddess Minerva, reinstating him in her own citadel. It would have been still stranger if these impersonations of Athenian wisdom had not succeeded in imposing on the understanding of Athenians. For their minds were in that fluctuating state which disposed them to receive every various form of impression from any plausible teacher. Their general cultivation of mind, and taste for literature, prepared them for listening with pleasure to exhibitions of rhetorical and dialectical skill, such as the Sophists gave. And from admiration of the skill thus displayed, the transition was natural to consider that as the only wisdom, which was capable of maintaining both sides of a question with equal plausibility, and that the only virtue, which could shift and accommodate itself to every expedient with equal satisfaction.

Yet the Athenian was not entirely the creature of those circumstances, which had so considerably modified his character. He yet retained some traces of that high feeling so beautifully touched by his own tragic poet, when that poet speaks of "the pious Athens," and appeals to the ancient associations of religion which consecrated the land. Religion indeed had acquired the name of superstition, or the fear of supernatural powers, ἐπιστολή; but even this marks that there were some who cherished, though in that degenerate form, a veneration for the truths of the Divine Being, and the Divine agency in the world. Nor was the Athenian ever insensible to his pride of birth, and rank among those of the Grecian name. He dwelt on the recollections of a remote antiquity of origin, as distinguishing him among the members of the Greek family. He claimed to be the offspring of the Attic soil, ἀναγεννημένος, whilst others were descended from successive immigrations of strangers. Amidst his fickleness, and susceptibility of every passing impulse, he yet felt himself strongly influenced by his veneration for the past, and loved to connect himself with the ancient glories of his country. In the Athenian character, accordingly, may be observed the union of extremes; devoutness of deep inward feeling, accompanied with superficial irreligion and profane dissoluteness of morals; a mercurial temperament, ever eager for change, floating like a light cloud over a deep-rooted reverence of antiquity, and the traditions of ancestral wisdom and virtue.

Now, on accurately studying the writings of Plato, we find them, both, a reflexion of this state of the public mind at Athens, and a corrective of it. Full of imagination and of severe subtle thought, they are formed to attract and fix the attention of the literary Athenian. Bringing the Sophist on the scene, and giving sketches of the social life of Athens, and making conversation the vehicle of his instructions, Plato in a manner transferred to his own teaching, what was every day witnessed at Athens in the professorial exhibitions of the Sophists themselves. His philosophy, a counterpart, in its way, to the drama of the comic poet, instructed the people, at once, through their wisdom and their folly. As Aristophanes spoke to them under the mask of folly, and gave utterance to lessons of severe wisdom under that mask; so Plato, on the other hand, put on the mask of the sage, and in grave irony ridiculed and exposed the light-hearted folly of his countrymen. Both were wiser than they seemed to the outward observation; as was indeed the volatile Athenian, to whom they addressed their counsel. Both presupposed that delicacy of perception and quick tact in their fellow-citizens, which would be flattered by such indirect modes of address, and would, at the same time, appreciate the jest of the one, and the irony of the other. Both speak with the freedom of the democratic spirit. But the counsel of Aristophanes is that of the privileged jester of the sovereign-people amidst festal scenes and the enthusiasm of mirth; whilst Plato appeals to the Athenian at the moment of quiet, serious reflection on the surrounding folly, and treats him as a contemplative spectator, rather than himself an actor in it.

Before the time of Plato, there were no philosophical writings which answered the requisitions of the Athenian mind. There were poems of the early philosophers. There were didactic writings of the later Pythagoreans, and even dialogues discussing speculative questions. Anaxagoras, too, whose name was well known at Athens, had published a treatise of philosophy. But none of these, if they were even accessible to the Athenian, were calculated to attract his attention. The philosophical poems differed nothing from prose but in the metre, and were exceedingly dry and uninviting to the general reader. The books of Pythagoreans were very few, at least at this time, and hardly known to any but the devoted student of philosophy. Nor would the dialogues of Zeno or Euclid, concerned about mere logical subtleties, or the physical discussions of Anaxagoras, possess any charm for the lively Athenian. Even afterwards, the instructive writings of Aristotle did not obtain that reception which could save them from a temporary oblivion. But the dialogues of Plato supplied exactly what was yet wanting in this department of Athenian literature. They were the proper development of the philosophical element in the genius of the people. The shrewd practical talent of the Athenians had been strikingly exhibited in the successful achievements of their great generals and statesmen, and in the lead of Athens itself amongst the states of Greece at the close of the Persian war. Their taste in arts, and poetry, and general literature, had put forth splendid fruits in the works of Athenian artists, Athenian masters of the drama, and of history. But their genius for abstract speculation as yet had nothing which it could claim as strictly its own. Socrates indeed laid the basis for such a work. During the half century preceding the appearance of Plato as the leader of a school of philosophy, Socrates had been engaged as a missionary of philosophy, awakening the curiosity of men; turning their thoughts to reflection on themselves, as creatures endowed with moral and intellectual faculties; and inspiring them with longings after some information on questions relating to their own nature, and a taste for discussions addressed to the resolution of such questions. Plato succeeded him, and carried the philosophical spirit, now fully called into action, to its result. His works accordingly display this spirit at its maturity; exemplifying at the same time that peculiar combination of qualities which formed the Athenian character. Thus are they at once serious and lively, abstract and imaginative; full of deep thought and feeling intermingled with gaiety and humour; instinctive with the awe of religion and ancient wisdom, whilst they present also an image of Athenian versatility, and frivolity, and love of change. They convey indeed a strong rebuke of the vices of the times. They draw, in no softened colouring, outlines of the evil and misery resulting from the profligacy of existing governments, and the excesses of individual culpability; the two great causes assigned by Plato for the prevailing evil of his times. But these lessons were calculated rather to interest the hearer or reader by their faithful representation of manners, than to alienate him, as we might at first think, by the justness of the censure. Athenians would give their attention to such descriptions, as they did to the invectives of their orators, acknowledging the general truth of the representation; and each, at the same time, taking no offence at what he applied to others, and to every one rather than to himself. Philosophy too, taught, as by Plato, colloquially, was such as particularly to suit the taste of the Athenian, whose life was in the agora, or the ecclesia, or the courts of law; and who regarded the interchange of words as no unimportant ingredient in everything that he had to do. Such conversation, too, as that of Plato's Dialogues, elegant conversation, steeped in the well-spring of Grecian literature, and expressed in language such as Jove, it was said, might use, and adorned with the charms of an exquisite musical rhythm, could not but be highly attractive to Athenian ears. We may see, accordingly, in these circumstances, at once, an occasion for the existence of such writings as those of Plato, and a reason of the peculiar mould in which they were cast, as well as of the success which attended them.

Not only, however, was the general character of his philosophy, as viewed in connection with the writings which convey it, derived from such influences; but the internal structure of it was the natural result of the peculiar education of such a mind as his, under the circumstances to which we have referred. His philosophy was essentially dialectical or colloquial; an examination and discussion of systems, and doctrines, and opinions. According to his notion, the true philosopher is the dialectician; the investigator, who has fought his way, step by step, through every argument capable of being adduced in support of, or against, a particular opinion, refusing those that are unsound, until at length he has found rest in some position that cannot be shaken. Hence he is the disciple of no particular system of philosophy, whilst he brings all systems under his survey, and compels all to pay a tribute to his stock of truth, by discussing them, and rejecting in them what will not abide the test of examination. We have seen that he was engaged in studying the doctrines of Heraclitus, and of the Pythagoreans, and of the other schools, whilst he was also a hearer of Socrates. He had thus begun in early life to analyse different systems by the searching method of Socrates; and his mature philosophy was only the same proceeding more deeply imbibed in his own mind, more extensively carried on, and more vigorously applied. So far, indeed, does the colloquial spirit predominate over his philosophy, so entirely dialectical is it in its whole internal character, that it leaves on the mind of the reader more an impression of a series of discussions, in order to the determination of the questions considered, than the conviction of any thing positively determined. Hence it is that Cicero, speaking of Plato's writings, says, that "in them nothing is affirmed; and much is discussed on both sides; everything is inquired into; nothing certain is said." So also Sextus Empiricus raises the question, in what respect the philosophy of Plato differs from that of the Sceptics. And again his doctrines have been characterized as brilliant clouds, which we seem at the point of grasping, when they vanish from our hands. This effect is doubtless partly to be ascribed to the disguise of his irony; to the artist-design which presides over his whole instruction. But it is also the proper effect of that dialectical philosophy which is worked out in the Dialogues. Whilst he is a consummate artist throughout, he is also illustrating the lessons which he had learnt from Socrates, by bringing false opinions to the test of discussion, and leaving truth, for the most part, to be collected from refutation of error, rather than positively enunciating it, or exactly defining it.

For when we come to examine his philosophy more closely, we find, that it begins and ends, like the lessons of Socrates, with a confession of the ignorance of man. Socrates had led him to perceive how much was taken for granted in the popular opinions and systems of philosophy; how even those who had a reputation for wisdom and talents took up principles which they had never examined, and which they could not satisfactorily account for, or defend, when pressed in argument. Imbibing, accordingly, the spirit of the Socratic method, he did not endeavour to teach, in the proper sense of the term, so much as to explore and test the minds of men; to ascertain, how far they really understood the doctrines and opinions which they professed. The fundamental error of the Sophists was, that they assumed all current opinions to be true. They did not think it necessary to examine this preliminary; whether the opinions on which they built their fabric of knowledge were true or false. It was enough for them, that certain opinions were actually held; and to these, as given principles, they directed their whole system of teaching. Their teaching, accordingly, was entirely ἐπιστήμης, relative to opinion; and it must, consequently, stand, or fall, as existing opinions could be maintained or impugned. Now, with Plato, as with Socrates, the investigation of this preliminary point (that is, whether existing opinions are true or no), is everything. The presumption that they are true, is what he will by no means admit. He demands a positive evidence of them. And as the presumption of their truth is a bar to all inquiry concerning them, he commences with the opposite presumption of their falsehood, or at least a confession on the part of the inquirer, that as yet—until he has investigated—he does not know the truth of his opinions.

For the same reason, he avoids all dogmatism in his conclusions. Those might aspire to communicate the knowledge of new truth to the mind, who, as the Sophists did, assumed that knowledge was entirely subjective; or who held that any opinion which could be produced in the mind, was simply true, was really known, because it was there. But as Plato denied the truth of Opinion, if it had no other evidence, but that of its mere presence in the mind; so, neither would he concede that any process of the mind in itself, or any argumentative and persuasive instructions, could produce, by their own force, a conviction of truth in the mind. In other words, he required the student of philosophy, not only to begin, but to end, with a confession of the ignorance of man.

We have an apt illustration of this in the dialogue entitled the First Alcibiades. There Socrates is introduced, questioning Alcibiades concerning his plans of life, and shewing how entirely he had presumed on his knowledge of matters with which he was unacquainted; and that until he could be brought to feel and confess his ignorance, there was no possibility of his being able to direct himself or others aright.

In the Meno, the same is illustrated by the comparison of the effect of the searching questions of Socrates, on the mind of the person submitted to them, to that of the torpedo. Meno says, he had thousands of times, and to many a person, and with much credit to himself, as he thought, spoken on the subject of virtue; but on conversing with Socrates, he was quite at a loss now to say even what virtue was.

To the same purport is the general application by Socrates in the Apology, of the oracle which pronounced him the wisest of men. The oracle, he observes, had only used his name by way of example, as if it had said, "He, O men! is the wisest of you, whoever, like Socrates, is convinced, that he is in truth worthless in respect of wisdom."

The method of Plato, accordingly, is the reverse of didactic. The Sophists could employ a didactic method; because they assumed principles as true, from which they might proceed to argue and persuade. But this was precluded to Plato, assuming, as he did, that all opinions demanded a previous examination. It was necessary for him to extort a confession of ignorance, to make men sensible of the difficulties belonging to a subject. It only remained, therefore, for him to proceed by Interrogation. In a colloquial philosophy, Interrogation is what experiment is in physical inquiry. It is the mode of discovering what the real state of a person's mind is, in regard to the opinions which he professes. The whole art of Socrates consisted in putting questions to the person with whom he conversed, so that an answer bearing on the point in debate might be elicited; that the grounds on which a given opinion was held might fully appear; and the person's own answers might open his mind to see it in its proper light. This method Plato has followed out in the interrogatory of his Dialogues. Under such a method of philosophy, the answerer is brought to teach himself. The lesson thus given by the philosopher, consists wholly in the questions which he puts. He preserves, from first to last, the simple character of the inquirer; and he pronounces only so far as he approves or rejects the answer given.

The popular opponents of this method called it a method of producing doubt; and regarded it as dangerous to the principles of the young. Plato carefully obviates such a misrepresentation of his proceeding, and guards his method from being confounded with that of the Sophists. The Sophists taught the art of exciting doubts on every subject; a mere effort of gladiatorial skill. They professed to make men apt to cavil and dispute on any given subject. All principles, according to them, were equally stable; all were equally open to be impugned. They, therefore, did not care how they unsettled the minds of men, if their skill could only find materials on which to exercise itself. In Plato's hands, however, the awakening of doubt has for its object, to remove the unstable ground on which opinions may happen to be rested, and to lead to more settled convictions. With him it is exalted into a regular discipline of the mind. With the Sophists, it was perverted to strengthen that universal scepticism in which their whole teaching was based. So strictly does Plato confine the application of his method to the single purpose of investigating the truth, that he strongly objects to the use of it as a mere exercise of ingenuity; lest the young, led on by the pleasure of refuting and perplexing others, should think, at last, that there were no real distinctions of right and wrong.

Plato seems the more anxious to distinguish his method of inquiry from that of the Sophists, as his method did in some measure resemble theirs. It was inquisitive on every subject, as theirs was. It did superficially appear to be nothing but questioning, and doubting, and cavilling. It did appeal to the reason of every man, and oblige him to see how he could defend his opinions. And on this very ground Socrates had been attacked: for he was accused of corrupting the young, by making them "doubt," ἀπορεῖν. Plato fully admits that this practice, as pursued by the Sophists, was dangerous to the principles of the young. In fact, he observes it would be even better to suffer them to remain under the guidance of some principles, which, though not true, served as restraints on their passions, than to remove everything from their minds, and leave no check whatever to licentious indulgence. By a beautiful illustration, he compares the effect produced by the sophistical method, to the case of a child brought up amidst wealth, and luxury, and high connections, and the society of flatterers, but in ignorance as to his real parentage. Suppose, he observes, such a person to come to know that those, whom he has hitherto believed to be his parents, are not so, and at the same time not to know who his real parents are. It is clear, that whilst in his state of ignorance concerning his supposed parents, he would respect and attend to them more than to his flatterers; but on finding out his mistake, unless he were of a superior character, such as is rarely met with, he would attend to his flatterers more than to those whom he once supposed to be his parents. So would it be, then, he shews, with one who should find out that the popular principles of morals in which he had been trained, were not the truth, without arriving, at the same time, at the real truth. He would no longer be controlled by those moral principles of which he had discovered the falsehood; but having nothing to substitute in their place, he would give way afterwards, without reserve, to the seductions of pleasures, the flatterers, whose blandishments he had before in some measure resisted. In opposition to such a system of cavilling, Plato holds an even course between the scepticism which merely doubts about everything, and the dogmatism which pronounces on everything without examination.

The method by which he accomplishes his object, carried out to the fulness of a regular system and discipline of the mind, is, what he calls by a term conveying to a Greek ear its colloquial origin and application, dialectic. As contrasted with the spurious method of the Sophists, or the method of contradicting on every subject, and involving the mind in endless perplexity, it was the true art of Discussion. As contrasted with the mere wisdom of opinion, δόξας, which the Sophists inculcated, it was philosophy, real science, or knowledge of the truth. The method of his philosophy, and his philosophy itself, thus run up into one, and coincide under the common name of Dialectic.

To trace the manner in which this coincidence was effected, will lead us to a perception of the true character of Plato's philosophy, as a system mediating between the dogmatism of the sciolist on the one hand, and the scepticism of the disputant on the other.

The hypothesis, we observe, on which he founded the whole of his proceeding, was the fallaciousness of Opinion; the Sophists, on the contrary, assuming the truth of Opinion. universally. Whilst to the Sophists every opinion served as a ground of argument, and for them there was no need to look beyond the apparent; it was necessary for Plato, to seek for some Criterion of Truth out of the region of mere Opinion. Commencing with denying the sufficiency of what metaphysicians call Subjective truth, or the assumption that whatever is perceived by the mind is true, because it is so perceived; he had to search after Objective truth, truth independent of the mind of man, and exempt from the contingencies and variations of human judgment, as a foundation of his system of knowledge.

The hypothesis, accordingly, of the fallaciousness of Opinion from which his Method set out, involved a corresponding hypothesis in philosophy of the fallaciousness of the senses. It is the joint application of these two fundamental principles that combines his Method and his Philosophy in one master-science of Dialectic. Opinion, according to him, is the kind of knowledge derived from the information of the senses, and is therefore no proper knowledge at all, but mere belief or persuasion, ἐπιστήμη; whereas true knowledge is founded on that which is purely apprehended by the intellect, without any intervention whatever of the senses. Dialectic, as it is Philosophy, is conversant about that which is, or which has being, as contrasted with presentations to the senses, which have only the semblance of Being; as it is a Method, it investigates the reason, or account of the Being of everything,—the account of everything as it is, and not as it appears; not being satisfied, like its sophistical counterpart, with opinions of which no account can be given, but bringing all to the test of exact argument and definition.

In order, therefore, to give his Method a firm basis, and his Philosophy a distinct object, it was required, that he should establish a sound theory of Being, or, in other words, a sure Criterion of Truth. Such, then, was his celebrated Theory of Ideas.

There are four distinct views embraced in this theory as it is developed by Plato; four phases, as it were, under which it is presented.

I. The first, and most strictly Platonic view of it, according to what we have already stated, is in its connection with logical science. None of the great philosophers before Plato; none, that is, of those who had speculated on the universe at large, as Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, were conversant with logical science. Zeno the Eleatic, and Euclid of Megara, were known indeed as dialecticians. But the kind of logical science which they professed, was a rude and imperfect art, consisting chiefly in the knowledge and use of particular fallacies, and not founded in any deep study of the nature of thought and reasoning. They were, besides, mere dialecticians, rather than philosophers in the most extended sense of the term. Plato's mind, however, while it was engaged in logical studies, was also no less intent on the investigation of the first principles of all things. And, as has been often observed in other cases, the favourite study of his mind gave its complexion to his theory of first principles, or doctrine of Ideas.

The term "Idea" does not indeed convey to the understanding of a modern any notion of a connection of the theory with logical science. In our acceptation, it belongs exclusively to metaphysics. But in Plato's view there was no separation of the two branches of logic and metaphysics. Both were closely united in the one science to which he gave the name of Dialectic, and which was accordingly at once a science of the internal reason,—that is, of the processes of the mind in its silent speculation on things; and of the external reason,—that is, of the processes of the mind in communicating its speculations to others in words. The terms, therefore, belonging to the one process, are indiscriminately applied to the other. Thus, to "give a reason" of the being of a thing, ἀδείαν λόγον τῆς ὑφίστασθαι, was equivalent to a scientific view of it; and the word λόγος denoted at once the terms of language by which that reason was expressed, and the reason itself as it existed in the mind. Thus, too, the word ἰδέα, or ideas, was only a little varied from the logical term ἰδέα, or species, which indeed is sometimes substituted for it in the phraseology of Plato. The simplicity, accordingly, and invariableness, and universality, which belong to terms denoting the agreement of a variety of objects in certain characteristics, were transferred to supposed counterparts in the mind itself, or to the notions represented by the terms which are the name of the species. Hence the idea, or eidōs, was conceived to be, not simply a result of a process of the mind, but something in the mind, and as having a being independent of the mind itself. As the species expressed in words was universal, so its counterpart in the mind was the universal nature in which the individuals to which it referred, participated. In that, the mind, perplexed by the variety and anomaly of individual objects, found an invariable sameness. In the contemplation of it, the mind no longer wavered and doubted, but obtained a fixity of view. The idea, or species, therefore, was to be explored and reached in order to a just theory of everything, and was in itself that theory.

Further, as there is a relative classification of objects by means of words; some standing for characteristics common to a greater number of objects, whilst others stand for characteristics of only some out of that number; this property of words was in like manner conceived to have its counterpart in the mind. A graduated series of species was supposed to exist, first in the mind, and then independent of the mind, by means of which, as by steps, the mind might rise to the highest species, the ultimate idea itself, in which all others were comprehended. And hence there was no real perfect science but that which penetrated to this ultimate nature or being; and all other ideas, or theories, were truly scientific only as they participated in this.

This notion of "participation" of the ideas, was a still further application of logical language to the business of philosophy in general. For, as the several particulars belonging to a species all possess those characteristics which constitute their species, as well as those which connect them with a higher species or genus of which they are the species, their logical description is made up of an enumeration of those characteristics, together with the name of the higher class or genus under which the whole species is included. The higher class is an ingredient in the specification of a lower; or, conversely, a lower class participates in a higher. So Plato considered everything in the universe, as being what it is, by a "participation" of the Ideas; and consequently, that to explore its nature we must ascertain the idea which thus constitutes it. The Pythagoreans before him spoke of things as existing by "assimilation" to the essential being. Plato's logical views occasioned this change of phraseology; for he varied only the term, as Aristotle observes, whilst he followed the Pythagoreans as masters in the fundamental conception of his theory. Aristotle, indeed, whilst he assigns the logical studies of Plato as the occasion of the form of the ideal theory, more particularly accounts for the theory, from Plato's observation of the importance of Definitions in the ethical discussions of Socrates. Plato found how effectual an instrument Definition had been in the hands of Socrates in silencing the impertinencies of false opinion on moral subjects. As it had brought moral questions to an issue, so it might be applied, he thought, generally, as a stay to the extravagancies of opinion on all subjects whatever. Accordingly he had only to generalize the principle of definitions, and the result was the theory of

1 Aristot. Metaph. i. 6. Plato's Ideas, or the universal science of reasons, and the ultimate criterion of all truth.

To understand, however, rightly how Plato was led by logical considerations to his theory of Ideas, we should observe more particularly what his view was of the nature of logic. We should greatly misapprehend him if we supposed that he had that notion of the science which has prevailed since the systematic exposition of it by Aristotle. As it was conceived by Plato, it answered strictly to its original name of Dialectic, rather than to that of Logic; being the art of discussion, or the art of drawing forth the truth from the mind by questioning, rather than the art of deducing consequences from given principles. It was a higher, more comprehensive science, than the art of Deduction. For it was conversant about the discovery and establishment of principles; whereas the logical science which is employed about Deduction, assumes the principles in order to speculate about their consequences. It left the latter inquiry to be pursued by subsequent research, whilst the more ambitious flight of those who first speculated on the nature of Discourse was directed to the discovery of truth. In Plato's hands it was an energetic reform of the quibbling shallow logic, which was as yet known and practised in the schools. This logic had no concern for truth, but only for victory and display. It consisted in a skill of wielding certain sophisms, known by familiar names in the schools, and founded on the equivocations of words. An appearance of truth being all that it aimed at, it did not exact of the student any consideration of the nature of things. It was enough that he could give the word reason, the mere logos, the symbol or counter. He was not taught to go beyond this legerdemain of language, or to search out the reason of the being of things, and correct the paralogisms involved in the use of words, by reference to the realities represented by them. This sophistical method affected indeed to be a dialectic art; to instruct and furnish the mind with principles applicable to every subject of discussion. It considered, forsooth, language as an universal science of nature already constructed; and, proceeding on this supposition, professed to enable the student to apply the wisdom already embodied in language, to the purpose of appearing wise himself, and imparting to others the same apparent wisdom. But going no further than this, it ended in mere ἀπόστασις, mere opinion. It produced, that is, in the result, only a wavering state of mind, subject to be changed by every new impression of opposite arguments, and, after all, imparted no steady knowledge.

It was a great reform, then, which Plato undertook, in following up the example proposed in the conversations of Socrates, and instituting a proper science of Dialectic, a science of the reason of the being of things. It was a change from an empirical system, a vain art of words, to a scientific method or investigation of the reasons themselves, on which an instructive use of words must be founded.

For, we must observe, it was still a science of words which he teaches as the true Logic or Dialectic. It had throughout a reference to discussion. Still it was a real science as compared with the verbal and technical logic of his predecessors. Though it was a science of words, it had for its object the determination of such words as should fully correspond to their intention as symbols, in characterizing and denoting the proper being of the thing signified. These reasons of the being of things, the λόγοι τῆς ὕλης, were the Ideas.

His logical method, accordingly, was an analytical, inductive method. Setting out on the assumption of the erroneousness of opinion as such, it examines hypothesis after hypothesis on each subject proposed for discussion, rejecting and excluding, as it proceeds, everything irrelevant. The scrutiny instituted consists in searching for the grounds of contradiction with regard to each opinion, and shewing that opposite views on point after point in the matter discussed, are at least as tenable as the assumptions contained in the given opinion or hypothesis. Hence it consists almost entirely of refutation, or what both he and Aristotle denominate ἐλέγχος, a process of reasoning by which the contradictory of a given conclusion is inferred.

A method of this kind was calculated fully to put to the test every unsound opinion. It collected everything that could be said either for or against a given opinion. It made the maintainer of it state on what grounds he maintained it, what consequences followed from it; and either forced him to self-contradiction in his defence of it, or obliged him to modify it according to the requisitions of the argument. And the result was, that whatever stood its ground after this complete sitting of the question, might be regarded as stable truth. When refutation had done its utmost, and all the points of difficulty and objection had been fully brought out, the dialectical process had accomplished its purpose; and the affirmative which remained after this discussion might be regarded as setting forth the truth of the question under consideration. For everything connected with it, and yet not founded in the truth of things, was then removed. And the result therefore might be accepted as a simple truth of being, an object which the eye of the intellect might steadily contemplate, and therefore matter of Science.

The process throughout corresponds with the process of investigation in modern philosophy. Only we must conceive the dialectical investigation of Plato as nothing more than an admirable scheme for clearing a question of everything foreign to it; whilst the latter draws out the true law of nature from the promiscuous assemblage of phenomena under which it is presented to observation, and lies concealed until analysis has done its work on the mass. The nomenclature of the two methods varies accordingly. Argument is the instrument of the former; experiment, that of the latter. Refutation is the primary business of the former; rejection and exclusion of irrelevant phenomena that of the latter. Definitions of words, as they are signs of the being of things, are the result of the former; whilst the latter develops laws of nature.

Both processes are carried on by Interrogation. But whereas the analysis which investigates a law of nature proceeds by interrogation of nature, the analysis of Plato's dialectic proceeds by interrogation of the mind, in order to discover the true being or "idea" of the thing discussed. Therefore it was that Socrates called his art, in his own playful manner, ἀνάγκης, a kind of midwifery; a delivering of the mind of the notions with which it was pregnant. Thus the dialectic of Plato, being entirely directed to observation on the mind, and not to external nature, takes the state of knowledge as it exists in the mind for the ground of its proceeding. It deals with things; that is, as they exist in the forms of thought; going, as Plato says, "from species to species, until it arrives at the principle of all things," and following throughout the steps by which the mind advances in obtaining an exact view of any object of its contemplation. It is, in fact, the true thought spoken out. The process of thinking by which it is attained, is the dialectical process of interrogation. The decision of the mind when its conviction is settled, is the dialectical conclusion.*

The chief logical instrument employed in this method is Division. The being able to divide according to genera, and not to consider the same species as different, nor a different one as the same, is stated to belong especially to dialectical science.* In searching out the true definition of the being of a thing, this portion of the internal process of the mind would naturally strike the attention. General ideas being founded on general resemblances of objects, the first step towards a more distinct idea of an object is to see that the generalization is complete; that it neither excludes nor includes any objects which it ought not to exclude or include. The true idea of any object would be that which characterized every object belonging to the idea, and none other. The analysis accordingly pursued by Plato is conversant about Division, using the induction of particulars in subordination to this. We find, indeed, a constant use of Induction by Plato, after the manner of Socrates. But it is always in reference to the main purpose of determining, not a general fact, but the dominant Idea in every object of thought.

At the same time, we may observe, the Dialectic of Plato is truly a method of investigation, though it does not penetrate to the depth of the modern analysis. It employed deductive reasonings; but these were not essential parts of its method; since the whole was a process of ascent to the theory of the Ideas.

Afterwards, indeed, Dialectic approximated to what is now commonly understood by Logic. The transition was first to the consideration of it as a method of drawing out the probable conclusions deducible from given premises. This was natural. For in Plato's method every opinion was admitted as an hypothesis to be examined, in order to rejecting the falsehood and eliciting the truth that might be contained in it; and so far his Dialectic might be regarded as a speculation on probabilities. This transition prepared the way for a further one, when Dialectic became strictly the science of Deduction. Attention would be drawn more and more to the use of words as instruments of reasoning, when Dialectic was once exalted into the rank of a science.

The progress seems to be this. The science being cultivated primarily with a view to discussion, the importance of language in order to reasoning could not fail, from the first direction of the mind in this channel, to strike the philosophical observer. The phenomena of sophistical argument would suggest the necessity of inquiry into words as they are employed in reasoning. Philosophers, accordingly, would be led to examine into the nature of words considered as signs and representatives of thought. Thus they would proceed to arrange words into classes, according to their import in this respect. Thus would be obtained that great division of words into those that denote an individual alone, and those that stand both for many and for one, or into singular and common—the fundamental principle of logic properly so called, or of logic as the science is now considered. The use of Division and Definition would soon appear. These processes, indeed, would be naturally discovered in the very prosecution of discussions addressed to the refutation of false opinions and popular fallacies. The early dialectics, accordingly, abounded in the use of them.

Afterwards, as the analytical power of language came to be more particularly observed, the connections of words in propositions and arguments would attract speculation. The possibility of exhibiting any given proposition or argument under abstract formulas, in which unmeaning symbols were substituted for the terms themselves of the proposition or argument, would at length be discovered. Thus in the result would be erected a formal science of logic, in which language would be considered as an artificial system of signs, and the validity of arguments would be explored in their abstract forms, independently of the subject-matter about which they happen to be conversant.

When Plato, however, drew his Theory of Ideas from the logical speculations in which his mind was engaged, there was no such system as that now found in treatises of logic. There are the materials in the writings of Plato for constructing a method of dialectic, such as the science presented itself to his view; but that method remains, even to this day, to be fully explored and stated. It is clear that he had such a system, and that his writings proceed on regular method; though he has nowhere accurately sketched it, and perhaps never even proposed it to himself in the form of a system. His thoughts were engaged in this, as in other subjects, in giving the great outlines of his philosophy. It was enough for him to have seized the bearings of logical truth on all truth; and to this general view of the science he has made everything secondary and subservient.

II. The next aspect under which the Theory of Ideas should be considered, is that in which it sums up and measures the infinites of the sensible world. In this point of view, it more immediately represented its Pythagorean prototype, than under its logical aspect. It is in reference to this intention of the theory that Aristotle objects, that whilst it professes to give the account of things, it introduces an additional number of objects in the Ideas themselves; an absurdity, he observes, like that of attempting to facilitate a calculation by adding to the numbers to be calculated. It was, accordingly, an endeavour to reckon up the individuals of the universe, and exhibit their sum in one statement. As Plato's logical speculations gave their colour to his whole philosophy, so the devotion of the Pythagoreans to mathematics led them to form a mathematical theory of the universe. The universal nature of Number gave them the ground for this application of their peculiar studies. For all things are in number; and there is nothing from which the notion of number may not be abstracted. That number, then, which alone measures all other numbers,—Unity,—would be regarded as the common measure of all things. And thus the philosophy of the universe would be reduced to a system of calculation; and the infinity of existing things summed up in definite proportions of numbers. The Greek word \(\text{logos}\), whilst it combined in it the notions of "word" and "reason," also further combined that of "ratio," and reasoning and calculating were expressed by the one term \(\text{logos}\). This marks the connected trains of thought by which the arithmetical theory of the Pythagoreans was formed. The effects of this combination of thought are seen, not only in the fundamental conception of the theory, but in our ordinary phraseology on the subject of reasoning even at this day; as, for example, in our use of the word "Term,"—that is, "limit," or "boundary,"—for words, not only in their logical signification, but even in their familiar use.

It appears to have struck the mind of Plato that the theory of the Pythagoreans was not sufficiently comprehensive, or even ultimate, as an account of the Being of things. The simplicity of Number did not adequately explain the great variety of natures found in the universe; and though the science of Arithmetic held almost the highest place in his scale of knowledge, on account of its ab- Plato's Writings and Philosophy.

constant production; being the momentary, ever-varying results of the concourse of agent and patient. Colour, for example, as the object, and sight of the colour in the eye as the sensation, are momentary relations simultaneously produced by something that acts in the coloured object, at the moment, on something that receives the impression in the eye. This doctrine resolved all knowledge into sensation, and (which was equivalent to this) made "man the measure of all things," according to the celebrated enunciation of Protagoras.

Plato saw that, if these views were admitted as an account of the universe, his whole dialectic must fall to the ground. It would be nothing but miserable trifling to try to call forth those reasons of things which he conceived to be in the mind, if knowledge were of this fluctuating character. There could not, in fact, be then any such reasons. There was nothing stable, nothing that remained in the mind, to serve as the standing criterion of true and false opinions. There would be no distinguishing whether all that passed in life were not a dream, or whether the occurrences in dreams were not rather the realities. Some sure criterion was therefore wanted, to which the phenomena of sensation might be referred. The theory of Ideas, as a theory of Being, furnished this.

Plato admitted, accordingly, the perpetual flux of sensations and their objects, as taught by Heraclitus, whilst he refuted the sophistical extravagancies into which the doctrine had been carried. Granting, therefore, that there was no test of truth or falsehood in the sensations themselves, he points out, that the ground of fallaciousness is in the judgments formed by the mind concerning the impressions of the senses. The soul is endowed with a common power of perception, to which the reports of the different senses are referred, and by means of which the mind is enabled to compare past and present sensations of the same kind, as also different sensations with one another. It is in the conclusions then formed on these comparisons that we are to seek for knowledge; or in the purely mental processes, abandoning altogether the mere informations of sense.

He was led, accordingly, to examine these processes of the mind, in order to discover the grounds of truth and knowledge. He observed, that when the mind compares two sensations, and decides on their similarity or difference, there is always some ground on which that judgment is made. When, for instance, it decides on the equality of two things, there is a standard to which they are referred, the general notion of equality itself, which serves as a middle term for testing the equality of the two things compared. In like manner, there is always, whenever a comparison is made by the mind, some general principle, which is the medium of the comparison. And this is a principle not in any way produced by the sensations; for it is evidently prior to them, and independent of them; being appealed to by the mind as a criterion of them. This general principle, then, is in every instance the Idea; and not being formed by the sensations, it is not subject to their variability. It remains unmoved, and the same, amidst the flow of the sensations, or of the objects of the sensations—the standing criterion of all the judgments of the mind to which it applies.

Hence we may see the peculiar meaning of the term "Idea" in Plato's philosophy. It consists in its contrast with the objects of sensation. The latter never attain to any definite perfect form—to any clear outline, as it were, to

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1 Rep. vii. ad fin. The importance assigned to arithmetic in the early philosophy, is shown in that line of Aeschylus: Καὶ πάντες ἀριθμοῦ ἐγὼν εἰσηγοῦμαι. (Prom. 459.) 2 ὅτι τὸ ἄριστον ἀποδείκνυσιν ἀληθῶς τὸ ἀριθμοῦ ἐγὼν. (Phileb. p. 303; also Rep. vi.) 3 Thetetus. 4 Phileb. pp. 170, 230-236; Rep. vii. pp. 143-147; Thetetus. 5 Ibid. p. 82. 6 Ibid. pp. 130-144. 7 Ibid. pp. 130-144. They flow and have vanished before they could attain to such form; since, in the very succeeding one another, they not only pass away, but undergo alteration. But the standard to which they are referred in the mind, is a positive defined shape, or form, or species, simple and uniform, analogous to an object of sight of which we can clearly trace the whole outline by the eye. For the like reason, the term exemplar, ἐξαπλάσιον, is also applied to denote the Idea. As the one perfect standard to which all the reports of the senses are referred, it appears in the light of a pattern, to which they would be conformed, but for that incessant mutability which necessarily belongs to them. This, however, was rather the Pythagorean view of general principles than the Platonic, though Plato himself not unfrequently recurs to it.

Plato, at the same time, in thus constituting Ideas the sole absolute criteria of real existence, did not intend to deny all reality whatever to conclusions drawn from our sensible experience, such as those of the physical sciences. But he means, in the first place, to shew the delusive character of all informations of sense which are not corrected by the internal reason of the mind. In the next place, his design is to point out the inferior knowledge which every other kind of evidence conveys, but that which is drawn from the intuitive perceptions of the mind. The informations of sense, he teaches, are only a knowledge of semblances or idols, ἰδόμενα, conjecture founded on mere images of the truth. He describes this kind of knowledge by an admirable illustration from a supposed case of men placed in a long cavern, with their bodies so chained from infancy, that they can only look before them, whilst the light of a fire from behind casts on the side opposite to them, the shadows of vessels, and statues of stone and wood, carried along a track leading upwards from the cavern by persons who are themselves concealed by a wall, like the exhibitors of puppets. As men so circumstanced would see nothing of themselves, and of each other, or of the things thus carried along, but the shadows, they would mistake the shadows for the realities; they would speak of the shadows as if these were the things; and if any voice was heard from the persons carrying along the figures, they would think the sounds proceeded from the passing shadow. Just like this, he declares, is the influence of education in the lower world of sense on the minds of men. They must be carried up from this cavern, in which they see everything only by an artificial light, to the light of the sun itself, to the region of Ideas, where alone objects are seen as they are in themselves.

As to the knowledge conveyed by the physical sciences, neither is this properly Science. It amounts only, as he states it, to belief or opinion. These are less intellectual than the mathematical sciences, because they are conversant about human opinions and desires, or about the production and composition of things, or about the means of sustaining things produced and compounded. They are therefore as unstable as the things about which they are. But they are still not devoid of evidence, so far as they collect the real informations of the senses, and do not learn from mere shadows. This is implied in his calling such knowledge belief, and distinguishing it from conjecture; though he is rigid in preserving the exclusive prerogative of Truth to the knowledge of the Ideas.

The evidence of Experience was necessarily slighted in such a philosophy, and condemned as insufficient for the discovery of truth. For what is Experience but the memory of several similar previous informations of sense, combined into one general conclusion? And though Aristotle allows that such a general conclusion, in which the mind acquiesces, might be regarded as scientific, this could not be admitted by a philosopher who placed the objects of sensation out of the pale of Being. It was not enough for Plato's system to answer in favour of the scientific value of Experience, that though this and that particular instance of an information of sense had no immoveable truth in it, yet, from the observation of a number of similar instances, a general uniformity might be inferred, and an immoveable general principle established. He would grant that generalization was a corrective of experience. For this he did when he granted some importance to the arts in education, and for the purposes of life. But truth with him must be universal, not simply general: it must be that which is always the same, not simply that which is only for the most part. And the highest degree of the evidence of experience, even that which amounts to what is called moral certainty, falls short of this absolute universality. It might be urged, for example, that though what was sweet to one person and at one time, might be bitter to another person and at another time; and though what seemed the same sensation of sweet, was not in fact the same at two successive moments, but a reproduction; still it was possible, by combining recollections of many similar instances, to form a general notion which should adequately characterize that sensation. Still Plato would say, this was only belief or opinion, and not science. The object of science must be such as cannot be otherwise: it must be absolutely one and the same permanent being: you must altogether quit the stream of the world of sense, and land on the rock of unchangeable eternal Being.

Thus Rhetoric is strongly reprobated by Plato, on the very ground on which it is systematically taught by Aristotle, of its being nothing more than an instrument of persuasion, or an art speculating on the means of persuasion. Much of his invective indeed derives its point from its application to the servile rhetoricians of his day. Still we find him condemning Rhetoric on the abstract ground of its having no higher view than persuasion. In the modern view of the subject, as in Aristotle's, Rhetoric is a real science, so far as it is framed on just conclusions respecting those modes of speaking or writing, which excite interest and produce conviction. With Plato it is mere quackery; and for this reason, that it is founded on experience of what persuades, being only an ἱπποτροπή or ἐπικίνδυνος, a knack acquired by experience and converse with the world; an accomplishment, learned by practice, without any real knowledge, in flattering the passions of men. He in fact regarded Experience as corresponding with what we call empiricism; contrasting it with the conclusions of abstract reason, as we contrast an illiterate and unscientific use of experience with that of the philosopher.

Looking to that sort of Experience on which the popular teaching of the Sophists was founded, Plato, we should say, was fully justified in his condemnation of the experimental method of his day. It was in truth mere quackery. It was content with shadows and images of the truth, and entirely directed to producing a desired effect, without caring for the absolute truth—a shallow philosophy of sensation, not founded in the nature of things. He had thus to contend against a system, which distorted that criterion of truth, which man has in himself, by the right use of his reason conjointly with his experience, to the undermining of all truth and reality. This empirical system was the crying evil of those times. It had infected politics, and education, and private intercourse, as well as philosophy. In opposition to it, he had to take up an antithetical position; to call in question the existing acceptation and use of the human criterion of truth; to limit it within its proper bounds, and guard against its perversion. Accordingly the whole stress of his philosophy is on this point. It is a perpetual polemic against the sophistical principle, that "man is the measure of all things." This amply accounts for his disparaging so much as he does, the scientific value of Experience, and insisting on the necessity of the existence of higher principles than those of Experience, in order that the mind may duly receive and appreciate the information of sense. He taught men, at any rate, to perceive that the popular notion of that evidence of truth which man has in his own nature was false and deceptive, and that in all judgments and reasonings there is also something more than is merely of man.

IV. The fourth leading point of view under which the Theory of Ideas remains to be considered, is its aspect as it is a theory of the Cause of the universe. Under this aspect it is identified with the speculation into the Chief Good. Here it is an account at once of the first principle of motion, and of the end to which all things tend as their perfection and ultimate good. According to Plato, there was no other cause worthy of the name, or which really accounted for the phenomena of the universe, but "The Good," or, as it is technically called, the Final Cause. The early speculations of philosophers had been chiefly directed to the material phenomena of the universe, and had attempted to account for them in a rude manner, by referring them to some one or more of the material elements. Some indeed had introduced also moral influences into their theory. The Pythagoreans combined with their speculation of the mysterious Unity, the notion of Love as the one-making principle. The Ionic school, however, appears to have led the opinion of philosophers in regard to the cause of the universe at the time of Plato. And though Anaxagoras asserted the ascendancy of Mind, he had lost sight of his great theory in the explanations from material causes, to which he descended in the completion of his system. Socrates began a strenuous opposition to the physical philosophers. Plato carried on that opposition, and, blending the familiar ethics of Socrates with the moral and theological mysticism of the Pythagoreans, established the Final Cause or theory of "the Good," as supreme over the domain of science.

Anaxagoras had certainly prepared the way for the theory. Plato took up his doctrine of a Divine Intelligence, and gave it that development which, as it had been taught by Anaxagoras himself, it yet waited to receive. It was but a vain theory of a Supreme Mind (sublime and important as the simple enunciation of the great truth was), which did not also exhibit the Supreme Mind as operating in the universe by design, and as diffusing the energy of its intelligence and goodness, as well as of its power, throughout its operations.

The Supreme Mind, therefore, according to Plato, must be conceived, as exemplifying the attributes of its own nature in the works which have proceeded from it. If it be granted that there is a Supreme Mind, that must be the true measure of all things in the universe. All things must have been framed according to the scheme which such a mind would contemplate in their production. As intelligence, it cannot be regarded but as working for some object, inas far; for by this is intelligence distinguished from unintelligent force; and the only object to the Supreme Intelligence is the most perfect nature, which is itself. The pattern of its own perfections, therefore, must have been present to it, and in its design, in the construction of the universe. In other words, the Deity himself is not only the author of all things, but he has designed to exemplify in them his own attributes. The principle, accordingly, by which all true philosophy must hold, and which it must carry out into its speculations, is, that "God is the measure of all things." And hence, whenever the proper being of any thing is to be explored, it must be studied in that light in which it is seen as a work of the Supreme Mind, designed after the pattern of the Divine perfections. In such a contemplation, the theory of the Best is the view by which philosophy must be guided; for, in Ancient Philosophy, an object of intelligent aim, and good, are equivalent terms. The object at which the most perfect Intelligence aims, must be, therefore, that which is best; and in tracing out, accordingly, the workings of the Divine Mind in the world, we must look for "the best" in everything. That notion of everything by which it is "best," is both its real nature, and the cause of its being produced.

But why is not everything, as it is actually seen, a work of "the best"? why is not good visibly impressed on everything as it stands forth to the view? why must we, in short, resort to the Idea of good, in order to ascertain its nature, instead of taking it simply as it appears?

The antagonist force of unreason in the nature of that which has body, and is apprehended by the senses, occasions all the imperfection and evil in the world, as the world actually exists. It subsisted already in the mass of disorder and confusion which the Divine Intelligence, by its operation, had brought into order and regularity of motion; and it still subsists, though reduced into subordination to intelligence. It is overruled so as to minister to the designs of mind, but still impedes by its contrariety of nature the development of good in the world. And thus Plato says that it is impossible for evils to perish out of the world, for that there must ever exist a contrariety to good. Evil pre-existed, and evil accordingly must be displaced by the presence of good; as contraries are displaced by contraries; and as all generation, or production, is carried on by a process from contrary to contrary. Thus, though evil retires before good in the world of generated things, evil still manifests itself in the very act of its retiring before good; and a perpetual opposition of good and evil remains. What we see, accordingly, in the world, is not the perfect accomplishment of good, but effort and tendency after good in all things. The effects of a struggle between reason and unreason are manifested, on the one hand, in the evanescent imperfect nature of all sensible things; and, on the other hand, in their constant renewing, or in that undying vigour with which they flow on, and are reproduced, and aim at a perfection beyond themselves.

Though, therefore, the Divine Artificer has designed everything in the world for the best, they are not actually the best as they are presented to our senses. They are the best that such things can be, but they do not attain to the Idea of good, according to which they have been made. Time, for example, only imperfectly represents the divine eternity, which is its true Idea. In eternity there is no distinction of past, present, and future. But the bodily nature of things will not admit of this co-instantaneous development of the divine Idea. Existence is here broken up into successive moments; and these successive moments, marked by the periodic motions of the heavenly bodies, introduce the distinctions of number into the simple idea of duration. Again, the velocities of the heavenly bodies, which are observed by the astronomer, must be conceived as very in- adequate representatives of the "real velocities performed in the true number and true figures," which are the "Ideas" after which they have been established. Or, again, it is clear that the ideas of the good, and the just, and the honourable, and the beautiful, as they are seen in the world around us, are only imperfectly developed. Our thoughts are distracted by the contemplation of them in the world, by the multiplicity of forms under which they are apprehended by men, and it seems to the superficial glance as if there were no one perfect standard of each. At the same time, we are able to trace evident signs of such a standard, when we look thoughtfully at the course of things. We cannot doubt, on such examination, that these principles exist, and are working their way, and that the universe has been constructed after the pattern of them. But all that the most attentive study will disclose to us as actually observed, is tendency towards these principles—a "becoming" or incipiency of being. We do not see their full effect, or what would be their effect, if the world were such as to give them free scope and exercise, and if the impressions of sense did not diversify and obscure the presentations of them to our minds. Must we not say, then, that if we formed our notions of these principles from the visible world, and the impressions of sense, that we must estimate them improperly? And must we not rather elevate our minds to the Ideas themselves, after which the universe has been constituted in its present order, and take our measures of them from the Divine Being, whose goodness, and truth, and beauty, they represent?

Thus did the Theory of Ideas serve as a moral explanation of the course of nature, and meet the demand of philosophy, by removing the perplexity of the mind on the contemplation of the apparent disorder of the world, and giving a firm stay to the thought in this direction. This apparent disorder has been the constant appeal of the atheist and the sceptic in all ages. And in Plato's time there was need, we find from several passages of his writings, of an answer on the part of philosophy to speculative objections on this ground. The Theory of Ideas supplied this answer. By the theory of a perfect model of good, imperfectly wrought out in the visible universe, the existence of evil was accounted for in some degree, and the eye of thought was enabled to see a chain of goodness, and beauty, and order, binding together the most untoward appearances of the moral world. As the Pythagoreans enchained these disjointed portions of the moral fabric, by supposing a fundamental Unity pervading the whole, and reducing the multiple and the unlimited to definite proportion—a sort of keynote, modulating the apparent discords of nature—so Plato made the one moral good the all-pervading moderator of the system of the universe. The abstract notions, the genera, and the species, and the definitions, which dialectical science brought out by the aid of language, presented the materials for extending the moral view to other notions besides those strictly moral; and thus a theological and moral complexion was spread over the whole region of philosophy.

Ideas of evil were evidently excluded. "The good" could not be the cause of all things, but only of those that were well constituted; of evils it was causeless. Evil, as we have seen, had no exemplar or pattern in the nature of the Author of the universe. It was a condition of that bodily nature on which the good was actively displayed. Plato's Evil arose from the nature of the "diverse" inherent in body; that nature in body by which it was contradistinguished from the "sameness" belonging to the Ideas.

In considering the Theory of Ideas under the different aspects which it presents, we have in fact taken a summary view of the whole of Plato's philosophy. This theory is the cardinal principle of the whole. The speculations on particular branches of philosophy are all included in this one theory, which binds them together and explains them. For when the mind had once risen to the contemplation of the Ideas, it needed no further helps from observation or study of nature to understand all knowledge. The mind was then in possession of the only true principles of knowledge; and to enter into the consideration of material and sensible phenomena, was only to return to the darkness and the dreams from which the eye of the intellect had been purified,—to quit the light of the sun for the cavern of shadows.

Accordingly, all his writings are devoted to the establishment of this theory. Proceeding on that notion of the importance of the theory which he inculcates, he bends every thought to this one point. No one science is set forth by him in detail; no one subject obtains with him a full and explicit consideration. All is resolved into its most abstract and general view, that the mind may be led to see the common principles of all truth; so intent is he throughout on his theory of Ideas, whatever may be his immediate subject of discussion. He assumes hypotheses, and examines them, and refutes them, in the way of argument, without pronouncing on either side of a particular question, as if indifferent about the establishment of any mere opinion, and desirous only of clearing his way for the perception of his theory.

But to place that theory in its full light, we should advert to the theories of Knowledge and of the Soul, which are intimately connected with it. These theories contain his account of the origin of the Ideas.

Knowledge, according to Plato, is Reminiscence, ἀναμνήσις, a recovery of forgotten truth, which had been possessed by the soul in a former state of existence. His dialectic professed to do nothing more than to lead the mind, by apt interrogation, to perceive the Truth for itself. It abandoned the attempt to communicate the Truth by dialectic propositions. It only removed falsehood, and left the truth to its own course, to suggest itself to the mind, now disabused of its error and prejudice. It appealed to principles as certain criteria of truth, and yet confessed its inability to state those principles, and place them distinctly before the mind of the learner. They were simply referred to, as existing in every mind, whatever might be the peculiar opinions of the individual to whom the questions of the dialectician were addressed. How, then, could those principles have been acquired? No time in the present life could be pointed out when they first appeared in the mind. They are prior to the sensations, for the sensations are referred to them; and the sensations we have had from our birth. These standard principles, then, must have been acquired in a previous state of existence, and what is commonly called learning, is, in fact, Reminiscence; and to know, is, properly speaking, to remember.

In proof of this account of the origin of the Ideas, Plato introduces Socrates making an experiment on the mind of a particular occasion which suggest them. It shews further, that these principles are in some way dependent on such occasions for their development, though not dependent on them for their truth and reality; for the mind accepts them as true, and as the criteria of all other truths, at the moment when they are presented to it. This, then, is what is really illustrated in Plato's instance in the Memo. Geometrical science is the best illustration of it; though it is seen also in all our judgments and reasonings; because the remote conclusions to which we are brought by the chain of exact demonstration in that science from a few very simple definitions, present the fact most strikingly. Those conclusions are clearly far beyond the apparent compass of the definitions themselves. They are strictly deduced from them, however, and with an irresistible cogency of argument. The wonder is accounted for by the fact to which Plato has called our attention. The demonstration of the problem appeals in every successive step to the intuitive convictions of the mind. Ideas are suggested by which the statements at each point of the proof are tested; and we sanction the conclusion ultimately, because the process by which we arrive at it has been approved throughout by clear principles of our own minds.

But though the theory of Reminiscence has not been satisfactorily made out by Plato, he has the merit of having distinctly noticed and marked, in speculating on the origin of the Ideas, a class of notions of which no previous account, as it seems, had been given. The philosophy of sensation had before his time chiefly engaged the attention of thinking men, whether of those of the Eleatic school, who made everything "stationary," or of the Ionic, who made everything "flow." It had been carried into the extreme of refinement by the Sophists, its devotees, when Plato commenced his antagonist system. He found that this philosophy was too narrow a basis for the structure of science, and that it could not stand alone. He saw that it left altogether unexplored the perceptions of the mind itself; such, for example, as the notions of equality, identity, time, causation, right, &c.; and that these notions were, in truth, more important for the establishment of science, than those which had previously chiefly attracted the attention of philosophers. He applied himself accordingly to examine and characterize these principles. The main thing to be accomplished in such an inquiry, was to distinguish them accurately from the informations of sense; to show that they were not included in, or in any way derived out of, the informations of sense, but developed by the workings of mind. This fact he has recorded in his theory of Reminiscence,—a term expressing the point of contrast in his method, to that of the empirical philosophers before him exclusively founded on Sensation.

The truth and importance, accordingly, of Plato's Theory of Ideas, appear in this; that by that theory he laid a stable foundation of science, in the principles themselves of the human mind. His error is, that he carried that theory too far; that he included in it notions which are not part of the fundamental principles of the mind, and thus involved his theory in vagueness and paradox. The war of Nominalism and Realism is well known to every one who has looked into the History of Philosophy, or of theological opinion. This found its occasion in the wide generalization of the Ideal Theory. Had Plato restricted his theory to such notions as really exist in the mind; and had he not extended it, without discrimination, to those which belong to general terms, and which are purely notional; there would not have been that ground for controversy on the subject. As the case has been,—one class of disputants, looking to the generalizations of language, the genera and species of logic; took the nominalist view of the subject,— imputing to the whole of the ideas the attribute of one portion of them—the other class of disputants, justly observing the reality of certain general principles, became the advocates of realism throughout. What has been already said on the dialectical origin of the theory, will sufficiently account for the confusion of two such dissimilar classes of principles in Plato's system.

How shall we wonder, therefore, that the great logical philosopher who followed him should find it necessary to combat the theory of Ideas in the undefined form in which it had been left by its author. As thus left, it stood in the way of those exact arrangements of the objects of thought which the rigorous method of Aristotle required, and introduced a class of existences for which he could find no place in his system.

Nor, further, will it be matter of wonder that controversies should have arisen in the schools respecting the nature of the Ideas; such as, whether they subsisted by themselves, or were bodies, or were actually separable from sensible things, or only separable from them in thought; or whether they were locally situated anywhere, or only in the Divine Mind.

The establishing of the theory in its general form was the greatest business of Plato: it was enough for him to have projected it above the horizon of philosophy. Others would elaborate it after him with more or less skill. Various speculations would be raised concerning it; and controversy would at length reduce it to more definite form, and a precision beyond the contemplation of its author.

But, however just and important the Ideal Theory is in its connection with metaphysical science, it is but too clear that it retarded the advancement of sound physical philosophy, by its substitution of final causes for physical, and consequently withdrawing attention entirely from the latter. It would follow, indeed, from the suspicion thrown over the information of sense, and the undervaluing of experience, that physical science would be slighted under such a system of philosophy. But the dominion of the theory of Ideas would necessarily exclude any other consideration in order to the truth, but that of tendencies or final causes. No other view of nature, but that supplied by this theory, would be conceived to possess the stability which science demanded. Accordingly, hypotheses would occupy the place of investigation here. The philosopher would be speculating on what ought to be, instead of observing accurately what is; and assuming a priori notions of "the best," in order to determine the law of physical facts. The principle, "that all things are constituted for the best," no doubt holds good in physics as well as in other studies of the Divine workmanship; but it is here the termination of inquiry, not the commencement. It may even be employed instrumentally in the process of inquiry, to lead the mind to a point to which investigation should be directed. And this it may effect in two ways: either, from considering the good intended in the structure of some object, we may be led to see the parts of that structure in a way which discloses their real organization, and which we should otherwise not have observed; or, from taking our view of an object, not as it is actually exhibited in inferior specimens, or in those states of it in which it is seen only in progress, or under distortion, but from the most perfect specimen,—those most answerable to a divine intention or tendency to the best,—we may judge what it is, by considering what it would or should be. But to lay down final causes as principles from which the truths of physics may be deduced, is, as Bacon says, to corrupt natural philosophy with theology, and to render it barren of all fruits.

Such, then, is the state of Plato's Natural Philosophy. In fact, though he asserts the importance of physics in his own sense of the term, the science has no place in his philosophy. He goes so far indeed as to say that no art can flourish apart from a knowledge of physical truth; and he attributes the imperfect Rhetoric of his day to its want of such a foundation. But even whilst he imputes the superiority of Pericles as an orator to his studies under Anaxagoras, he strongly objects to the system of that philosopher, as we have already seen, on account of his leaving out all consideration of final causes.

Accordingly, in the dialogue which fills up this department of his system, he speaks in the person of the Pythagorean, Timaeus, and strictly follows the Pythagorean notions. The detail of this dialogue consists of a history of the order of the formation of the universe in all its parts; commencing with an account of the universe at large, and the hierarchy of the heavens, and ending with a minute explanation of the structure of man, in regard to his moral and intellectual, as well as his physical powers. And here mathematical figures and proportions are the principles into which the composition and motions of all bodies are resolved. But the theory on which the whole speculation turns, and which gives the explanation of the phenomena, is the theory of "the Best." It is an account of Good operating throughout the universe, conforming everything to itself, and constraining the untoward nature of body to yield to its sovereign power. An intelligent and good author of all things is assumed; and his order of proceeding is inferred from that which presents itself to our view as "the best." Thus the Father of the universe constructs it after the eternal unchanging pattern; "for that is the noblest of generated things, and the best of causes." He formed by his immediate operation whatever is of eternal unchanging nature. Nothing, indeed, but Himself, is immortal and indissoluble by its own nature; but, good as he is, he can never be disposed to destroy what is good. And therefore the fabric of the universe and the celestial beings, the generated and visible divinities included in it (with the highest order of whom Plato's description identifies the luminaries of the heavens), subsist eternally, not of themselves, but by virtue of their participation of Good. Whatever is subject to death,—as the bodily nature of man and brutes,—being imperfect, is the work of the generated divinities, imitating the power of the Supreme. It is with these secondary Gods that he connects the popular mythology; deriving from them the parentage of Saturn, and Jove, and the other objects of heathen worship; and leaving the further account of their origin to be given by the current tradition. Thus the supreme God is described as the author of all good throughout the universe; and where anything of evil or imperfection is, the agency of the subordinate powers, and the irrational nature of body, are interposed to guard him from imputation of evil.

Derived as his history of the universe evidently is from the early theogonies, it is very remarkable that it keeps clear altogether of the oriental dualism. There is but one active principle in his system of the universe, the principle of Good; and nothing forms or moves but that only. "Let us not," indeed, he expressly says in another place, "conceive that there are any two gods, of contrary sentiments, causing the revolution of the universe." He seems indeed to personify the irrational force of body, where he describes it under the name of Ἀνάγκη, necessity. But he is evidently only speaking in metaphorical language here (that language probably derived from personifications found in the early cosmogonies), intending to represent that inert power by which Nature, as we speak, acts according to its laws.

It must have been observed all along how important a place the nature of Body, ἐμπεριέχον, occupies in Plato's philosophy. He has nowhere, however, attempted to give any positive description of the nature of Body. It is, in truth, rather a condition in order to the development of the ideal theory in connection with the phenomena of sensation, than any positive nature, according to his conception of it. He has left it in the most mysterious form; nor does he seem indeed to distinguish it from Space, when he shadowed it out by negatives of the attributes of all actual existence.

In giving an analysis of production or "becoming," however, he enumerates three principles as concerned in the process:

1. The thing produced; 2. That in which it is produced; 3. That from which the thing produced takes the pattern of its production; depicting them under the analogy of the father, the mother, and the offspring.

The notion of body is here represented by the intermediate term of the three, namely, that in which the production takes place. "The nurse," "the general receptacle," and "the laboratory," ἐγκατάστασις, are also expressions by which he endeavours to characterize it, as being in its own nature incapable of being presented to the senses or the intellect. "As a person," he says, "observing a perpetual succession of figures moulded of gold, if asked during the process what was moulded, could only safely answer, that it was gold," so we must be content to speak of this nature, calling it only a receptacle of forms or species, and not attributing to it any particular species whatever.

The tendency of this theory of Body is obviously to remove all material phenomena from the class of real existences. And it seems to point to the origin of Plato's ideal theory in some older philosophy avowedly idealistic. At any rate, the speculation concerning body, as it stands in his system, leaves a hiatus in the transition from the world of Ideas to that of material existence.

The doctrine of Soul, as delivered by Plato, is properly the connecting link between the worlds of "being" and sensation. Hence is derived the importance of the theory of the Immortality of the soul in his philosophy. For it is in the soul that the eternal and immutable is found in the presence of the incipient and evanescent; the intellectual idea in contact, so to say, with the phenomena of sense. The soul partakes of change, as it is connected with the bodily nature; it is eternal and unchangeable, as it is the seat of intelligence.

Soul, then, according to Plato, is the necessary condition for the development of intelligence in the universe, as Body is for the existence of sensation. Soul, therefore, was necessarily prior to Body, as the first condition in order to the constitution of the universe. It was the animating principle by means of which the Deity, when he brought the world out of the disorder and confusion of unreason, communicated intelligence to it, fashioning it after the pattern of the eternal ideas. And not only is the whole universe thus ensouled by the immediate agency of the Deity; but every particular system in it, in which any degree of intelligence is found united with body, has in the very gift of that intelligence a soul originally imparted to it by the Father of the universe himself.

This is the ultimate account of that immortality which Plato attributes to the soul of man. It is not as a human soul that it is immortal; but it derives an eternal existence from its being among the original intelligent units of the animated universe. We see indeed a constant production of living things in the world; but it is not, as they have "being," that they are thus produced or generated or "become." This is the result of that "diverse" nature which was blended in their original composition with their higher principles, with the principles, forsooth, of "sameness" and "being."

For these are the three principles into which Plato analyses Soul,—the principles of the same and the diverse, and being, and by these he explains the phenomena of its actual existence. No time can be assigned, then, to the origin of that which by its nature is, and is the same essentially. No one soul, therefore, can now begin to exist. And again, whatever once exists can never cease to exist, unless there is anything capable of destroying its principles of Sameness and Being. But Death, as he shows, has no such power. It may disengage the soul from its present body by dissolving the body; but it cannot affect the essential vitality which is in the soul. This essential vitality is the direct contrary to death. It therefore recedes when death comes, according to that law of Contraries, which holds throughout the world of generation and corruption, and which is the agent in all changes. But it still lives as vigorously as ever, and returns to animate another body in the course of Generation. Nor, for the same reason, can it maintain an unvaried perpetuity of existence. It remains ever undestroyed; but from that "diverse" principle which enters into its composition, it both alters in its internal character, and only imperfectly imitates the Eternal Nature by a successive re-appearance in the forms of new bodies. Thus, whilst it returns to the sensible world, it migrates from the male to the female sex, or to forms of the lower animals, according to that condition of purity in which it departed from its last body, or its previous degree of intellectual cultivation. For, as we may observe, there is no original distinction, according to the theory, between the soul of one man and another, and the soul of man and brute. All are equal in intelligence and goodness, as the immediate work of the Divine Author. The varieties in the characters of souls arise from the operation of the inferior deities who framed the bodies of men and brutes, and the use which individuals may make of their circumstances in the world. Whilst the number of souls, then, remains the same, they are continually changing their habitations, and passing by death from one body to another in the different forms of animal life; undergoing degradation with the forms of inferior animals, or elevation with those of superior nature, according to their state in a former existence.

The theory of the immortality of the soul thus rests entirely on the Theory of Ideas. It is the universality, and being, and truth, and perfection of the Ideas which prove the soul to be eternal. Ideas are found existing in the mind, but their acquisition cannot be traced to any particular period of a man's present life. They have been there from time immemorial, for no one can say when they first appeared in his own mind. They were therefore born with us; and if so, they must have had existence before our birth; and who can limit that existence? They have existed, for ought we know to the contrary, from all eternity; and who, then, shall limit their existence by any future period? why may they not be born with us in a life subsequent to the present, as they were born with us in the present life, and so on to all eternity in endless generations? This is in substance the train of reasoning by which Plato seeks to establish the immortality of the soul. A similar argument has been reproduced in modern metaphysical treatises, variously modified and stated, but the same in substance. How little calculated it is to produce practical conviction, whilst we admire its ingenuity, is evidenced by Cicero's confession, that whilst he wept over the Phaedo, his mind retained no deep impressions from the argument.

This brings us to the consideration of Plato's ethical system, in its vital connection with his physical and metaphysical doctrines.

The two great principles on which his ethical system re- poses, are; 1st, that no one is willingly evil; 2d, that every one has in his own will a power of inducing changes in his character.

These principles are only the counterpart ethical expressions of his theories of immutable Being, on the one hand, and of the world of phenomena, or mere Becoming, on the other.

For the soul of man, so far as it has any good or truth in it, is framed after the pattern of the eternal Ideas of the good and true. These Ideas, under the various moral aspects which they present, constitute its moral nature. All its desires, therefore, naturally tend to the Good and True. These qualities are what the soul would be. They are the mysterious realities to which it is striving to attain, in all those various efforts after Pleasure which it makes in the present life:—unconscious it may be, as it is in fact in the depraved, of the true nature of the objects to which its affections ultimately point. Still, if it be conceded that Ideas are the only proper Beings, and that everything else is phenomenal, or the mere product and offspring of the generating power of the eternal Ideas, it must also be admitted, that nothing else can be the real source of moral phenomena but the Good and True. In the moral, no less than in the physical world, a constant succession of passing events is found to take place. We perceive a variety of affections in the nature of man as he is in the world, directed to a variety of objects, each aiming at some particular gratification; one desire and its gratification passing away, and others succeeding it in endless flow. All this restless course, then, of moral events exhibited in the life of man is phenomenal; not in the sense of its having no reality whatever, but of its having no permanent reality—of its being no more in the result than effort towards being—restless, endless effort towards that which may give rest and full satisfaction, and stable being.

This ultimate object, then, however indistinctly sought, is the aim of every individual soul of man. Some, indeed, avowedly make mere sensual gratification the end of their desires. They endeavour to satisfy themselves with the limited and the evanescent. But the true cause of all that perverted activity which they display, is the Good itself. They know not what the Good is; but they love it in spite of themselves, and bear evidence, by their life of unceasing pursuit, that they are secretly actuated by the desire of it,—and that they can find no rest in anything short of it. Their soul, originally formed in the likeness of the Deity, can never willingly be separated from its Divine image. In the midst of its wildest aberrations, it feels the attraction of like to like, impelling, and at the same time reclaiming it to right.

This accordingly is Plato's meaning in the principle, which he so emphatically lays down, that "no one is willingly evil." It is very different, we may observe, from saying that no one commits evil willingly. And Plato himself takes care to guard his theory from this misconception. He readily grants, that acts of wrong are distinguished by being voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit; but he strenuously maintains that this distinction does not apply to evil itself. It is in all cases involuntary. No one can choose it in itself. It is necessarily the object of aversion, as the good is invariably the object of choice and pursuit.

How is it, then, it will be inquired, that men do become evil—that whilst they are really seeking to be conformed to a divine pattern, they practically do what is evil, and, losing more and more of their likeness to the Eternal Being, conform themselves rather to the fleeting character of the world of sensation?

The explanation is found in the other great principle of Plato's philosophy, the theory of Becoming, to which we have referred. Change is the characteristic of all that belongs to this subject; as immutability is the characteristic of Being. The course itself of successive phenomena may be varied by impressions from circumstances. In the soul there is a principle of change in the power of regulating the desires,—in indulging them to excess, or moderating them, according to the will. And the circumstances in which the soul is placed, as connected with the sensible world by means of the body, present the occasion for such change. The humours and distempers of the body produce discomposure in the soul. It becomes diseased analogously to the body. This state of disease is what is commonly called folly, ἀνοία; and it takes the form either of madness, γρῖψις, or of mere ignorance, ἀγνοία. Where even ignorance only is the result, the internal harmony of the soul is disturbed. Pleasures and pains are unduly magnified; the democracy of the passions prevails; and the ascendancy of reason is cast down. In addition to these disturbances or ailments through the body, come the influences of evil governments, evil public lessons, evil education. Hence the soul is changed from what it was when it first came from the hands of its Divine author. The eternal Ideas after which it was framed are not effaced from it. This cannot be; for then it would cease to have being; but it loses distinct apprehension of them,—mistakes appearances of good for good itself,—and under that delusion willingly does evil, and presumes on obtaining happiness by a course of evil conduct.

But the same principle of change in the soul gives an opening also for its moral restoration. As the soul is deteriorated by the contagion of the body, so it may also be restored to a sound state by remedial treatment. The yielding to every passing desire, and suffering the desires to grow out of proportion, and destroy the harmony of the soul, is the cause of men's falling into that blindness which hides the good from their mental eye. By restraining them, and moderating the desires, the internal disorder is gradually corrected; reason resumes its ascendancy; the soul once more "sees and hears aright," and thus returns to that good to which its desires naturally tend. It is a long process, indeed, by which the restoration is effected; a process of gradual purification, καθάρσις, of the soul, by chastisement and suffering. Nor is it accordingly completed in a single life; many courses of existence must be passed through. Not only is the present life of the soul a consequence of its conduct in a former one; but it is destined to many successive stages of existence, each adapted to the character acquired at the stage next preceding, until its defilements are purged away.

These ethical doctrines of the philosopher, when divested of the extravagance of his theory, so far accord with the truth both of inspiration and experience, as they indicate, that the utmost man can do in the present life is insufficient to restore in him the lost image of God. Whilst they lay down this truth under the disguise of the remedial process of the transmigration of the soul, they further agree with the inspired authority, and with experience, in imposing on man the duty of commencing the process of restoration, and in holding him strictly responsible for the state of his mind and affections, through that power of self-direction and capacity of improvement by discipline, with which he has been endowed. Thus does he also bear evidence both to the fact of the perfection of man at his creation, and that of his existing corruption. But he differs from the Scripture account of that corruption, in making it originally a physical rather than a moral debasement,

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1 Timaeus, 218; De Legibus, ix. 2 De Legibus, x.; Ibid. v. p. 212; Ibid. ix. p. 17; Philob. p. 231. and representing it as taking place by a gradual process, and not by a sudden and entire fall, the effect of a first transgression of a positive divine command.

The Sophists, indeed, boasted of their power of transforming the characters of men, and accordingly made great profession of "teaching virtue." But they coupled with this pretension, the admission, that all opinions on moral, no less than on other subjects, are equally true. All opinions in morals, they said, are true; "but all are not good. What we would effect, therefore, is to lead men to such opinions as we know also to be both good and wise." But this was a mere evasion; for if all opinions are equally true, then must also each man's view of good be true, as well as that which his instructor would inculcate on him; and there is no fixed standard to which he may be conformed. Plato's theory of good, as the sole object of desire—or the invincible tendency of the will to good, and its invariable aversion from evil,—was a strong ground of opposition to the sophistical doctrine. It pointed out that there was a principle in man superior to instruction, and independent of the accidents of worldly circumstances, the God-measure, the "God-measure," the fixed Divine standard, to which all moral teaching should be directed, and from a reference to which all moral discipline obtained its value.

From this mode of enunciating the fundamental principles of morals, it followed, that the practical morality which Plato teaches, should be directed to the means of removing the false appearances of good by which the mind is deluded into evil. He shews, accordingly, that there are false pleasures as well as false opinions—that men's ignorance extends, not only to mistakes in regard to their wealth or bodily accomplishments, but as to their moral characters; for that most men think themselves better than they really are. Thus does he apply to morals more particularly, the general confession which his philosophy exacts of its disciple on all subjects, that he knows not what he presumed he knew, and sends every one to learn himself, in order that he may be truly a moral man.

This, therefore, according to Plato, is the great purpose for which philosophy must be cultivated. Philosophy alone can open the eyes to see the true value of things, and alone elevate the mind from the evanescent region of the phenomenal world to the seat of true and eternal Being.

For the same reason Dialectic, as immediately conversant about the Ideas of the good and true, is the ultimate study of him that would seek to educate and improve the powers of his soul to the utmost.

Philosophy and morality, in fact, in his system, perfectly coincide. The love of truth is also the love of good, and the love of good is the love of truth. The same process by which the good man is effected, philosophically viewed, is a power of analysing pleasure and pains, an art of measurement, enabling the mind to discriminate between Truth and Good on the one hand, and their semblances on the other, and distinctly to apprehend them, under whatever disguise they may be presented and obscured by the senses. Morally viewed, it is the one motive of the love of truth and good predominating over, and purifying, and absorbing into itself, every desire of human nature. In the first view, it is wisdom or philosophy; in the latter, it is purification, and perfect virtue,—and discipline of immortality,—the resemblance and participation of the Deity.

These views of moral truth are in themselves certainly grand and ennobling. As guides, however, to duty, they are deficient in that particularity and homeliness of application which are required for the real business of morality. Their tendency, too, to contemplative mysticism is obvious, as they are by Plato in undefined outline, and clothed in the charms of his imaginative eloquence. Nor shall we wonder that they have easily combined with the feeling of asceticism, so congenial to the human heart. The contempt which they throw over everything belonging to the bodily nature of man,—the delusiveness imputed to the senses, without any limitation of it, or guard against abuse of the theory,—and the abstractedness from the world which they propose,—admit of being construed into a theory of mortification of the body, and of the purifying efficacy of self-inflicted punishments. These tendencies, indeed, of Plato's ethical doctrines, were, not long after his time, exemplified in the apathy and austerity of the Stoic morality. And it is well known to what extent they have been developed in the teaching and practice of religionists of all creeds. It cannot be denied, also, that where they take hold of a morbid and susceptible temperament of mind, they tend to substitute, in such a case, the morality of imagination and sentiment for that of common sense and household feeling, and to fritter away the convictions of duty into mere proprieties of taste; so that even whilst they elevate the character above sordid and vulgar seductions of pleasure, they emasculate and corrupt it, through the very excess of its theoretical refinement.

As bad education was regarded by Plato as the other great cause of human corruption, in addition to the influence of Body on the soul, he directs a large portion of his philosophical disquisitions to correct the evil arising from the second source. His ethical discussions go to the limiting of the desires, and curing the diseases produced by them in the soul. His political discussions have for their immediate object, the laying down right principles of education, and enforcing them by the constitution, laws, and power of the state. His two great works, the most elaborate of his writings, the Dialogues of the Republic and the Laws, are rather theories of Education than of Government and Laws. The former indeed inquires more particularly into the principles on which a right government may be formed; whilst the latter gives a systematic view of the principles of legislation. Both, however, have in view the improvement of human nature by social institutions expressly framed for that purpose. It has been supposed that in the Republic we have his theory of a perfect state, and in the Laws a practical exemplification of the theory. But this is clearly a mistake. Both are doubtless intended by Plato as theoretical disquisitions on the political matters of which they treat, whilst the real matter in hand is Education. This is expressly asserted by Plato himself, when he compares his legislation to the method of the philosophical physician.

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1 *Gorgias*, however, laughed at the other Sophists for pretending to teach virtue. He professed only the art of words. *Protog.* p. 282. 2 *Philebus*, p. 354. 3 *Charm.*, pp. 190-195. 4 *Politeia*, p. 305. 5 *Politeia*, p. 247, et seq. 6 *Theaet.*, VII. p. 121. 7 *De Legibus*, VII. p. 354. 8 *Philebus*, p. 41. When the mere empiric, he observes, should hear such a physician discoursing to his patient of the origin of the disease, and ascending to the speculation on Nature, he would be disposed to object that such proceeding was folly; "for it was not healing the sick man, but rather educating him, as if he wanted to become a physician, and not to be made well." The like objection, he says, might be applied to his method of legislation; for, "whoever pursues the inquiry concerning laws," he adds, "as we are doing now, educates the citizens, but does not legislate." And he goes on to say, in the person of the chief speaker, addressing the other interlocutors of the Dialogue, that in their work of legislation they were at leisure, as speculators on the subject, to consider, not what was most necessary, but what was best.

We are not to suppose, then, that Plato had in view the actual foundation of a state, according to the principles of government and legislation laid down in his two famous dialogues. His object was to give an example of the most perfect life, free from those impediments which all existing governments and laws throw across the path of the virtuous man. As philosophy is the guide of private life, elevating it to the knowledge of the Good and True, so he would have philosophy also seated on the throne of government, and exhibit the eternal Ideas of Good and Truth, modifying society after their pattern. Hence it is that he overlooks impossibilities in his arrangements; as is pointed out by Aristotle in his acute comments on the leading points of Plato's political theories. All is sacrificed, in fact, to the one great object of Plato's mind, the sketching of the Idea of the Good as a social principle, apart from the evil influences of existing society.

The most extravagant hypotheses, accordingly, are put forward in this part of his philosophy; not indeed with a view of their being ever exemplified in any institutions of real life, but in extreme contrast with the existing selfishness of human society, and as theoretic developments of the unchangeable idea of good. Such, for example, is his theory of a community of wives and children, and the training of women to the hardest exercises of the gymnasion and of war. We justly take exception at the immorality and unnaturalness of such hypotheses. But Plato looks down upon man from the height of his sublime theory. He sees everything in the unity and invariableness of that theory, and overlooks distinctions deeply founded in the nature of man. Thus it is that in his view man himself becomes a thing of little consideration or importance,—a sort of plaything of the Deity, scarcely worth any serious attention. "You disparage altogether the race of man," says an interlocutor in the Dialogue of the Laws. "Wonder not at it," replies the Athenian; "but make allowance for me; for it was from looking off to the Deity, and under this impression, that I said what I have now expressed. However, let it be granted that our race is not insignificant, if you like, but worth some serious consideration." It is in this spirit that he himself sports with human nature, as if human beings were only so many chessmen, to be moved on the board, so as to display the admirable design of the disposing mind, and illustrate the working of the eternal Ideas. His fault is the same as in his physical speculations, that of commencing from the final cause, or the notion of the Best, and forming the world of social life after that, instead of rising from the study of its actual formation to the notion of the Best;—or at least in supposing, that he could arrive at a just view of the divine pattern of Good, by presenting a theoretic copy of it, after his own conceptions of the Best. But such extravagancies as these we have referred to, could only have proceeded from so bold a mind as that of Plato,—a mind, not checked by the repulsiveness of particular consequences from pushing a theory to the utmost.

At the same time, this fundamental notion of the Divine standard and pattern on which he proceeds, imparts a solemn dignity, in the midst of these excesses of the spirit of theory, to the substance of his speculations on government and laws.

Religion is thus secured as the basis of all right government and legislation. That government only which most resembles a theocracy is, in Plato's view, a true polity. All others, popularly termed governments, as democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy, are merely settlements of cities, and not Polities, being called after that power which has the ascendancy in each over the other parts of the state. So far as a state is truly such, it ought to be named, he says, after the true God, the lord over all intelligent beings. Governments, as they exist, are only the results of the struggles of contending factions: whence we find, as he observes, one party in the ascendancy excluding and depressing another, in order to its own maintenance, and no concern taken for the welfare of the whole community. To remedy this general evil of existing governments, he would have the simple and straightforward course of the divine procedure brought before the minds of men, and a conformity with that procedure inculcated on them as the only rule of life and happiness. "God," he teaches, in an animated and noble passage, "as the ancient story is, holding the beginning, and end, and middle of all things that are, describes a straight line, according to nature, as he walks his circuit. In his train ever follows Justice, the avenger of those that are left behind by the divine law; to which, he that would be happy, keeping close, follows in the train, humble and orderly; but whoever is puffed up with high boasting, or elated with wealth, or honours, or grace of person, together with youthfulness and folly,—his soul burning with insolence, as presuming, that he requires neither ruler nor any guide, but is competent even to be a guide to others,—is left, forsaken of God. And being left, and taking to himself others besides, such as he is, he frolics, throwing everything into promiscuous confusion. And to many he seems to be some one; but, after no long time, undergoing a retribution, of which he cannot complain, to Justice, he utterly subverts himself, and his house, and his city."

Here we have emphatically recognized the great truth, that the foundations of all government and law are laid in the unchanging nature of the Divine Being. The law of right, as exemplified in the dominion of party, is the law of the strongest, fluctuating with the accidents of power, and never attaining to any permanent being. Such was the law of right, as taught by the Sophists, from city to city, and which was fully established in public opinion throughout Greece,—not only as manifested in the factious character of the particular governments, but avowedly declared and acted on as a principle of conduct. "It is nothing," say Athenian ambassadors, "out of the course of the established opinion of men concerning the Divine Being, or..." their sentiments concerning themselves, that we expect or do. For we hold that the Divine Nature, so far as we can judge of it, and human nature, as we see clearly, by an instinctive necessity, ever exercise power where they can obtain the mastery. Nor are we the first, either to propose the law, or to use it when laid down: it was in being when we took it up; and it will subsist for ever, for us to transmit to others after us; and we merely act upon it; convinced, that yourselves, no less than others, were you placed in the same power in which we are, would do so." Here, then, is the law which belongs to the region of instability—to that nature which is ever becoming, and never is. Contrast with this Plato's principle, which deduces the origin of law from the eternal idea of good, and it will then be more distinctly seen what the spirit of Plato's legislation really is.

It follows, indeed, from his principle, that all instituted law is imperfect. And he admits, accordingly, that if a perfectly virtuous ruler could be established on earth, it would be best that the business of government should be carried on by his will; which would in such a case be only the copy of the Divine exemplar of right. But as this is past hope in the present condition of human things, the substitute for the more perfect system is the institution of laws framed after the eternal Idea of Good; not laws adapted merely to the preservation of a particular form of polity, but embodying in them the immutable principles of right. And even such laws, as being matters of institution, are inferior in dignity to unwritten laws—the principles of right—which, themselves resting on no external sanction, are yet the conserving principles of all positive laws.

Having his eye fixed on the eternal pattern of the good and the true, Plato looked with a feeling of disappointment and disgust at the several forms of polity which the states of Greece exhibited. He is generally thought to have inclined to a preference of aristocracy, and to have regarded with aversion all popular government. But though it is probable, that, from what he saw of the tyranny of an unrestrained democracy, he sighed in secret for a better order of things, we cannot conclude from his political speculations that he regarded any single polity as the best. He, in fact, condemns all particular forms; and when he asserts a preference, it is for a polity such as was nowhere seen in his times, combining in it monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But in his view, as governments then existed, they were all one-sided; the dominion of one part of a community over the rest, and not the dominion of good over the whole. This dominion, as we have observed, was only to be found in the government of God over the world, and to it, therefore, he would have all human government conformed. His sole preference, then, is for a theocracy, if such could be realized on earth. His slighting manner of speaking of the lower orders of society, and of all indeed but those who are gifted with superior talents and other natural endowments, is to be ascribed to his general low estimate of human nature, considered apart from that cultivation, which the highest and most intellectual studies impart to it.

Respect for antiquity and prescriptive authority is strongly inculcated by Plato. In nothing was the changeableness of all generated things more evident than in the ever-varying forms of the states of Greece, and especially of Athens itself. The democracy of Athens had been an universal market, ἐκείνης ὁμοιότητος, as Plato terms an extreme democracy, of all sorts of politics. And laws had so far lost their force there in the most corrupt times, that everything was transacted by the decrees of the day; the variable determina-

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1 Thucyd. v. 105. 2 Ἀλλὰ τὸ πραγματεύεσθαι εἰς τὸν ἀνθρώπου καὶ τὸν ἀνθρώπου ἀνθρώπου ἢ ἡ ἀνθρώπου ἀνθρώπου, ἢ ἡ ἀνθρώπου ἀνθρώπου. (Polit. p. 82.) 3 De Leg. iii. pp. 137, 138. 4 Thucyd. ii. 24. 5 Rep. vii. 6 De Legibus, i. 24, 25. 7 Ibid. vii. pp. 338, 339. corresponding exactly to a demand for religious or civil changes, in our days, under established governments and institutions. The question of change is now gravely discussed, and deliberately carried or rejected, not with the view of unsettling everything, but in order that some particular institution or law may be established for the future. Except in violent outbreaks of human passions long pent up within artificial restraints, exasperated by resistance, and at length forcing their way out, and levelling all barriers before them, as in the instance of the great French Revolution, it cannot be said with truth, of the struggles for particular changes in modern institutions, that they have been actuated by the mere desire of change; and the hatred of everything established. The religion and the civilization of modern times have in some measure presented a check to this. But at the centre of movement in Greece, change was the order of the day. Athens would neither rest itself, nor suffer other states to rest. When its very demagogues are forced on some occasions to endeavour to repress this incessant changefulness; as Cleon was, when he told the Athenians it was better "to have worse laws unmoved, than good laws perpetually changed";—it is evident that the spirit of change was then developed in its most fearful form. For we find the magician himself who had evoked it, starting in terror at the apparition, and finding it too strong for his direction and control. Διάδοχος ἐστὶν ὁ ἀνεξέλεγκτος, ἐπιφανὴς δὲ ἐν ἀπομόνωσιν, "Slaves of every new extravagance, but despisers of accustomed things," are the words with which he attempts to exercise it, and which the historian of the times puts into the mouth of one who, as the creature of the system, could most pointedly characterize it. Such was that spirit, then, against which Plato had to contend. It was an enemy not only to the existing government, but to all government, and all law, and all religion and morality. It demanded, therefore, the most forcible counteraction. It was to be met by inculcation of the opposite. According to his own universal principle, contrary was to be expelled by contrary. Everything that was ancient was to be upheld, accordingly, as worthy of veneration and acceptance, simply because it was ancient. The voice itself of antiquity, though speaking without evidence, was to be received with implicit acquiescence and submission. Thus it is that Plato is found strenuously appealing to the instinctive feeling of his Athenian countrymen, which they still retained in spite of the prevailing folly,—the feeling with which they so fondly reverted to their early glories, and delighted to view themselves in the past;—and labouring to correct their vacillations of present opinion by recalling them to the fixed lessons of their memory.

Political philosophy, then, according to Plato, is the history of those changes which the will of man produces in the matter of government and laws, and an endeavour to limit those changes by restoring in the social world the primitive order and rule.

Education is the means by which those changes are counteracted. It avails itself of that principle of contrariety by which all changes are carried on; and endeavours to expel the evil by inducing the good. The process by which it carries on this effect is, a discipline of the intellect, prescribed by the state, and promoted by all its institutions and customs, framed, as these are supposed to be, after the idea of the Sovereign Good. That discipline lays down a course of exercise for the body as well as for the intellect, that the body may be brought into the best condition, in order to the exercise of the intellect. The intellect itself it conducts through the steps of the several sciences, from the bodily and sensible to the disembodied and intellectual,—from the phenomenal and changeable to that which has real being, and is unchangeable. And thus in Plato's system it is classed under the two comprehensive heads of Gymnastics and Music; the latter term being understood, according to its derivation, to denote literature in general. Philosophy itself was the ultimate attainment of education,—the result of the whole intellectual training of the accomplished man. Ostensibly, under this system, there was no peculiar discipline of the heart. Indirectly there was; so far as it inculcated purification and self-denial. But the strengthening and elevating of the intellect was its direct object. Its tendency was thus to exalt the virtues of the intellect above those of the heart; and, in opposition to the evidence of facts, to assert the power of knowledge over the determinations of the will. Not that Plato denies the existence of what we call self-command, or that controlling of the passions which is the result of a previous struggle with them. But he did not admit (as Aristotle does, and urges against him) that reason could ever be overpowered by the passions, or that if there were a distinct knowledge of the truth in the mind, it could give way to passion.

In the matter of Religion, Plato's theory of Ideas led him to see that there were truths above the evidence belonging to Experience, and which must be received solely on the ground of the Divine authority. For whilst he taught that the mind of man must work its way up to the Ideas by a course of argument and examination of evidence, yet, having reached the Ideas themselves, it had attained the ultimatum of truth; no further evidence of these was to be sought; they carried their own light in themselves. So, when any truth was presented to the mind, which related immediately to the Divine Being, it was not to be supposed capable of being examined in itself, and established on any higher ground of internal evidence, but must at once be admitted, if there were sufficient external authority for it. The only question respecting such truths is, are they historically true? Is it certain, or at least highly probable, that they have descended to us from the Father of Lights himself? Have we reason to think that they were originally real divine communications,—and are they vouched to us as such by a competent evidence? Now, in regard to the primary principles of the mind, such as we have before spoken of, though they are not evidenced by any higher principles, or by any conclusions from Experience, they carry their own evidence, by their invariable presence in the mind on certain occasions, being naturally suggested by such occasions to every rational understanding. But the truths of religion are of a different nature. They cannot be authenticated by the mind itself to itself, as being out of its range of thought. They must therefore be authenticated from without. And in regard to these, accordingly, we must appeal to the Reason and Word of God, as the simple, and proper, and unanswerable vouchers of them.

This is the account of Plato's disclaimer of all evidence, either of demonstration or probability, on matters strictly divine, and his frequent appeal to mythic traditions when his discussion touches a mystery of the Divine Being or the Divine conduct. He resolves the whole authority of such matters into the evidence of "ancient story," παλαιῶν λογισμῶν, and "primitive hearing," ἀρχαῖα ἀκήρα, and "learning heavy with time," μετὰ τοῦ χρόνου ἀκήρα. In speaking of the generation of the subordinate divinities, in the Timaeus, he makes

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1 Thucyd. iii. 37. 2 Aristotle, Ethic. Nic. vii. 2. 3 Aristotle, though controverting the extreme view of the doctrine of Plato on this point, in the result nearly coincides with him. Ibid. c. 3. 4 Ἐκ τούτου, ἡ Σοφία, ὅτι ἂν ἤθελεν ἀπολυτρώσει τῆς ἀναγκαίας τῆς ἀναγκαίας ἀπολύτρωσις, ἢ ἂν ἤθελεν ἀπολυτρώσει τῆς ἀναγκαίας τῆς ἀναγκαίας ἀπολύτρωσις. 5 Ὅτι ἂν ἤθελεν ἂν ἤθελεν ἀπολυτρώσει τῆς ἀναγκαίας τῆς ἀναγκαίας ἀπολύτρωσις. 6 Timaeus, p. 291. an observation applicable to the whole subject of divine things as treated by him. Instead of entering into explicit accounts of them, he observes that the subject is "too great for us," and that we must believe those who have spoken before, being the offspring of gods, in the way in which they said it, and because they must be conceived to have known their own ancestors;" adding, that we cannot refuse credit to the "sons of gods, although they speak without probabilities and necessary demonstrations, but must follow the rule of believing them on their word, as declaring what belongs to them." He commands, too, the primitive generation of men for their docility in following rules of life founded on oral tradition,—their "holding as true what was said ἐν λα-γεῖσι, concerning both gods and men." Again, speaking of the state of the dead, and their interest in the concerns of men on earth, he appeals to the same kind of evidence. "We must believe," he says, "the voices of others in such matters, so current as they are, and so extremely ancient; and it is enough for our belief that legislators, unless they be proved absolutely unwise, have asserted them." So justly does he insist on the reasonableness of being content with the voice of a declaratory authority in matters inapplicable, by their nature, of a direct evidence from our reason.

By the heathen philosopher, in the absence of an authentic revelation, the authority for such truths was naturally sought in ancient traditions,—traditions mounting up beyond all memory of their origin, and therefore referable to times when the world was yet fresh from the hand of God. The voice of remote and undefined antiquity, indeed, by a natural delusion, represents itself to the mind as but little different from the sanction of eternal truth. For it is but a slight and imperceptible transition from the indefinite to the infinite. Many such traditions were found in the heathen mythology, connecting themselves with another order of things, when gods conversed with men on earth. Some of them, certainly, were full of absurdity and profaneness; and all were disfigured with the colouring of fable; but still there were some, beautiful in the conception, and sublime and impressive in the doctrine. Of this latter character, for the most part, are those exquisite mythical legends, with which Plato has diversified his discussions, throwing the solemnity of religion over truths of high importance which he would specially enforce.

Thus, though he has elaborately argued the Immortality of the soul, he is not content to leave the question on those abstract grounds of conviction. He feels that the conviction which may practically influence the conduct, must be drawn from another source,—that of a simple belief in some authority declaring it,—when he closes the discussion, as in the Phaedo, and in other places, with a scenic representation, from the legends of ancient tradition, of the doctrines which he has been enforcing. The whole of the Timaeus, in fact, is a legend rather than a philosophical inquiry. It appeals, for the reception of its truths, to the shadows with which it veils them, and the mystic echoes of sounds heard by the listening ear from afar. In that legend, indeed, we have very considerable evidence of the pure source, from which the heathen world drew much of the sacred truth that was wrapped up and disguised in their fables. We perceive in such a document of ancient philosophy, at once the sure and wide-spread knowledge resulting from a scriptural Revelation, and the obscurity and fallibility of the information of Tradition. To this effect are the description in the Timaeus, of the universe as the "one" work of the "one Supreme Being"—as the "visible likeness of one himself the object only of intellectual apprehension,"—as the "only-generated," πορευόμενος, of the Father of all things; and the strong assertion of the goodness, and beauty, and perfection of the universe; and particularly, in reference to this, that striking passage, "When the Father who generated it, perceived, both living and moving, the generated glory of the Everlasting Divinities, he was filled with admiration, and, being delighted, he further contemplated the working it still more to a resemblance of the pattern." Add to these instances the simple and magnificent words which he has put into the mouth of the Father of the Universe, as an address to the generated gods, respecting the formation of the bodies of men and other living creatures. The attributing to Him a speech at the first formation of man, is alone sufficiently remarkable; and the plural address with which it opens, makes the correspondence still closer to the sacred words, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The order of the generation of things, it may be further observed, agrees with the order of the Creation. First the heavens and the earth are produced, and then the living creatures; and among these Man, designated as "the most religious of animals." But at the same time there is much confusion and degradation of the high subject. We look in vain for those sublime features of the inspired account, that the Creation arose out of nothing, by the word of God. This is darkly intimated in the shadowy nature which the narrative assigns to Body; but, though it be but a shadow, Body still subsists in his system, as the co-eternal contrary of the Divine Intelligence. Traces of the descent of holy truth, in the like disguise, appear in the references found in Plato to early deluges and genealogies; to the notion of God as the shepherd of his people; and to accounts of variations in the course of the rising and setting of the sun.

Such, then, is the character of Plato's philosophy, both in its general method, and in its results, as a theory of the universe, and an information respecting the leading branches of human knowledge.

It was concerned, we find, more in investigating and establishing first principles, than in drawing out results; in exciting the love of wisdom, rather than in aiding in the research after it. With him, indeed, philosophy and its method of inquiry, as we have seen, are one; and, in like manner, philosophy and its several branches coalesce in his system into one. We have spoken of his logical, and physical, and ethical doctrines, as if they were distinct subjects; but in his mind the one theory of Ideas held these several doctrines in its embrace, and made them indissolubly one with itself. For his design throughout is, to establish universal principles common to every subject, and on these to build a structure of philosophy,—counterpart in the human mind to the universe itself, and comprehending therefore all that relates to the Deity, to man, and to the universe. He would place the mind of the philosopher far above the scenes in which man lives, and endue him with a keenness and range of vision, extending over the whole region of speculation, and leaving no part, either from its largeness or from its minuteness, unexplored. The problem which he undertakes to solve is, how all things are both one and many; how, amidst the multiplicity of phenomena with which we are surrounded, a real unity still subsists and pervades the whole. He proceeds on the conviction, that to attain to this unity, so far at least as our faculties will enable us to attain to it,

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1 Timaeus, p. 324. 2 De Leg. iii. p. 111. 3 De Leg. xii. 150. 4 Ὅτι ἡ μάθησις τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τῶν ἀποκεφαλίσματος τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἤδη ἦν ἐν τῇ γενέσει τοῦ ἔργου τοῦ Ἀτλαντοῦ. (Ibid. pp. 316, 317.) 5 Ὁμοίως ἂν ἦν ἡ ἀπεικόνισις τῶν ἀποκεφαλίσματος. (Ibid. p. 325.) 6 Ὅτι ἡ ἀπεικόνισις τῶν ἀποκεφαλίσματος ἦν ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ τοῦ Ἀτλαντοῦ. (Ibid. p. 326.) 7 Polit. p. 290; De Leg. i. 8 Ὅτι ἡ ἀπεικόνισις τῶν ἀποκεφαλίσματος ἦν ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ τοῦ Ἀτλαντοῦ. (Ibid. p. 326.) 9 Polit. p. 28. The same are evidently referred to by Herodotus in Euterpe, 142. Plato's writings and philosophy.

(for in itself it is incomprehensible and ineffable), is to find the clue to that maze of sensible things which bewilders human observation. He was not intent, therefore, on distinguishing and arranging the several branches of knowledge, but on bringing all into subjection to his commanding theory of the perfect unity. He has not, in fact, elaborated, or even sketched, any one particular science. He has shewn how the sciences may be distributed, or rather furnished hints for such a distribution. But he has left the task of doing so to others after him, as subordinate agents, filling up the details and supplying the omissions of his system. His was characteristically a one-making mind. It analysed,—not, however, for the purpose of finding and arranging the component elements of a subject, but in search of the one vivifying principle, which gives form, and truth, and goodness, and beauty, to everything. He omits, accordingly, to examine with minuteness into secondary agencies, which are the proper study of the particular sciences, in order that he may direct attention to the master-principle, by which all subordinate principles are held together, and by which they work as concurring causes in the infinite variety of actual phenomena with such energy and constancy of operation.

It was left for his pupil Aristotle to take up the business of philosophy where he had designedly left it unfinished, and, by a more rigorous method, to introduce order into the field of science, by assigning to each particular science its distinct objects and office.

It required, indeed, some philosopher worthy of such a master to take up the subject where Plato had left it, and to carry it out to the fulness of an instructive method, and a systematic exposition of truth; and such a successor was found in Aristotle. Aristotle, as controverting the Theory of Ideas, may perhaps be regarded by some as an antagonist, rather than a successor, to Plato. But every succeeding system of philosophy is partly a polemic against its predecessor, by whose labours it nevertheless has profited. So it was with the great movement of mind commenced by Plato. It languished under Speusippus and Xenocrates, and the still more remote successors in the Academia. But in the Lyceum, the rival school in name, but the rival only as the vigorous offspring of the declining parent, a crowd of bearers such as that whom the great magician of the Academia had called around him, was once more assembled, and Athens again assumed the form of an university. In Aristotle's system, accordingly, we see the productiveness of those germs of philosophy which the genius of Plato had planted and reared. Others cultivated the germs themselves; and some fostered them into a wild luxuriance. It was by being grafted on the sturdy stock of Aristotle's mind, that they received fresh vigour, and produced fruits, though not strictly their own, yet partaking of their life and richness.

If we take Plato's philosophy as a whole in its complex form, not simply as a system of philosophy, but a system in which philosophy, and eloquence, and poetry, and deep religious and moral feeling, are harmoniously combined, it stands alone in the history of literature. There is nothing which approaches to it under this point of view, nothing which may be properly regarded as a continuation of it. It is a splendid work of rare genius, like the Homeric poems or the Minerva of Phidias, which no other artist has ever equalled. Philosophical dialogues have been written in imitation of those of Plato; but how unlike to them, how altogether inferior to them in conception and execution! There is learning, and eloquence, and grace, in whatever the accomplished mind of Cicero has touched. But compare his most finished specimens in this way with the Dialogues of Plato, and what a deficiency appears! Dignity and refinement of mind, and an acquaintance with the stores of philosophy, shine forth in the Dialogues of Cicero. But we miss altogether the depth and the exquisiteness of thought, the range and the minuteness of vision, the exactness of reasoning, the lively sketches of character and manners, which interest and astonish us by their combination in the Dialogues of Plato. Xenophon had great knowledge of human nature, and has thrown an air of great naturalness over his simple descriptions, whether it is conversations and moral lessons that he relates, or stirring scenes of history. But his Socratic dialogues do not admit of comparison with the elaborate efforts of Plato. They were clearly intended only as accounts of what Socrates had taught, and did not aim at any artist-like effect, as compositions. Or, if we turn to the Symposium of Plutarch, there, again, much as the author admired and studied Plato, we observe an entire want of that tact in the management of the dialogue, which so engages our attention amidst the subtleties of Plato's discussions. If we compare, again, the imitations of Plato in the Dialogues of Berkeley and Shaftesbury, we find the like contrast as in those of Cicero. Superior as these are in composition to other efforts of the kind in our language, they still give no proper representation of the spirit or the form of the Platonic Dialogue. There is no life in the interlocutors of these Dialogues; and the author himself is scarcely concealed behind their masks. Nor are there any touches of natural feeling or incident to connect the argument with the personality of the speakers; such as those in the Phaedo, where the discussion opens with the loosing of the chains from the limbs of Socrates, his bending and rubbing his leg, and expressing the pleasure arising from the contrast of his pain before; circumstances, not merely thrown in by way of dramatic interest, but leading, in immediate application, to the argument in hand. As we have said, then, the philosophy of Plato taken in connection with the admirable compositions in which it is contained, stands alone in the history of literature. It is due to the charm of the composition, that the interest of the reader is sustained amidst much of dry abstract speculation, requiring the closest attention, and considerable acquaintance with the subjects of philosophical discussion, in order to follow it. It was this charm in great measure, doubtless, which rendered the writings of Plato, in spite of their abstruseness and subtlety in many parts, so acceptable to Grecian taste. He had his critics also and censors; but all seem to have concurred in placing him at the head of the philosophical writers of Greece. Objection was taken by some to the severity of his sarcasm against the leading Sophists and other great names. Complaint, too, was made of his putting sentiments and words into the mouth of Socrates which Socrates had never used; and of his anachronisms, in bringing together in conversation persons, who, from the period at which they flourished, could never have met. But these were merely minute criticisms. It was seen by those who entered into the spirit of his writings, that he was still the great master throughout,—that he was not giving, in his Dialogues, a history of individuals or of the times, but a general character of classes of men, and the prevailing tone, both of philosophical discussion and of popular opinion. The enlightened critic saw that Socrates, for example, is not portrayed by him simply as Socrates, but as the characteristic spokesman of the system on which he is engaged;—and in like manner, that when he brings together persons of different periods, he overlooks the anachronism, that he may enunciate the doctrines inquired into, in their proper person.

The perfection to which he wrought the style of his most elaborate Dialogues, will be apparent to those who study them accurately under this point of view. So fastidious, indeed, is the taste with which they have been wrought into their present form, that it cannot be duly appreciated without an accurate and even delicate observation. Every word seems chosen with care, and every clause of his periods made to flow with its proper rhythm; and this effect at the same time is produced out of the ordinary materials of the language. The words and idioms are those of conversation, and the way in which they are put together seems, at the first view, to be as unstudied as mere conversation. But the result is an exquisite composition, in regard to which we are at a loss to pronounce whether the depth and the elegance of the thought, or the grace and propriety of expression, most prevail. It is quite evident that he was not the first to compose Dialogues, were we to look simply to the finished form in which his Dialogues have been executed. They are doubtless not the first efforts in that way. But the school of Elea had preceded him in this style. More particularly, however, we are told that Alcmaenius of Teos was the first to write Dialogues; or at least his is the earliest name to which, on the testimony of Aristotle, in a work now lost, the honour of originating the Dialogue has been assigned. But we need look no further than to the Greek drama for the first thought of the Platonic Dialogue. The Mimes of Sophron, and the Comedies of Epicharmus, probably furnished materials from which he was enabled, if not to mould, at least to enrich his Dialogues. The Mimes of Sophron, indeed, it is said, found a place under his pillow. And what are the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Symposium, it may be asked—the particular Dialogues in which he has most fully displayed his dramatic power—but philosophical comedies in prose, analogous to the Clouds of Aristophanes, and only differing from that play, as addressed to a higher class of hearers, and as intended, not to call forth the applause of spectators, but to elicit thought from a reader.

Nor, in touching upon the peculiar excellences of Plato's Dialogues, ought we to omit to notice especially, under this point of view, the delightful mythic narratives with which he has adorned and relieved his abstract discussions. The art with which he has introduced them is most admirable. They are openings of rich scenery suddenly presented to the view when least expected—tales of an Arabian night succeeding to a morning's pastime of disputation in some school of Greece—solemn shadows from an unseen world casting their majestic forms over some ordinary incident of daily life. But they are not to be regarded only as embellishments and reliefs to the argument. They bear an important part in the teaching itself of his philosophy. They soften down the outline of his reasonings—taking from them that positive didactic form in which they might appear amidst the strife of debate, and as wrought out by discussion. The knowledge which his theory aims at im-

1 The fastidiousness of taste with which he touched his compositions is illustrated by the account of the opening of the Republic having been found with the clauses variously transposed. Diog. Hal. De Comp. Phil. 25. 2 Diog. Laert. In Vit. 3 Ἐν τῷ πολυτελεῖ καθιστάμενος ἐν τῷ συμβουλευτήριῳ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων. (Rep. vii., p. 133.) 4 Tim., p. 363.

parting is that of Reminiscence, as we have known; and he would not, accordingly, have the results of his inquiry present themselves as anything else but Reminiscence. We are, indeed, to search out the reason of things. We are not to rest in mere opinion, but to battle our way against error and falsehood, until we rise to the eternal Lucas, the causes of all knowledge, as they are the causes of all Being. Still, we are not to suppose that we can distinctly comprehend the eternal Ideas in themselves. Though they are at last intellectually discerned, it is only "at the last," and that "scarcely." For they carry up the eye of the soul to the fountain of all knowledge,—the Divine Being himself, who cannot be conceived, much less defined in words. The mythic legends admirably combine with the refutative form of the discussions to leave this impression of indefiniteness on the mind. Whilst the mind's eye is directed steadily to the objects which can alone give stability and certainty to its knowledge, we are thus throughout reminded by Plato that we live amidst shadows and darkness, and that our eye must be purified and endued with heavenly light before it can look undazzled on the truth itself.

The first edition of Plato's works was that published by Aldus at Venice, A.D. 1513. The next edition was that published at Basle, by J. Oporinus, in 1534. An edition was superintended by Marcus Hopperus, who corrected several errors of that formerly published at Basle. The text of H. Stephanus, in 3 vols., 1578, does not require many words to describe it. The Bipont edition (11 vols. 8vo., 1781-1786) contains a reprint of Stephanus, with the Latin version of Marsilius Ficinus. It was owing to Immanuel Bekker that the text of Plato was first brought into a satisfactory condition in 1816-18. It was accompanied by the Latin version of Ficinus, a critical commentary, an extensive comparison of various readings, and the Greek Scholia, with copious indices. The dialogues are arranged according to the scheme of Schleiermacher. The reprint of Bekker, London, 1826, by Priestley, is a useful edition. Ast's 9 vol. edition of Plato, Leips. 1819-27, contains many emendations of the text. G. Stallbaum gave to the world an 8 vol. edition of Plato in Leipsic, 1821-25; and commenced an elaborate edition in 1827, which is perhaps the best and most useful which has appeared. The text of Baier, Orelli, and Winckelmann (1 vol. quarto, Zurich, 1839), deserves especial mention.

The translations of separate Dialogues are almost endless. There is no good Latin translation but that of Ficinus. Of the English ones, that of Taylor is by no means accurate. V. Cousin's edition, in French, is careful and elaborate. Schleiermacher's edition, so far as it goes, is unquestionably the best. There is an Italian translation by Bembo. Bohn has published an edition in 6 vols., executed by various hands,—the best in the English language.

(R. D. H.)