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JOHN M. KELLY LIBRARY
Donated by
The Redemptorists of
the Toronto Province
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Holy Redeemer College, Windsor
University of
St. Michael's College, Toronto
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The Schools of Philosophp
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
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GREEK PHILOSOPHY
PART I
THALES TO PLATO
BY
JOHN BURNET
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1928
«Ὁ
HOLY REDEEM se
ER LIBRARY, WINDSOR
Pe
ΙΝ
COPYRIGHT
First Edition 1914.
Reprinted 1920, 1924, 1928.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
Tue preparation of this volume was undertaken some
years ago, but was interrupted by my work on the Lexicon
Platonicum, which has proved a more formidable task than
was at first anticipated. I have to thank the editor of this
series and the publishers for their generous indulgence in
the circumstances. |
It is unfortunate in some respects that I have been
obliged to deal with certain parts of the subject in a form
which does not admit of detailed argument and still less
of controversy. The second edition of my Early Greek
Philosophy (referred to as E. Gr. Ph.?) makes this in large
measure unnecessary in Book I., but there are certain parts
of Book III. where I have had to state my conclusions
baldly in the hope that I may have a later opportunity
of discussing their grounds. My chief aim for the present
has been to assist students who wish to acquire a firsthand
knowledge of what Plato actually says in the dialogues of
his maturity. So long as they are content to know some- |
thing of the Republic and the earlier dialogues, Platonism
must be a sealed book to them.
[ have not thought it well to present Greek names in a
Latin dress. I see no advantage, and many disadvantages,
in writing Herakleitos as Heraclitus. It often leads to his
being called out of his name, as the Emperor Herakleios
v1 PREFACE
usually is when disguised as Heraclius. On the other
hand, the Latin titles of Plato’s dialogues are English
words. Theaitetos of Athens is best left with the beautiful
name chosen for him by his father Euphronios, but “ the”
Theaetetus is as much English as Thessalonians. We shall
never, it seems, reach agreement on this matter; I only
wish to explain my own practice.
I have to thank my friend and former colleague, Sir
Henry Jones, for many valuable suggestions and, above
all, for his constant encouragement. Mr. Hetherington
of Glasgow University was good enough to verify most
of my references, and the proofs have been carefully read
by Mr. W. L. Lorimer, Lecturer in Greek at the Univer-
sity of St. Andrews. For the imperfections which remain
I am solely responsible.
ΤῈ
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION - - ᾿Ξ = & Ξ 2 ° I
BOOK I. THE WORLD
CHAPTER I
Tue TIontans - 2 Σ᾽ Ξ Ξ ee : 17
Miletos - - - Ὲ a is - ᾿ 17
The Breakdown of Ionian Civilisation - - - 28
Religion - “ - Ε = - τ Ξ 31
Enlightenment - - - Ξ - = - 32
CHAPTER Ii
PyTHAGOoRAS. - : : 3 Ἰ Ξ 5 Ξ 37
The Problem - = 5 μι = 2 3 37
Life and Doctrine Ξ Ξ Ἑ Ξ Ξ = 38
Music - - - - - - = - 45
Medicine - - - - = = 2 Ξ 49
Numbers - - - :: = : Ξ ΒΞ: 51
CHAPTER III
HERAKLEITOS AND PARMENIDES' - Ἔ i i 57
Herakleitos - = τ Ξ = Ἔ = Ξ 57
Parmenides - - - - - - - - 63
viil CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
Wee EURALISTS so ee a τ
Empedokles - - - - : = Ξ = 71
Anaxagoras - - - - - - x - 76
CHAPTER V
E.LEATICS AND PyYTHAGOREANS τ ae eee 82
Gre ee i ee 82
Melissos - : : Ξ = Ξ = Ξ 8ς
The Later Pythagoreans’~ - - - - - 87
CHAPTER VI
Προ se = ll ll lm lw OL
BOOK II. KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER VII
Mere SOPMISTS = OS
Law and Nature - - - - - - - τος
The “Sophists” - - - - - - - Τοῦ
Protagoras - - - - - - - = = 110
Hippias and Prodikos - - - - - - 118
Gorgias - - - - - - - - 119
Eclectics and Reactionaries - - - - et
CHAPTER VIII
GENER GE OOKRATES - Ss νι = lw = 186
The Problem - - - - - - = 136
The Platonic Sokrates - - - - - =» 138
Aristophanes and Xenophon - - - - - 144
CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX
Tue PHiLosopyy or SoKRATES Ξ Ξ
The Associates of Sokrates - - :
The Forms - = : :
Goodness - = : 4 : :
CHAPTER X
THe TriaAL AND DzgatH oF ΘΟΚΒΑΤΕΒ -
The Condemnation - 2 a
The Alleged Offence - : ξ ξ
The Real Offence : : Ἰ τ
The Pretext Ξ Ξ Ξ : 7
The Death of Sokrates 3 Ξ Ξ
CHAPTER: Xf
DEMOKRITOS’. - Ξ : ss
Theory of Knowledge - : Ξ Ξ
Theory of Conduct - 2 Ἑ i
ΠΟΘΟΚ ΗΓ PEAT
CHAPTER XII
PLATO-AND THE ACADEMY 2. Ὁ
Plato’s Early Life a = a .
Foundation of the Academy = =
Plato and Isokrates - = = ε
The Methods of the Academy - =
The Programme of Studies - - .
Eukleides and Plato’ - a :
ΙΧ
199
205
205
213
215
219
227
230
x CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIII
CRITICISM : . Ἂ : o
The Theaetetus - Ξ : 3
The Parmenides - Ξ - τ
CHAPTER XIV
Locic ᾿ = ᾿ ε ἱ ᾿
The Sophist - - - Ξ
CHAPTER XV
Po.itics - ” Ἐ : " ᾿
The Statesman - = 2
Plato and Dionysios
The Laws - Ξ Ξ 5 ᾿
Education - = = Β 7
'
Ι
!
CHAPTER XVI
THE Puitosopyy or NumMBERS 2
I. Forms, Mathematicals and Sensibles
II. The One and the Indeterminate Dyad
The Philebus - - i -
CHAPTER XVII
Tue Puitosopyy or MovEMENT -
The Soul -~ - - - -
God - - - - - -
The World - - - -
Conclusion - = Ξ : -
APPENDIX Z 4 Ξ Ἑ 2
INDEX es 3 5 " Σ: 2
PAGE
234
237
253
273
273
290
290
294
301
305
312
315
320
5.6
333
333
335
338
349
35!
255
INTRODUCTION
I
No one will ever succeed in writing a history of philo-
sophy ; for philosophies, like works of art, are intensely
personal things. It was Plato’s belief, indeed, that no
philosophical truth could be communicated in writing at
all; it was only by some sort of immediate contact that
one soul could kindle the flamein another. Now in dealing
with the philosophy of an earlier age, we are wholly con-
fined to written records, and these are usually fragmentary
and often second-hand or of doubtful authority. They
are written, too, in a language which at best we only half
understand, and have been moulded by influences for the
most part beyond our ken. It will only, therefore, be in
so far as the historian can reproduce the Platonic contact
of souls that his work will have value. In some measure
this is possible. Religious faith often seems able to break
through the barriers of space and time, and so to appre-
hend its object directly; but such faith is something
personal and incommunicable, and in the same way the
historian’s reconstruction of the past is primarily valid for
himself alone. It is not a thing he can hand over ready-
made to others. There is nothing mysterious about this
aspect either of religious faith or of philological inter-
pretation. On the contrary, all knowledge has the same
character. In the present case it only means that a man who
tries to spend his life in sympathy with the ancient philo-
sophers! will sometimes find a direct conviction forcing itself
1 This is what Plato calls τὸ συζῆν (Ep. vii. 341 ¢), but he is thinking
of the living, not the dead.
A
2 INTRODUCTION
upon him, the grounds of which can only be represented
very imperfectly by a number of references in a footnote.
Unless the enumeration of passages is complete—and it
can never be complete—and unless each passage tells
exactly in the same way, which depends on its being read
in the light of innumerable other passages not consciously
present to memory, the so-called proofs will not produce
the same effect on any two minds. That is the sense
in which philological inquiry, like every other inquiry,
requires an act of faith. It is clear, however, that no one
whose experience has not been identical can be called
on to repeat this act after another, and for this reason
professed histories of philosophy are often more of a
hindrance than a help. They seem only to interpose
another obstacle where there are obstacles enough already.
But though a history of philosophy is impossible, there
are some humbler tasks that can in a measure be per-
formed, and of which the performance may help to
prepare the way for a more direct vision. In the first
place, there are certain external matters that may be
determined with considerable accuracy and which are not
without importance. We are more likely to understand a
philosopher rightly if we know the time he lived at and
the surroundings that may have helped to shape his
thought, even though these can never wholly explain him.
It is particularly useful to know what other philosophers
he was acquainted with, either directly or through their
writings. In the second place, the development of Greek
philosophy depends on the progress of scientific, and
especially mathematical, discovery more than on anything
else, and it is possible to ascertain pretty accurately the
stage Greek science had reached by a given time. The
records are full, and, when critically used, trustworthy.
It is for these reasons that this work deals so largely with
matters which may appear at first to lie outside the pro-
vince of philosophy. That is, in fact, its chief justification.
It is an attempt to lead the reader to the right point of
view, from which he may then sce for himself. Lastly,
MYTHOLOGY 3
there is what may be called the cathartic or purgative
function of history. The greatest of all the obstacles we
have to surmount is just the mass of scholastic explana-
tion and dogma which so soon overwhelm the teaching of
any original genius. To clear that away is perhaps the
greatest service that can be rendered in this field. We
do not wish to see Plato with the eyes of Aristotle,
or even of Plotinos, but if possible, face to face, and
anyone who can help us here deserves our thanks. It
may seem a purely negative service, but that lies in the
nature of the case. In the long run the positive con-
struction must be left to the individual student, and no
two students will see quite alike. All the historian can
do is to point the way, and warn others off tracks which
have already been found to lead nowhere.
Even this, however, implies that we know already what
philosophy is, and clearly, unless we have some notion of
that, we shall be in danger of losing the thread of our
story. We can nevertheless dispense with such a defini-
tion as would be applicable to the philosophy of all ages
and peoples, for we shall find a pretty clear notion of
what philosophy was during the Hellenic period emerging
as we goon. This will at least do justice to one aspect
of the subject, and that the one we are immediately con-
cerned with. It will be convenient to state at once,
however, that for the purpose of this work, I mean by
philosophy all Plato meant by it, and nothing he did not
mean by it. The latter point is important ; for it means
that philosophy is not mythology, and, on the other hand,
that it is not positive science, however closely it may be
related to both of these.
II
In the first place, philosophy is not mythology. It is
true that there is plenty of mythology in Plato, and we
shall have to consider the meaning of that later. It is
aiso true that we shall have to take account from the first
4 INTRODUCTION
of a mass of cosmogonical and eschatological speculation
which influenced philosophy in many ways. These things,
however, are not themselves philosophy, and it cannot
even be said that they are the germ from which philosophy
developed. It is important to be quite clear about this;
for in some quarters Oriental cosmogonies are still paraded
as the source of Greek philosophy. The question is not
one of cosmogonies at all. The Greeks themselves had
cosmogonies long before the days of Thales, and the
Egyptians and Babylonians had cosmogonies that may be
older still. Even savages have cosmogonies, and they are
nearly as advanced as those of more civilised peoples. It
is possible, though it has certainly not been proved, that
the oldest Greek cosmogonies, or some of them, came from
Egypt or Babylon. [{ is still more probable that systems
such as that of Pherekydes have preserved fragments of
“ Minoan” speculation, which may be of indefinite
antiquity. These things, however, have nothing directly
to do with philosophy. From the Platonic point of view,
there can be no philosophy where there is no rational
science. It is true that not much is required—a few pro-
positions of elementary geometry will do to begin with—
but rational science of some sort there must be. Now
rational science is the creation of the Greeks, and we know
when it began. We do not count as philosophy anything
anterior to that.
ΠῚ
It is true, of course, that science originated at the time
when communication with Egypt and Babylon was easiest,
and just where the influence of these countries was likely
to be felt, and it is a perfectly fair inference that this had
something to do with its rise. On the other hand, the
very fact that for two or three generations Greek science
remained in some respects at a very primitive stage affords
the strongest presumption that what came to Hellas from
Egypt and Babylon was not really rational science. If the
EGYPTIAN SCIENCE 5
Egyptians had possessed anything that could rightly be
called mathematics, it is hard to understand how it was
left for Pythagoras and his followers to establish the most
elementary propositions in plane geometry ; and, if the
Babylonians had really any conception of the planetary
system, it is not easy to see why the Greeks had to dis-
cover bit by bit the true shape of the earth and the ex-
planation of eclipses. It is clear that these things were
not known at Babylon; they were gradually worked out
in South Italy, where we can hardly assume Oriental
influences. Of course everything depends on what we
mean by science. If we are prepared to give that name
to an elaborate record of celestial phenomena made for
purposes of divination, then the Babylonians had science
and the Greeks borrowed it from them. Or, if we are
prepared to call rough rules of thumb for measuring
fields and pyramids science, then the Egyptians had
science, and it came from them to Ionia. But, if we
mean by science what Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler,
and Leibniz and Newton meant, there 15 not the slightest
trace of that in Egypt or even in Babylon, while the very
earliest Greek ventures are unmistakably its forerunners.
Modern science begins just where Greek science left off,
and its development is clearly to be traced from Thales to
the present day. Copernicus says himself that he was
put on the track by what he read of the Pythagoreans in
the Placita ascribed to Plutarch.’
The only remains that have come down to us show that
the Egyptians were not without a certain ingenuity in
the solution of particular arithmetical and geometrical
problems, but there is not the slightest trace of anything
like general methods.” If inconvenient remainders occur,
they are simply dropped. In the same way, the rules
1E. Gr. Ph2 p. 349, 2. 2. It was “the Pythagorean doctrine, taught
also by Nicolas Copernicus,” that was condemned by the Congregation
of the Index in 1616.
2For the Rhind papyrus, see E. Gr. Ph.? pp. 22 ff, and, for a later
discussion, see v. Bissing in Neue Jahrbiicher, xxv. (1912), pp. 81 ff.
6 INTRODUCTION
given for reducing triangles to rectangles are only correct
if the triangles are right-angled, though those given in the
diagrams are apparently meant to be equilateral. In fact
the whole system resembles the rough and ready methods
of the Roman agrimensores far more than anything we
should call scientific. Nor is there the slightest ground
for the statement sometimes made that the Egyptians had
a more highly developed geometry which they guarded asa
mystery. That is based mainly on the story that Plato
went to Memphis to study under the priests, a story
for which there is no good evidence. In any case we
know Plato’s opinion of Egyptian mathematics, and it 18
that there was an element of illiberality in it due to its
preoccupation with merely practical ends? It is stated
that, though hexagons are common on the Egyptian
monuments, the pentagon is never found? If that is so,
it is very significant. Anyone can make hexagons, but
the construction of the regular pentagon is a different
matter. We shall see that it was known to the Pytha-
goreans, to whom the pentagon was of interest as the side
of the regular dodecahedron, the most important figure
in their system. It should be added that all mathematical
terms, ‘ pyramid’ included, are of pure Greek origin
It is true, of course, that in Hellenistic times, a certain
number of Egyptian priests applied the methods of Greek
science to the traditional lore of their own country. The
Hermetic literature proves it, and so does the elaborate
astrological system the later Egyptians erected on a Stoic
foundation. All that, however, throws no light on the
origins of Greek science. On the contrary, if the Egyptians
of these days adopted the contemporary Greek science
1Plato, Laws, 747 b, 6599.
2Zeuthen, Histoire des mathématiques (Paris 1902), p. 5.
8The words πυραμίς, πυραμοῦς, which mean a cake made of wheat
and honey, are clearly derived from πυροί, ‘wheat,’ though their form
has been influenced by the analogy of σησαμίς, σησαμοῦς. See alsa
Ἐ, GF. PES p. 28..5..1.
BABYLONIAN SCIENCE 7
and philosophy, it is only another indication of their own
poverty in such things,
Ly.
In the case of Babylon it is even more important to
distinguish the times before and after Alexander the
Great. In the latter period Babylon had become a
Hellenistic city, and there was free intercourse between
the astronomers of Mesopotamia and Alexandria. It is
certain that Hipparchos, for instance, made use of Baby-
lonian observations. But Greek science was fully consti-
tuted before his time, and there can hardly be any doubt
that Babylonian astronomy attained its highest develop-
ment under Greek influence.1 What we have really to
consider is whether there is any trace of it in Hellas at a
much earlier date. Now we know a few facts about this,
and they are instructive. According to Herodotos (ii.
109), it was from Babylon the Greeks got the instru-
ment called the guomon, which indicated the solstices
and equinoxes by a shadow. Whether that is a scientific
instrument or not depends on what you do with it.
The Greeks were also familiar at an early date with the
Babylonian duodecimal and sexagesimal systems of
numeration, but the use of these was limited to weights,
measures, and currency, or, in other words, to com-
mercial purposes. They were not employed in science
till Hellenistic times, when the circle was divided into
degrees. Arithmetic proper used only the decimal
system. If they had cared, the Greeks might have
learned from the Babylonians to distinguish the planets.
These were of the greatest importance for purposes of
divination, but the Greeks paid no attention to astrology
before the third century B.c.? So long as there was no
1 For recent statements on this subject, see Jastrow in Enc. Brit. (11th
edition), vol. ii. pp. 796f.; Boll in Neue Jahrbiicher, xxi. (1908), p. 116.
2 See Cumont in Newe Jahrbiicher, xxiv.(1911), pp. 1 ff. He says (p. 4):
“The universal curiosity of the Hellenes by no means ignored astrology,
8 INTRODUCTION
cosmological system in which the “tramp-stars” (zAavjrat),
as the Greeks irreverently called them, could find a place,
they did not strike them as of more consequence than
shooting stars and the like. The Pythagoreans appear to
have worked out their planetary theory quite indepen-
dently after discovering the real nature of the earth. It
was said to be Pythagoras or Parmenides that first
identified the evening and the morning star. The Greek
equivalents for the Babylonian names of the planets, which
we still use in their Latin form, appear for the first time
in the Platonic Epinomis (987 Ὁ sq.). Evidently, then, the
Greeks did not learn from the Babylonians the single piece
of real astronomical knowledge they possessed.
They did, however, make use of one important achieve-
ment of theirs in this field, namely, their records of
eclipses, and the various cycles established on the basis of
these records. They used these for the purposes of the
calendar, and, as we shall see, for the prediction of
eclipses. Whether such observations and calculations are
scientific or not depends wholly on the purpose with
which they are made and the uses to which they are put.
In itself an eclipse of the sun is a phenomenon of purely
local interest, and it is no more scientific to record it than
it would be to record rainbows. If the record suggests
that something has really happened to the sun, and that
something may therefore happen to the King, it is not
only not science, but an instrument of positive nescience.
That, however, was the view taken by the astronomers of
Babylon.
The only eastern people that can bear comparison with
the Greeks in science and philosophy are the Indians.
but their sober understanding rejected its adventurous doctrines. Their
acute critical sense knew well how to distinguish between the scientific
observations of the Chaldeans and their erroneous inferences. It remains
their everlasting glory that they discovered and made use of the serious,
scientific elements in the confused and complex mass of exact observa-
tions and superstitious ideas, which constitutes the priestly wisdom of the
East, and threw all the fanmstic rubbish on one side.”
GREEK SCIENCE 9
How much of Indian science is original, and how much
may be traced to Greek influence, is a very difficult ques-
tion in view of the uncertainty of Indian chronology. It
does seem certain, however, that no Indian scientific work,
and therefore nothing we count as philosophy, can be
dated with probability before the time of Alexander. In
particular, there is no ground for believing that the mathe-
matical book entitled the Su/va-sutras, or “rules of the
cord,” is of earlier date, and it is in any case far below the
level of Greek science The analogy of Egypt and
Babylon certainly suggests that this reached India from
the Hellenistic kingdom of the North West.
Vv
The truth is that we are far more likely to underrate
the originality of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we
do not always remember the very short time they took to
lay down the lines scientific inquiry has followed ever
since. By the early part of the sixth century B.c. they
had learnt the rough and ready system of mensuration
which was all Egypt could teach them, and a hundred
years later we find the study of arithmetical and geo-
metrical progressions, plane geometry and the elements of
harmonics firmly established on a scientific basis. Another
century saw the rise of solid and spherical geometry, and
the sections of the cone were soon added. The Greeks
learnt, directly or indirectly, from Babylon that certain
celestial phenomena recur in cycles, and may therefore be
predicted. Within fifty years they had discovered that
the earth swings free in space, and the knowledge of its
spherical shape soon followed. A century saw the true
account of eclipses clearly stated, and this led up to the
1See A. B. Keith in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909,
pp. 589 ff. Itis a pity that M. Milhaud has been persuaded to accept
an early date for the Sulva-sutras in his Nouvelles études (1911), pp.
109 599.
Io INTRODUCTION
discovery that the earth was a planet. AA little later some
Greeks even taught that the sun was not a planet, but the
centre of the planetary system. Nor must we forget that
hand in hand with this remarkable development of mathe-
matical and astronomical science there went an equally
striking advance in the study of the living organism.
Most of the writings that have come down to us under
the name of Hippokrates belong to the fifth century B.c.,
and, while some of them show a tendency to the specula-
tive interpretation of vital phenomena natural in an age of
rapid scientific progress, there are others which display in
an almost perfect form the method of minute and pains-
taking observation that is alone appropriate in dealing
with facts of such complexity. The physicians of Alex-
andria discovered the nervous system, but the native
Egyptians, though accustomed for some thousands of
years to embalm dead bodies, show astounding ignorance
of the simplest anatomical facts.
The Greeks achieved what they did, in the first place,
because they were born observers. The anatomical
accuracy of their sculpture in its best period proves that,
though they never say anything about it in their literature,
apparently taking it for granted. The Egyptians, we
may remember, never learnt to draw an eye in profile.
But the Greeks did not rest content with mere observa-
tion; they went on to make experiments of a quite
modern character. That by which Empedokles illustrated
the flux and reflux of the blood between the heart and the
surface of the body is the best known ; for we have a
description of it in his own words.! It also established
the corporeal nature of atmospheric air. We should
certainly hear of many more such experiments if our
sources were less meagre, and more intelligently compiled.
Further, the Greeks always tried to give a rational
explanation (λόγον διδόναι) of the appearances they had
observed. Their reasoning powers were exceptional, as
we can see from the mathematical work they have left us.
1See E. Gr. Ph.” p. 253.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY II
On the other hand, they were also quite conscious of the
need for verification. This they expressed by saying
that every hypothesis must “save the appearances ”’
(σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα) ; in other words, that it must do
justice to all the observed facts.1 That is the method
of science, as we understand it still. It should be added
that the development of mathematical and biological
science at a given time to a large extent determines
the character of its philosophy. We shall see how the
mathematical influence’ culminates in Plato, and the bio-
logical in Aristotle.
VI
But, while philosophy is thus intimately bound up with
positive science, it is not to be identified with it. It is
true that in early times the distinction between the two is
not realised. The word σοφία covered all we mean by
science and a great deal more besides, such as the arts
of making pontoons and guessing riddles. But the dis-
tinction was there all the same. If we look at Greek
philosophy as a whole, we shall see that it is dominated
from beginning to end by the problem of reality (τὸ ὄν).
In the last resort the question is always, ‘“‘ What is
real?”’ Thales asked it no less than Plato or Aristotle ;
and, no matter what the answer given may be, where that
question is asked, there we have philosophy. It is no
part of the historian’s task to decide whether it is a
question that can be answered, but there is one comment
he may fairly make. It is that the rise and progress of
the special sciences depended, so far as we can see, on its
being asked. We find that every serious attempt to
grapple with the ultimate problem of reality brings with it
a great advance in positive science, and that this has
1This requirement of Greek scientific method is often ignored, but
Milton’s Raphael knows all about it. See Paradise Lost, viii. 81: ‘how
build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances,”
INTRODUCTION
always ceased to flourish when interest in that problem
was weak. That happened more than once in the history
of Greek philosophy, when the subordinate problems of
knowledge and conduct came to occupy the first place,
though at the same time it was just the raising of these
problems that did most to transform the problem of
reality itself. |
And this helps to explain why philosophy cannot be
simply identified with science. The problem of reality,
in fact, involves the problem of man’s relation to it, which
at once takes us beyond pure science. We have to ask
whether the mind of man can have any contact with reality
at all, and, if it can, what difference this will make to his
life. Τὸ anyone who has tried to live in sympathy with
the Greek philosophers, the suggestion that they were
‘intellectualists ” must seem ludicrous. On the contrary,
Greek philosophy is based on the faith that reality is
divine, and that the one thing needful is for the soul,
which is akin to the divine, to enter into communion
with it. It was in truth an effort to satisfy what we
call the religious instinct. Ancient religion was a some-
what external thing, and made little appeal to this except
in the ‘“‘ mysteries,” and even the mysteries were apt to
become external, and were peculiarly liable to corruption.
We shall see again and again that philosophy sought to
do for men what the mysteries could only do in part,
and that it therefore includes most of what we should now
call religion.
Nor was this religion a quietist or purely contemplative
one, at least in its best days. The mysteries had under-
taken to regulate men’s lives, and philosophy had to
do the same. Almost from the beginning it was regarded
as a life. It was no self-centred pursuit of personal
holiness either. “The man who believed he had seen the
vision of reality felt bound to communicate it, sometimes
to a circle of disciples, sometimes to the whole human
race. ‘The missionary spirit was strong from the first.
The philosopher believed that it was only through the
GREEK PHILOSOPHY 13
knowledge of reality that men could learn their own
place in the world, and so fit themselves to be fellow-
workers with God, and believing this he could not rest
till he had spread the knowledge of it to others. The death
of Sokrates was that of a martyr, and “ intellectualism,” if
there is such a thing, can have no martyrs.
CHAPTER I
THE IONIANS
Miletos
δ 1. Though neither the time nor the milieu can explain
the rise of so personal a thing as philosophy, they may
have considerable influence on the form it assumes. It is
not, therefore, without interest to observe that Miletos,
“the pride of Ionia,”} is just the place where the con-
tinuity of prehistoric Aegean civilisation with that of later
times is most strongly marked. The Milesians them-
selves believed their city to be a Cretan colony, and this
belief has received remarkable confirmation from recent
excavations. We now know that the old town of Miletos
belonged to the last period of the Late Minoan civilisation,
and that here at least that civilisation passed by imper-
ceptible gradations into what we call the Early Ionic.
There is a Milatos in Crete as well as in Ionia, and the
name of Thales is at home in the island too.2 We
may perhaps infer that the greatness of Miletos was
in some measure due to its inheritance from that earlier
age which has so recently become known to us. The
Milesians kept in close touch with Egypt and the
peoples of Asia Minor, especially the Lydians, and their
colonial empire extended to the northern coasts of the
Euxine.
1 Herod. v. 28: τῆς ᾿Ιωνίης ἣν πρόσχημα,
2 See my paper, “Who was Javan?” (Proceedings of the Classical
Association of Scotland, 1912, pp. 91 ff.).
B
18 THE IONIANS
§ 2. There is no reason to doubt that Thales was the
founder of the Milesian school of cosmologists, and to all
appearance he was the first human being who can rightly
be called a man of science. The distinction between
cosmologies such as the Milesian and cosmogonies such
as that of Pherekydes is a fundamental one, and it is
far more important to observe the points in which the
Milesians differed from their predecessors, whether Greek
or barbarian, than to look for survivals of primitive belief
in their speculations. No doubt these exist, and there
may well have been more of them than we know; but
for all that it is true to say that with Thales and his
successors a new thing came into the world.
Of Thales himself we know a great deal less than
we should like to know. In popular tradition he lived
mainly as one of the ‘Seven Wise Men,” and many tales
were told of him. In one of these he is the type
of the unpractical dreamer, and falls into a well while
star-gazing ; in another he shows himself superior to
the ordinary practical man by the use he makes of his
scientific knowledge. He is said to have foreseen an
abundance of olives and made a corner in oil, thus prov-
ing he could be rich if he liked. It is plain that people in
general had no idea of his real work, and regarded
hii simply as a typical “sage,” to whose name anecdotes
originally anonymous might be attached. These stories,
then>.tell us nothing about Thales himself, but they do
bear witness to the impression produced by science and
scientific men when they first appeared in a world that
was half arn ecia and half inclined to scoff.
There is, howéever;-another set of traditions about
Thales from which something may be learnt. They are
not of a popular character, since they attribute to him
certain definite scientific achievements. One of the most
important of these, the prediction of a solar eclipse, is
reported by Herodotos (i. 74). The existence at Miletos
of a continuous school of cosmologists makes the pre-
servation of such traditions quite easy to understand,
THALES 19
As, however, Thales does not appear to have written
anything, it cannot be said that our evidence is complete.
What makes strongly in its favour is that the discoveries
and other achievements ascribed to him are for the most
part just such developments of Egyptian and Babylonian
‘science’ as we should expect to find. But even if the
evidence is considered insufficient, it makes little differ-
ence. In that case Thales would become a mere name
for us, but it would still be certain that his immediate
successors laid the foundations of rational science. There
can be no harm, therefore, in mentioning some of these
traditions and interpreting them partly in the light of
what went before and partly in that of what came after.
§ 3. We learn, then, from Herodotos! that the life of
Thales belonged to the reigns of Alyattes and Croesus,
kings of Lydia, and that he was still living shortly before
the fall of Sardeis in 546 B.c. We are also told that
at an earlier date he had predicted an eclipse of the sun
which put an end to a battle between the Lydians and the
Medes. That was on May 28th (O.S.), 585 B.c. Now
there is nothing at all incredible in the story of this pre-
diction, though it is quite certain that the true cause of
eclipses was not discovered till after the time of Thales,
and his successors gave quite erroneous and fantastic
accounts of them. The Babylonians, however, were
equally ignorant on the subject, and yet they predicted
eclipses with tolerable accuracy by means of a cycle of
223 lunations. It is not even necessary to suppose that
Thales had to visit Babylon to learn as much as this. In -
Hittite times Mesopotamian influence had been strong in
Asia Minor, and Sardeis has been called an advanced post
of Babylonian civilisation. There may well have been
“wise men” in Lydia who had preserved the old secret.
It is interesting to note also that the Lydian king seems
to have employed the Milesian as his scientific expert ;
for we are told that Thales accompanied Croesus on the
expedition that proved fatal to his monarchy, and that he
1 References to authorities are given in ΚΕ. Gr. PA.2 §§ 2-7.
20 THE IONIANS
diverted the course of the river Halys for him. We
know, lastly, from Herodotos that he took a prominent
part in politics, and that he tried to save Ionia by urging
the twelve cities to unite in a federal state with its capital
at Teos.
δ 4. We are further told on the authority of Aristotle’s
disciple Eudemos, who wrote the first history of mathe-
matics, that Thales introduced geometry into Hellas. It
is extremely probable that he had learnt in Egypt the
elementary rules of mensuration referred to in the Lutro-
duction ; but, if we may trust the tradition, he must have
advanced beyond his teachers. He is said to have taught
the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids
by means of their shadows, and also to have invented a
method of finding the distance of ships at sea. It was
common knowledge among the peoples of the East that a
triangle whose sides were as 3: 4: 5 had always a right
angle, and right angles were laid out by means of this
triangle. What we are told of Thales suggests that he
invented some further applications of this primitive piece
of knowledge, and if so that was the beginning of rational
science. At any rate, there is no reason to doubt that he
was the pioneer of those investigations which were to bear
fruit later in the hands of Pythagoras, though it is hardly
safe to say more.
§ 5. According to Aristotle, Thales said that the earth
floats on the water, and he doubtless thought of it as a
flat disc. That, at least, was the view of all his suc-
cessors except Anaximander, and it remained characteristic
of Ionic as distinct from Italic cosmology down to the
time of Demokritos. It sounds primitive enough, but in
reality it marks a notable advance. The whole history of
cosmology at this date is the story of how the solid earth
was gradually loosed from its moorings. Originally sky
and earth were pictured as the lid and bottom of a sort of
box; but from an early date the Greeks, as was natural
for them, began to think of the earth as an island sur-
rounded by the river Okeanos. To regard it as resting
THALES 21
on the water is a further step towards a truer view. It
was something to get the earth afloat.
This was no doubt connected with what Aristotle
regards as the principal tenet of Thales, namely, that
everything is made out of water, or, as he puts it in his
own terminology, that water is the material cause of all
things. We have no trustworthy information about the
grounds on which this doctrine was based; for, in the
absence of any writings by Thales himself, Aristotle can
only guess, and his guesses are apparently suggested by
the arguments used in support of a similar theory at a
later date. We are perhaps justified in interpreting it
rather in the light of the doctrines afterwards held by the
Milesian school, and especially by Anaximenes ; and, if
we try to do this, our attention is at once called to the
fact that in these days, and for some time after, “air”
(ἀήρ) was identified with water in a vaporous state. In
fact it was regarded as only a purer and more transparent
form of mist, while a still purer form was “aether”
(αἰθήρ), which is properly the bright blue of the Mediter-
ranean sky, and is fire rather than air. It was also
believed that this fire and that of the heavenly bodies was
fed by vapour rising from the sea, a view which, on these
presuppositions, is the natural one to take of evaporation.
On the other hand, we see that water becomes solid when
it freezes, and Anaximenes at least held that earth and
stones were water frozen harder still. It may well have
seemed to Thales, then, that water was the original thing
from which fire on the one hand and earth on the other
arose. That, of course, is a more or less conjectural
account; but, if Anaximenes was in any sense _ his
follower, the views of Thales must have been something
like this. His greatness, however, would lie in his having
asked the question rather than in the particular answer he
gave it. Henceforth the question whether everything can
be regarced as a single reality appearing in different forms
is the central one of Greek science, and the story we have
to tell is how that in time gave rise to the atomic theory.
22 THE IONIANS
§ 6. The next generation of the Milesian school is
represented by Anaximander.!. We are on surer ground
with regard to his doctrines ; for he wrote a book which
was extant in the time of Theophrastos and later. It is
probable that it was the first Greek book written in prose,
and it may be noted here that Ionic prose was the regular
medium of philosophical and scientific writing. Two
Greek philosophers, Parmenides and Empedokles, wrote
in verse at a later date, but that was quite exceptional,
and due to causes we can still to some extent trace.
Anaximander was also the first cartographer, and this
connects him with his younger fellow-citizen Hekataios,
whose work formed, as has been said, the text of Anaxi-
mander’s map.
Anaximander seems to have thought it unnecessary to
fix upon ‘‘air,” water, or fire as the original and primary
form of body. He preferred to represent that simply as
a boundless something (ἄπειρον) from which all things
arise and to which they all return again. His reason for
looking at it in this way is still in part ascertainable. It is
certain that he had been struck by a fact which dominated
all subsequent physical theory among the Greeks, namely,
that the world presents us with a series of opposites, of
which the most primary are hot and cold, wet and dry.
If we look at things from this point of view, it is more
natural to speak of the opposites as being “separated out”’
from a mass which is as yet undifferentiated than to make
any one of the opposites the primary substance. Thales,
Anaximander seems to have argued, made the wet too
important at the expense of the dry. Some such thought,
at any rate, appears to underlie the few words of the
solitary fragment of his writing that has been preserved.
He said that things “give satisfaction and reparation to
one another for their injustice, as is appointed according
to the ordering of time.’ This conception of justice and
injustice recurs more than once in Ionic natural philo-
sophy, and always in the same connexion. It refers to
1 References to authorities are given in δ. Gr. Ph.” §§ 12 599.
~
~
}
ANAXIMANDER 23
the encroachment of one opposite or “element” upon
another, It is in consequence of this that they are both
absorbed once more in their common ground. As that is
spatially boundless, it is natural to assume that worlds!
arise in it elsewhere than with us. Each world isa sort
of vortex in the boundless mass. Our authorities attribute
this view to Anaximander, and no good reason has been
given for disbelieving them. It is obviously an idea of
the greatest scientific importance ; for it is fatal, not only
to the theory of an absolute up and down in the universe,
but also to the view that all heavy things tend to the same
centre. It was, in many ways, a misfortune that Plato
was led to substitute for this old doctrine the belief in a
single world, and thus to prepare the way for the
reactionary cosmology of Aristotle. The Epicureans, who
took up the old Ionic view at a later date, were too
unscientific to make good use of it, and actually combined
it with the inconsistent theory of an absolute up and
down. We are told that Anaximander called his in-
numerable worlds “gods.” The meaning of that will
appear shortly.
§ 7. The formation of the world is, of course, due to the
“separating out” of the opposities. Anaximander’s view
of the earth is a curious mixture of scientific intuition and
primitive theory. In the first place, he is perfectly clear
that it does not rest on anything, but swings free in space,
and the reason he gave was that there is nothing to make
it fall in one direction rather than in another. He inferred
this because, as has been observed, his system was incom-
patible with the assumption of an absolute up and down.
On the other hand, he gives the earth a shape intermediate
between the disc of Thales and the sphere of the Pythagor-
eans. He regarded it asa short cylinder “like the drum of
11 do not use the term “world” for the earth, but as the equivalent
of what was called an οὐρανός at this date, and later a κόσμος. It means
everything within the heavens of the fixed stars. From our point of
view, it is a “‘ planetary system,” though the earth and not the sun is its
centre, and the fixed stars are part of it.
24 THE IONIANS
᾽
a pillar,” and supposed that we are living on the upper
surface while there is another antipodal to us. His theory
of the heavenly bodies shows that he was still unable to
separate meteorology and astronomy. So long as all “‘the
things aloft” (ra μετέωρα) are classed together, that is
inevitable. Even Galileo maintained that comets were
atmospheric phenomena, and he had far less excuse for
doing so than Anaximander had for taking the same view
of all the heavenly bodies. Nor was his hypothesis
without a certain audacious grandeur. He supposed that
the sun, moon, and stars were really rings of fire surround-
ing the earth. We do not see them as rings, however,
because they are encased in “air” or mist. What we do
see is only the single aperture through which the fire
escapes “as through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.”
We note here the beginning of the theory that the
heavenly bodies are carried round on rings, a theory
which held its ground till Eudoxos replaced the rings
by spheres. We are also told that Anaximander noted
the obliquity of these rings to what we should call the
plane of the equator. Eclipses were caused by stoppages
of the apertures.
§ 8. With regard to living beings, Anaximander held
that all life came from the sea, and that the present forms
of animals were the result of adaptation to a fresh environ-
ment. It is possible that some of his biological theories
were grotesque in detail, but it is certain that his method
was thoroughly scientific. He was much impressed by
the observation of certain viviparous sharks or dogfish,
and evidently regarded them as an intermediary between
fishes and land animals. His proof that man must have
been descended from an animal of another species has a
curiously modern ring. The young of the human species
require a prolonged period of nursing, while those of
other species soon find their food for themselves. If,
then, man had always been as he is now he could never
have survived.
§ 9. The third of the Milesians was Anaximenes, whose
ANAXIMENES 25
activity seems to fall in the period when Ionia had come
under Persian rule.1_ He too wrote a prose work of which
one fragment survives. He was not a great original
genius like Anaximander, and in some respects his cosmo-
logy falls far short of his predecessor’s. His title to
remembrance is really based on his discovery of the
formula which for the first time made the Milesian theory
coherent, that of rarefaction and condensation. He re-
garded “air”—the air we breathe, but also that which
thickens into mist and water—as the primary form of
body, and so far his theory resembled that we have
ascribed to Thales. On the other hand, he thought of
this air as boundless and as containing an infinite number
of worlds, in this respect following Anaximander. The
solitary fragment quoted from his work shows that he was
influenced by the analogy of the microcosm and the
macrocosm. “As our soul,” he says, “ which is air, holds _
us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole
world.” The world is thought of as breathing or inhaling
air from the boundless mass outside it. This Air he spoke
of as a “god.”
The cosmology of Anaximenes was reactionary in many
ways. It was felt, no doubt, that Anaximander had gone
too far, though we shall see that his audacities contained
the promise of the future. According to Anaximenes, the
earth is flat and floats upon the air “like a leaf.” The
heavenly bodies also float on the air. Their paths are not
oblique, but the earth is tilted up, so that most of them
are hidden when they get behind the higher side of it. It
is unfortunate that Anaximenes did not know the spherical
shape of the earth; for this line of thought might have led
him to discover the inclination of its axis. As it was, he
regarded it as a disc, and said the heavens surrounded it
“like a hat.”” Ionia was never able to accept the scientific
view of the earth, and even Demokritos continued to
believe it was flat. The suggestive theory of Anaximander
was to be developed in another region.
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.2 §§ 23 sg¢. -
26 THE IONIANS
§1o. It has recently been maintained that the Milesian
cosmology was based on the primitive and popular theory
of “the four elements.” It is not meant, of course, that
the scientific conception of an “element” existed at this
date. We shall see later that this was due to Empedokles,
and it is only the place that the old quaternion of Fire,
Air, Earth, and Water occupied in his system, and after-
wards in that of Aristotle, that has led to these being
called “the four elements.” It is an unfortunate con-
fusion, but it is very difficult to avoid it, and we must
perforce continue to use the word “element”’ in two
senses which have very little to do with one another. It
is undeniable that, from an early date, a fourfold or three-
fold division of this kind was recognised. It can be traced
in Homer and Hesiod, and it has been plausibly suggested
that it is connected with the myth of the “ portions”
(μοῖραι) assigned to Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. We are
tempted, then, to say that the early cosmologists simply
took one of these “‘ portions” after the other and regarded
it as primary. But, when we look closer, we shall be
more inclined to conclude that the originality of these men
consisted precisely in their ignoring the old popular view
completely. In particular, we hear nothing whatever of
earth as a primary form of body, though earth is never
passed over in any popular list of so-called ‘‘ elements.” 1
This is still more striking if we remember the importance
of Mother Earth in early cosmogonies, an importance
which she still retains in Pherekydes. Here once more
the breach between the Milesian cosmology and every-
thing that had gone before is really the striking thing
about it.
Indeed, if we take a broad view of it, we shall see that
it depends on the extension of the observed identity of
ice, water, and steam to earth and stones on the one hand,
and to air and fire on the other. In other words, it sub-
1This is pointed out by Aristotle, Met. A, 8. 989 a, 5 “45. Neither
he nor Theophrastos made an exception of Xenophanes. Cf. Diels,
Vors® p. 52, 28.
MATTER ᾿ 27
stitutes for the primitive “ four elements” something which
bears a much closer resemblance to what are now called
the three states of aggregation, the solid, the liquid, and the
gaseous. At any rate, the Milesians believed that what
appears in these three forms was one thing, and this, as I
hold, they called φύσις. That term meant originally the par-
ticular stuff of which a given thing is made. Fr instance,
wooden things have one φύσις, rocks another, flesh and
blood a third. The Milesians asked for the φύσις of all
things. Thales said it was water, and we cannot be far
wrong in guessing that he said so because, as we should
put it, the liquid state is intermediate between the solid
and the gaseous, and can therefore pass easily into either.
Anaximander preferred to leave his Boundless as some-
thing distinct from any special form of body, so that the
opposites might proceed from it. Anaximenes saw that,
after all, the primary substance must have some character
of its own, and identified it with “air,” that is, with the
intermediate stage between water and fire. This he was
able to do because he had introduced the idea of rarefac-
tion and condensation, which alone makes the whole
theory intelligible. In a word, the Milesians had drawn
the outlines of the theory of matter in the physicist’s sense
of the word, and these outlines still survive in a recog-
nisable form in our text-books. That, and not the particular
astronomical doctrine they taught, is the central thing in
the system, and that is why it is reckoned as the beginning
1Plato, Laws, 891 ς : κινδυνεύει γὰρ ὁ λέγων ταῦτα πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ
γῆν καὶ ἀέρα πρῶτα ἡγεῖσθαι τῶν πάντων εἶναι, καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὀνομάζειν
ταῦτα αὐτά. ‘The question really is whether the original meaning of
φύσις is growth.” Aristotle (Mer. A, 4. 1014 b, 16) did not think so;
for he says that, when it means “ growth,” it is as if one were to pro-
nounce it with a long v. In other words, it did not at once suggest to
him the verb φύομαι (Aeol. φυίομαι). For controversy on this subject,
see Heidel, Περὶ φύσεως (Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, xlv. 4), and Lovejoy, “The Meaning of φύσις in the Greek
Physiologers” (Philosophical Review, xviii. 4). ‘To my mind the fact that
the Atomists called the atoms φύσις is conclusive. See Ar. Phys. 265 b,
25; Simpl. ἢ)". p. 1318, 34. Atoms do not “ grow.”
28 THE IONIANS
of philosophy. It is the earliest answer to the question,
‘What is reality ?”’
The Milesian school doubtless came to an end with the
fall of Miletos in 494 B.c., but we shall see later that
“The Philosophy of Anaximenes,” as it was called, con-
tinued to be taught in other Ionian cities, and that it
regained its influence when Ionia was once more freed
from a foreign yoke. For the present, however, what we
have to consider is the effect on philosophy of the Persian
conquest of the Hellenic cities in Asia.
The Breakdown of Ionian Civilisation.
δ τι, The spirit of Ionian civilisation had been thor-
oughly secular, and this was, no doubt, one of the causes
that favoured the rise of science. The origin of this
secular spirit is to be found in the world described by
Homer. The princes and chiefs for whom he sang must
have been completely detached from the religious ideas
which we may infer from the monuments to have been
potent forces in the earlier Aegean civilisation. It cannot
be said that the Olympian gods are regarded with reverence
in the Jad, and sometimes they are not treated seriously.
They are frankly human, except that they are immortal
and more powerfulthan men. To the religious conscious-
ness the word “‘god” (θεός) always means an object of
worship, and this is just what distinguishes the gods from
other immortal and powerful beings (δαίμονες). In Homer,
however, the distinction is obscured. It is by no means
clear that all the gods in the J/ad are thought of as objects
of worship, and it is only to a certain number of them that
prayers and sacrifices are actually offered. it is very sig-
nificant that when Achilles does pray in dead earnest, it is
not to the ruler of Ida or Olympos he turns, but to the
far-off Pelasgic Zeus of Dodona.
The spirit of Hesiod is very different no doubt ; for he
is no Ionian, and he feels himself to be in opposition to
Homer, but the influence was too strong for him. He
SECULARISM 29
really did even more than Homer to dissociate the idea of
god from that of worship. It is certain that many of the
“ gods” in the Theogony were never worshipped by anyone,
and some of them are mere personifications of natural
phenomena, or even of human passions. For our present
purpose, it is of most importance to observe that it was
just this non-religious use of the word ‘ god” which
made it possible for the Milesians to apply it to their
primary substance and their “innumerable worlds.” That
way of speaking does not bear witness to any theological
origin of Greek science, but rather to its complete inde-
pendence of religious tradition. No one who has once
realised the utterly secular character of Ionian civilisation
will ever be tempted to look for the origins of Greek philo-
sophy in primitive cosmogonies.
§ 12. The feudal society pictured for us by Homer
had been replaced in the Ionic cities by a commercial
aristocracy, but the rhapsodes still recited Homer in the
market-place, as the bards had done at the feudal prince’s
board. It wasimpossible to get away from the humanised
Olympian gods, and in practice it was of these that men
thought when they worshipped at the shrines founded in
earlier days, when the gods were still awful beings to
be approached with dread. A people brought up on
Homer could hardly think of the gods as moral beings,
though they were supposed to be the guardians of morality.
_ Almost the only divine attribute they possessed was power,
and even that is retained chiefly as a foil to human
impotence, a thing of which the lonians are deeply con-
scious. The generations of men pass away like the leaves
of the forest, and there is no life to come, or at best a
shadowy one, of which the departed “soul” is itself
unconscious. Only so much is left of it as will serve to
explain dreams and visions; the man himself is gone
for ever when he dies. So it is wise for men to think
only mortal thoughts (ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν). The mysterious
power that awards happiness and misery in this life, and is
as often called “the godhead ” (τὸ θεῖον) as God, appears
30 THE IONIANS
to be jealous of man, and brings low everyone that exalts
himself. So we should eat, drink, and be merry, but
take heed withal to do “naught too much” (μηδὲν
ἄγαν). The man who observes the precept ‘Know
thyself” will not be puffed up. For overmuch prosperity
(ὄλβος) brings satiety (κόρος), which begets pride (ὕβρις),
and that in turn the blindness of heart (ἄτη), which God
sends on those he is resolved to ruin. A like doctrine
appears in the Hebrew Wisdom literature some genera-
tions later.
§ 13. Such a view of life comes naturally to the
wealthier classes in an over-civilised nation like the Ionia
of the seventh and sixth centuries B.c., but it can bring
no satisfaction to the people, which always demands some
definite satisfaction for its religious instincts. We can still
see clear traces of a very different attitude towards the
gods even among the Ionians themselves. The Homeric
Hymn to Apollo is, no doubt, sufficiently secular in tone,
but the sanctuary of Delos still retained some memories
of the old Aegean religion. It is not for nothing that the
boat, which in prehistoric times had conveyed the ‘ twice
seven” Ionian youths and maidens from Athens to Crete,
went to Delos instead in later days, and the legend
of the Hyperboreans connected Delos with still more
remote and wonderful regions. It was not, however,
in Ionia itself that these germs were to fructify ; for the
days of Ionian freedom were almost at an end, and the
citizens of one state after another had to seek new homes
in the far west. A new age had begun in which there
was no room for the light-hearted polytheism of Homer.
When men once more felt a real need of worship, that
could not satisfy them. It is easier to worship a tree
or an animal, than a god who is just a man freed from
the restraints that keep ordinary men in check, That
is also why the worship of two agricultural gods, who are
almost unknown to Homer, Demeter and Dionysos,
come to be of such importance at this date. They had
not been completely humanised yet, though we can see
ORPHIC RELIGION 31
the beginnings of the process in the Homeric Hymns, so
it was still possible for men to worship them sincerely.
Religion.
§ 14. The cult of Dionysos, in particular, had received
a new impulse from the similar Thracian and Phrygian
worships of Zagreus and Sabazios. The phenomenon of
“ecstasy,” which was prominent in all these, suggested
an entirely different view of the soul and its relation to
the body from that we find in Homer, and this was
propagated by the Orphic religion, which we now find
spreading in every direction. It was distinguished from
all earlier Greek religion in two important respects. In
the first place, it appealed to a revelation which had
been written down in sacred books, and in the second
place, it was organised in communities not based on a real
or fictitious tie of blood, but open to all who became
initiated and promised to obey the rule. Its teaching was
the exact opposite of the Tonian pessimism, which had
widened the gulf between its humanised gods and man
so far that religion in any real sense had become impossible.
The Orphics taught, on the contrary, that, though men
were certainly fallen, they were yet akin to the gods
and might rise again by a system of “ purifications”
᾿ (καθαρμοί) ; they might win “‘redemption”’ (λύσις) from
sin and death, and dwell with the gods forevermore. For
the soul of the Orphic “saint”? (ὅσιος) was immortal ;
it had existed before his birth, and would exist after
his death. Indeed, these words are improperly used.
What men call life is really death, and the body is
the tomb of the soul (σῶμα ora), whieh is imprisoned
successively in animal, and even in vegetable bodies, until
its final purification liberates it from the “ wheel of birth.”
Those souls, on the other hand, which are incurable
(ἀνήκεστοι, aviator) are condemned to lie in the “ Slough”
(βόρβορος) for ever. The ideas of heaven and hell, salva-
tion and damnation, were a new thing in Greek religion.
32 THE IONIANS
The Orphic religion was mainly the faith of obscure
people. We do not know the names of its preachers and
missionaries, and we only know it to have been a reality
from certain gold plates buried with believers in South
Italy and Crete. It is true that rulers like Peisistratos
took up the religion of Orpheus for political reasons ; but,
on the whole, it is for us anonymous. ‘That it was apt to
degenerate into a mere superstition is natural ; for there
were no great Orphic teachers, so far as we know, who
could have preserved its purity, and it fell an easy prey to
charlatans and impostors. We shall see, however, that
certain elements, which seemed to have permanent value,
were taken up by the philosophers, and so preserved to
later ages. In this way Orphicism has profoundly affected
all subsequent religions and philosophies, and not least
those which seem, at first sight, to be furthest removed
from it.
| Enlightenment.
§ 15. It need hardly be said that such ideas were
wholly foreign to the enlightened men of the Ionian cities.
The saying that ‘all things are full of gods” is attributed
to Thales, and belongs in any case to this period. The
tendency it indicates is what we should call pantheistic, in
the sense in which pantheism has been called “a polite
atheism.” This is still plainer in another form of the
same saying, which is ascribed to Herakleitos. He asked
his visitors to come into the kitchen, saying ‘“‘ Here too
are gods.” But the true spirit of Ionian science is best
seen in some of the writings ascribed to Hippokrates,
which are certainly not later than the fifth century B.c.
In the treatise on The Sacred Disease (epilepsy) we
read—
“T do not think that any disease is more divine or more
sacred than others.... I think that those who first called
this disease sacred were men such as there are still at the
present day, magicians and purifiers (καθαρταί) and charlatans
and impostors. ‘They make use of the godhead (τὸ θεῖον) to
cloak and cover their own incapacity.”
ENLIGHTENMENT 33
And again in the treatise on dirs, Waters and Sites—
“Nothing is more divine or more human than anything
else, but all things are alike and all divine.”
That is the true note of “ enlightenment,” and it was the
note of all the Ionian schools. It is most strongly,marked
in an elegiac and satirical poet, who approached the
question from the standpoint of the reformer rather than
of the scientific investigator. I refer to Xenophanes, who
is often regarded as the founder of the Eleatic school, a
point we shall return to later. In any case, chronological
and other considerations make it most instructive to take
him up at this point in our story.
δ τό. It is difficult to determine the dates of Keno-
phanes’ life with any accuracy ; for those given by anctent
authorities have been arrived at by a mere process of com-
bination.1 The facts of his life are also obscure. There
is not the slightest evidence that he was a rhapsode, and it
is most improbable. He may have visited Elea as well as
other places, but no ancient authority states unambiguously
that he did. He was certainly a citizen of Kolophon, and
we know from his own statement that he had lived in exile
from the age of twenty-five, and that he was still writing
poetry when he was ninety-two. There is no doubt that
he lived chiefly in Sicily, and it is practically certain that
he was at the court of Hiero of Syracuse, who reigned
from 478 to 467:8.c. He is also said to have been a
disciple of Anaximander, and there are features in his
poetry which make this probable, On the whole, it is
safe to say that Xenophanes belongs mainly to the sixth
century B.c., though he lived well into the fifth. Hera-
kleitos already speaks of him in the past tense, and couples
his name with that of Hekataios.
§ 17. If we look at the very considerable remains of
his poetry that have come down to us, we shall see that
they are all in the satirist’s and social reformer’s vein.
There is one dealing with the management of a feast,
1 References to authorities are given in Κι Gr. Ph.2 §§ 55 599.
ς
34 XENOPHANES
another which denounces the exaggerated importance
attached to athletic victories, and several which attack the
humanised gods of Homer.!. The problem is, therefore,
to find, if we can, a single point of view from which all
these fragments can be interpreted. It may be that no
such pqint of view exists; but, if one can be found, it is
likely that we shall understand Xenophanes better. Now
we know that a great change came over Hellenic life at
the end of the sixth century B.c. It was a reaction against
the somewhat effeminate refinement and _ daintiness
(aBporns) of Ionia, which had its source in the court of
Sardeis and had spread with Jonian colonisation even to
the far West. It had reached its highest point at the
court of Polykrates of Samos, and its singers were
Mimnermos of Kolophon and Anakreon of Teos. It was
not coarse and brutal like the luxury of later days, but
there was an element of decadence in it. It was charac-
terised at once by pessimism and frivolity. The change
came when “the Mede appeared ”’ (Xenophanes, fr. 22),
and the Ionians had no longer to do with half-Hellenised
Lydians, but with a sterner foe. They then began to feel
the gulf that divided the Hellene from the “ barbarian,”
and to accentuate the differences between them more and
more. ‘The general use of the name “ Hellenes” dates
only from this time. Thucydides (1. 6) notes the change
in dress which marked the new spirit, and his statement
is confirmed by vase-paintings.? In architecture the Doric
style supersedes the Ionic. Everywhere we note a return
to a simpler and more virile way of life. It seems to me
that Xenophanes is best understood as a pioneer of this
movement.’
§ 18. The religious reformers of the day turned their
back on the anthropomorphic polytheism of Homer and
Hesiod, and Xenophanes will have none of it either. In
1 For a translation of the fragments, see Z. Gr. Ph.? § 57.
2See Pernice in Gercke and Norden’s Eindeitung, vol. ii. pp. 39-44.
® See especially fr. 3,
PANTHEISM © 35
his case, however, this revolt is based on a conviction that
the tales of the poets are directly responsible for the
moral corruption of the time. ‘“ Homer and Hesiod
nave ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and
a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and
deceiving of one another” (fr.11). And this he held
was due to the representation of the gods in human
form. Men make gods in their own image; those of
the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the
Thracians have blue eyes and red hair (fr.16). If horses
or oxen or lions had hands and could produce works of
art, they too would represent the gods after their own
fashion (fr. 15). All that must be swept away along
with the tales of Titans and Giants, those “ figments of
an earlier day” (fr. 1) if social life is to be reformed.
Xenophanes found the weapons he required for his
attack on polytheism in the science of the time. There
are traces of Anaximander’s cosmology in the fragments,
and Xenophanes may easily have been his disciple before
he left Ionia. He seems to have taken the gods of
mythology one by one and reduced them to meteoro-
logical phenomena, and especially to clouds. And he
maintained there was only one god—namely, the world.
That is not monotheism, as it has been called, but pan-
theism. It is a simple reproduction of that special use
of the term “god” we have seen to be characteristic
of the early cosmologists generally. There is no evidence
that Xenophanes regarded this “god” with any religious
feeling, and all we are told about him (or rather about it)
is purely negative. He is quite unlike a man, and has no
special organs of sense, but ‘sees all over, thinks all
over, hears all over” (fr.24). Further, he does not go
about from place to place (fr. 26), but does everything
“without toil” (fr. 25). It is not safe to go beyond this ;
for Xenophanes himself tells us no more. It is pretty
certain that if he had said anything more positive or more
definitely religious in its bearing it would have been
quoted by later writers.
36 XENOPHANES
§ 19. But while Xenophanes makes use of contem-
porary science to overthrow the Olympian hierarchy, it 18
plain that he was not himself a scientific man. In spite
of Anaximander, he still believes in a flat earth extending
to infinity in all directions, and boundless in depth also.
Consequently it is a different sun that traverses our
heaven every day. The same must apply to the moon,
which he further held to be superfluous. Both sun and
moon are ignited clouds. The stars, too, are clouds that
go out in the day time, but glow at night like charcoal
embers. ‘That is not science as science was understood
at Miletos, and it seems that Xenophanes merely made
use of cosmological ideas for his own purposes. Any
stick was good enough to beat the gods of Homer and
Hesiod with. He says distinctly that the accounts he
gives of the gods are “guesses like the truth” (fr. 34),
and he denies the possibility of certain knowledge in
this field—‘“ Even if a man should chance to say the
complete truth, he cannot know that it is the truth”
(fr. 34). In all this Xenophanes is.the precursor of
another philosophy that came from Ionia at a later date,
that of Epicurus. The difference is mainly that it was
less of an anachronism in the fifth century B.c. than it was
two hundred years later.
In this chapter we have seen how the traditional view
of the world broke down, and how its place was taken by
Orphic mysticism on the one hand and by enlightened
scepticism on the other. Neither of these contained in
itself the promise of the future. That lay in the work of
the man who first united science with religion, Pythagoras
of Samos.
CHAPTER II
PY THAGORAS
The Problem
§ 20. Pythagoras must have been one of the world’s
greatest men, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say
how much of the doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due
to the founder of the society and how much is later
development.1. We have met the same difficulty in the
case of Thales, and we shall meet it again when we come
to Sokrates. One general remark may be made about it
at once. So far as we know, all great advances in human
knowledge have been due to individuals rather than to
the collective work of a school, and so it is better to take
the risk of ascribing a little too much to the founder than
to lose sight of him among a crowd of disciples. On the
other hand, it is certain that some Pythagorean doctrines -
at least belong to a later generation, and it will be well to
reserve these for a future chapter. Such a division is
inevitable if we are to give an intelligible account of
Pythagoreanism, but it must be remembered that it is
often quite uncertain whether a particular doctrine belongs
to the earlier period or to the later.
§ 21. It is also hard to say how much of what we are
told about the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy ; for a
1 Aristotle never attributes any doctrine to Pythagoras himself. He
generally speaks of “the so-called Pythagoreans,” and, often, still more
cautiously, of “some of the Pythagoreans.” References to authorities
are given in E. Gr. PA.” §§ 37 599.
38 PYTHAGORAS
mass of legend gathered round his name at an early date.
Sometimes he is represented as a man of science, and
sometimes as a preacher of mystic doctrines, and we
might be tempted to regard one or other of those charac-
ters as alone historical. It is quite possible to picture
Pythagoras as a mere medicine-man, and to treat all
Pythagorean science as the work of his successors. It is
also possible to rationalise the story of his life and repre-
sent him mainly as a mathematician and statesman. In
that case we have to regard the miraculous tales told of
him as due to the Neopythagoreans of the early centuries
of our era. ‘There is a serious difficulty here, however ;
for many of these wonders were already known to
Aristotle. It is equally difficult to reject the tradition
that makes Pythagoras the true founder of mathematical
science ; for that science was certainly in existence by the
middle of the fifth century B.c., and it must have been the
work of someone. If the credit is really due to another
than Pythagoras, it is strange that his name should have
been forgotten. Further, Herakleitos in the next genera-
tion tells us that Pythagoras practised inquiry (ἱστορίη)
beyond all other men, and he thinks the worse of him for
it. That is practically contemporary evidence, and it can
only mean that Pythagoras was famous as a man of
science. The truth is that there is no need to reject
either of the traditional views. The union of mathe-
matical genius and mysticism is common enough. It was
also characteristic of the seventeenth century, which took
up once more the thread of Greek science. Kepler was
led to discover the laws of planetary motion by his belief
in the “ harmony of the spheres” and in planetary souls.
Life and Doctrine.
§ 22. Pythagoras was a Samian, and, as we are told, he
migrated to Italy because he disliked the rule of Poly-
krates. That is why his floruit is given as 532 B.c., the
year Polykrates became tyrant. No actual dates are
THE PYTHAGOREAN ORDER 39
known, but it is safe to say that his activity belongs
mainly to the last quarter of the sixth century B.c. When
he left Samos, he founded at Kroton in southern Italy a
society which was at once a religious community and a
scientific school. Such a body was bound to excite
jealousy and mistrust, and we hear of many struggles.
Pythagoras himself had to flee from Kroton to Meta-
pontion, where he died. The chief opponent of Pytha-
goreanism, Kylon, is expressly said to have been rich and
noble, and there is no evidence for the belief that Pytha-
goras and his followers took the aristocratic side. That
notion was based on the fancy that they represented “the
Dorian ideal.” It is far from clear what is meant by the
Dorian ideal ; but in any case Pythagoras himself was an
Ionian, and his society was established in Achaian, not
Dorian, colonies. It is also certain that the earlier Pytha-
goreans used the Ionic dialect. After the death of the
Master, the disturbances went on more than ever, and
soon after the middle of the fifth century there was a
regular rising, in the course of which the Pythagorean
lodges (συνέδρια) were burnt down, and many of the
brethren lost their lives. Those who survived took
refuge at Thebes and elsewhere, and we shall hear more
of them later.
Being a Samian, Pythagoras would naturally be
influenced by the cosmology of the neighbouring Miletos.
It is stated that he was a disciple of Anaximander, which
is no doubt a guess, but probably right. At any rate his
astronomy was the natural development of Anaximander’s
theory of planetary rings, though it went far beyond that.
The importance of the infinite (τὸ ἄπειρον) in the Pytha-
gorean cosmology suggests Milesian influence, and the
identification of the infinite with “air” by at least some
Pythagoreans points to a connexion with the doctrines
1Tt has been said that the name Pythagoras is Dorian in form.
Herodotos and Herakleitos and Demokritos call him ‘‘ Pythagores,” and
so no doubt he called himself. ‘The form “ Pythagoras” is no more
Doric than “ Anaxagoras.” It is simply Attic.
40 PYTHAGORAS
of Anaximenes. The way in which the Pythagorean
geometry developed also bears witness to its descent from
that of Miletos, The great problem at this date was the
duplication of the square, a problem which gave rise to the
theorem of the square on the hypotenuse, commonly
known still as the Pythagorean proposition (Euclid, I. 47).
If we were right in assuming that Thales worked with the
old 3:4:5 triangle, the connexion is obvious, and the
very name “hypotenuse” bears witness to it; for that
word means the rope or cord “stretching over against”
the right angle, or, as we say, “subtending ”’ it.
§ 23. But this was not the only influence that affected
Pythagoras in his earlier days. He 15 said to have been a
disciple of Pherekydes as well as of Anaximander, and the
mystical element in his teaching is thus accounted for.
In any case, as has been indicated already, the religion of
the Delian and Hyperborean Apollo had a mystical side.
The legends of Abaris and Aristeas of Prokonnesos are
enough to show that. There are several points of contact
between this form of mysticism (which seems to be inde-
pendent of the Dionysiac) and Crete. We have seen that
the boat containing the seven youths and seven maidens
went to Delos in historical times, though tradition remem-
bered its original destination was Crete, and Epimenides,
the great purifier, was a Cretan. There are many things,
in fact, which suggest that this form of mysticism had
survived from ‘ Minoan” times, and it is therefore quite
unnecessary to seek its origin in Egypt or India. It is
highly probable, then, that Pythagoras brought his ascetic
practices and mystical beliefs about the soul from his
Ionian home, and there was a statue of Aristeas of Prokon-
nesos at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. This does
not, of course, exclude the possibility that the religion of
the Pythagoreans was also influenced by contemporary
Orphicism ; it is only meant that they derived it from a
genuinely Ionic source, and that Apollo, not Dionysos,
was their special god.
§ 24. Now one of the leading ideas of the Apollonian
PURGATION 41
religion which had its centre at Delos in historical times
was purification (κάθαρσις), and that held an important
place in the teaching of Pythagoras. The longing for
purity is something very deeply rooted in human nature,
and Catharism is always reappearing in new forms. Of
course we may mean very different things by purity. It
may be merely external, and in that case it can easily be
secured by the strict observance of certain abstinences and
taboos. That these were observed in the Pythagorean
society is certain, and it is quite likely that many members
of it got no further. It is certain, however, that the lead-
ing men of the order did. There was an important medical
school at Kroton even before Pythagoras went there, and
it appears that the old religious idea of purification was
early regarded in the light of the medical practice of
purgation. At any rate, Aristoxenos, who was personally
acquainted with the Pythagoreans of his time, tells us that
they used medicine to purge the body and music to purge
the soul. That already connects the scientific studies of
the school with its religious doctrine, since there is no
doubt that we owe the beginnings of scientific therapeutics
and harmonics to the Pythagoreans. But that is not all.
In the Phaedo Sokrates quotes a saying that ‘“ philosophy
is the highest music,” which seems to be Pythagorean in
origin. The purgative function of music was fully recog-
nised in the psychotherapy of these days. It originated
in the practice of the Korybantic priests, who treated
nervous and hysterical patients by wild pipe music, thus
exciting them to the pitch of exhaustion, which was
followed in turn by a healthy sleep from which the patient
awoke cured. An interesting light is thrown on this by
what was known as “ Tarantism” in later days.2 Taking
all these things together, there is much to be said for the
view that the originality of Pythagoras consisted in this,
that he regarded scientific, and especially mathematical,
1 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv. pp. 295 599.
® See Enc. Brit. (11th edition) s.v. “Tarantula,”
42 PYTHAGORAS
study as the best purge for the soul. That is the theory
of the early part of Plato’s Phaedo, which is mainly a state-
ment of Pythagorean doctrine, and it frequently recurs in
the history of Greek philosophy. It may be added that
tradition represents the word ‘“ philosophy”’ as having
been first used by Pythagoras. If that is so (and there is
much to be said for the tradition), we need not hesitate to
ascribe to him the saying mentioned in the Phaedo that
philosophy is the “highest music,” and so, since music was
certainly regarded as a soul-purge, we come to the same
result in another way. We still speak of ‘“ pure mathe-
matics,” ? and that way of speaking has given rise in turn
to the phrase “ pure scholarship.”
§ 25. Closely connected with this is the doctrine of the
Three Lives, the Theoretic, the Practical, and the Apo-
laustic, which is probably to be referred to the founder of
the society. ‘There are three kinds of men, just as there
are three classes of strangers who come to the Olympic
Games. The lowest consists of those who come to buy
and sell, and next above them are those who come to
compete. Best of all are those who simply come to look
on (θεωρεῖν). Men may be classified accordingly as lovers
of wisdom (φιλόσοφοι), lovers of honour (φιλότιμοι), and
lovers of gain (φιλοκερδεῖς). That seems to imply the
doctrine of the tripartite soul, which 1s also attributed to
the early Pythagoreans on good authority,” though it is
common now to ascribe it to Plato. There are, however,
clear references to it before his time, and it agrees much
better with the general outlook of the Pythagoreans. The
comparison of human life to a gathering (raviyupss) like
the Games was often repeated in later days," and is the
ultimate source of Bunyan’s “ Vanity Fair.” The view
1Cp. the use of καθαρῶς γνῶναι, εἰδέναι, etc., in the Phaedo, 65e,
66d, e.
2 The authority is Poseidonios. See my edition of the Phaedo, 68c,
2, note.
8 Cp. Menander, fr. 481 Kock (Pickard-Cambridge, p, 141. No. 68),
Epictetus, il. 14, 23.
REBIRTH AND REMINISCENCE 43
v
that the soul is a stranger and a sojourner in this life was
also destined to influence European thought profoundly.
§ 26. There can be no doubt that Pythagoras taught
the doctrine of Rebirth or transmigration,! which he may
have learned from the contemporary Orphics. Kenophanes
made fun of him for pretending to recognise the voice
of a departed friend in the howls of a beaten dog (fr. 7).
Empedokles seems to be referring to him when he speaks
(fr. 129) of a man who could remember what happened
ten or twenty generations before. It was on this that the
doctrine of Reminiscence, which plays so great a part in
Plato’s Meno and Phaedo, was based.2 The things we
perceive with the senses, we are told, remind us of things
we knew when the soul was out of the body and could
perceive reality directly. We have never seen equal
sticks or stones, but we know what equality is, and it 15
just by comparing the things of sense with the realities of
which they remind us that we judge them to be imperfect.
I see no difficulty in referring this doctrine in its mathe-
matical application to Pythagoras himself. It must have
struck him that the realities he was dealing with were not
perceived by the senses, and the doctrine of Reminiscence
follows easily from that of Rebirth.
§ 27. As has been indicated, there is more difficulty
about the cosmology of Pythagoras. Hardly any school
ever professed such reverence for its founder’s authority
as the Pythagorean. ‘The Master said so” (αὐτὸς ἔφα,
ipse dixit) was their watchword. On the other hand, few
schools have shown so much capacity for progress and for
adapting themselves to new conditions. The contradic-
tion here is doubtless more apparent than real, but it
creates a difficulty for the historian, and we can hardly
ever feel sure to what stage of development any given
1The word metempsychosis is not used by good writers, and is
inaccurate ; for it would mean that different souls entered into the same
body. ‘The older word is παλιγγενεσία, being “born again.” See
E. Gr. Ph.2 p, 101, %, 2.
2See my edition of the Phaedo, 72 ε, 4 note.
44 PYTHAGORAS
statement about Pythagoreanism refers. One _ thing,
however, we can see distinctly. There is a form of the
doctrine that precedes the rise of the Eleatic philosophy,
and there is a form that is subsequent to it. We shall do
well, therefore, to reserve for the present all doctrines
which seem to imply the Eleatic criticism, That is really
the only criterion we can apply.
§ 28. We can make out pretty clearly to begin with
that Pythagoras started from the cosmical system of
Anaximenes. Aristotle tells us that the Pythagoreans
represented the world as inhaling “air” from the bound-
less mass outside it, and this ‘“‘air” is identified with “ the
unlimited.” On the other hand, Pythagoras seems to have
learnt from Anaximander that the earth is not a flat disc.
He still, in all probability, thought of it as the centre of
the world, though his followers held otherwise at a later
date, but he could no longer regard it as cylindrical. As
soon as the cause of eclipses came to be understood, it
was natural to infer that the earth was a sphere, and
we may probably attribute that discovery to Pythagoras
himself. With this exception, his general view of the
world seems to have been distinctly Milesian in character.
When, however, we come to the process by which
things are developed out of the “ unlimited,” we observe
a great change. We hear nothing more of “separating
out”’ oreven of rarefaction and condensation. Instead of
that we have the theory that what gives form to the
Unlimited (ἄπειρον) is the Limit (πέρας). That is the
great contribution of Pythagoras to philosophy, and we
must try to understand it. We have seen that the
Milesians had reached the conception of what we call
‘“‘matter’’; it was the work of the Pythagoreans to
supplement this by the correlative conception of “ form.”
As this is one of the central problems of Greek philosophy,
it is very important for us to ascertain if we can what was
originally meant by the doctrine of the Limit.
Now the function of the Limit is usually illustrated from
the arts of music and medicine, and we have seen how
‘APMONIA 45
important these two arts were for the Pythagoreans, so it
is natural to infer that the key to its meaning is to be
found in them. Let us see, then, what can be safely
affirmed with regard to early Pythagorean musical and
medical theory. The doctrines described in the following
paragraphs are all genuinely Pythagorean, but it will be
remembered that our ascription of any particular state-
ment to Pythagoras himself is conjectural. We cannot
tell either whether music or medicine came first, or, in
other words, whether the purge of the body was explained
by the purge of the soul, or vice versa. It will, however,
be convenient to begin with music.
Music.
§ 29. In the first place, it may be taken as certain
that Pythagoras himself discovered the numerical ratios
which determine the concordant intervals of the scale.
Of course, when the Greeks called certain intervals con-
cordant (σύμφωνα) they were thinking primarily of notes
sounded in succession and not simultaneously. In other
words, the term refers to melodic progressions, and not to
what we call harmonious chords. The principle is ulti-
mately the same, indeed, but it is often of importance
to remember that there was no such thing as harmony
in classical Greek music, and that the word “ harmony”
(ἁρμονία) means in the Greek language, first “ tuning,”
and then “scale.”
In the time of Pythagoras the lyre had seven strings,
and it is not improbable that the eighth was added later as
the result of his discoveries. All the strings were of
equal length, and were tuned to the required pitch by
tension and relaxation (ἐπίτασις, ἄνεσις). This was done
entirely by ear, and the first thing was to make the
two outside strings (Aypasé and été)! concordant, in the
1 Observe that the terms ὑπάτη and νήτη do not refer to pitch. Asa
matter of fact, the ὑπάτη gave the lowest note and the νήτηῃ the highest.
The terms for “high” and “low” are ὀξύς (acutus, “ sharp”), and βαρύς
(gravis),
46 PYTHAGORAS
sense explained, with one another, with the middle string
(mesé), and with the string just above it (#i/é, later
paramesée). ‘The notes (φθόγγοι) of these four strings
were called “stationary”? (ἑστῶτες), and were similarly
related to one another in every kind of scale; the notes of
the other three (or four in the eight-stringed lyre) were
“movable” (κινούμενοι), and scales were distinguished as
enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic (with their varieties),
according as these strings were tuned more or less closely
to the same pitch as the nearest fixed notes. They might
differ from these in pitch by as little as what we call
a quarter-tone, or as much as what we call a double tone.
It is obvious that none of our scales could be played on a
seven-stringed lyre at all; an eight-stringed lyre, tuned
to the diatonic scale, is required for them. Even in that
scale, however, the Greeks did not recognise the interval
we call the third as concordant.}
§ 30. It is quite probable that Pythagoras knew the
pitch of notes to depend on the rate of vibrations which
communicate “beats” or pulsations (πληγαί) to the air.
At any rate, that was quite familiar to his successors ; but
neither he nor they had any means of measuring the rate
of vibrations. As, however, the rate of vibration of two
similar strings is inversely proportional to their length, it
was possible for him to transform the problem and attack
it on that side. The lyre did not immediately suggest
this; for its strings were of equal length, but a few
experiments with strings of unequal length would establish
the truth. Pythagoras doubtless used a simple appa-
ratus, consisting of a string which could be stopped at
different intervals by a movable bridge (the monochord), and
in this way reduced the experiment to a simple comparison
of lengths on a single string. The result was to show
that the concordant intervals of the scale could be expressed
1An elementary knowledge of the Greek lyre is essential for the
understanding of Greek philosophy. A useful introduction to the
subject will be found in the articles (by D. B. Monro) Lyra and Musica
in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities.
MUSIC 47
by the simple numerical ratios 2: 1, 3:2, and 4: 3,
or, taking the lowest whole numbers which have these
ratios to one another, that the four stationary notes of the
lyre could be expressed thus:
6 8 9 12
For convenience let us represent these four notes by those
of the gamut in descending order :
Neté Paramesé Mesé Hypaté
Mi Si La Mi,
and we may explain the discovery of Pythagoras as follows :
(1) When he took a length of string double that which
gave the high Mi, it gave the low Mi. ‘That is the interval
which we call the octave and the Greeks called diapasin
(διὰ πασῶν, sc. χορδῶν). It is expressed by the ratio 2:1
(διπλάσιος λόγος).
(2) When he took a length of string half as long again as
that which gave the high Mi, it gave La. That is the
interval which we call the fifth and the Greeks called
dia pente (διὰ πέντε, SC. χορδῶν). It is expressed by the ratio
4:2 (ἡμιόλιος λόγος).
(3) When he took a length of string one-third again as
long as that which gave the high Mi, it gave Si. That
is the interval which we call the fourth and the Greeks
called diatessaron (διὰ τεσσάρων, SC. χορδῶν). It is expressed
by the ratio 4 : 3 (ἐπίτριτος λόγος).
(4) The compass (μέγεθος) of the octave is a fifth and
a fourth (3x 4 = 1), and the note which is a fifth from the
nété is a fourth from the Aypaté, and vice versa.
(5) The interval between the fourth and the fifth is
expressed by the ratio 9 : 8 (éadydoos λόγος). This is called
the “tone” (τόνος) or pitch par excellence (probably from
its importance in attuning the two tetrachords to one another).
(6) As there is no (numerical) mean proportional between
1 and 2, neither the octave nor the tone can be divided into
equal parts.
There is good reason for holding that Pythagoras did
not go any further than this, and that no attempt was
made to determine the ratios between the “ movable”’
notes of the tetrachord till the days of Archytas and Plato.
48 PYTHAGORAS
It is by no means clear, in fact, that there was any strict
rule with regard to these at this date.t Aristoxenos tells
us that the diagrams of the older musical theorists all referred
to the enharmonic scale, which proceeded by what he called
quarter-tones and a double tone ; but Pythagoras could not
admit the possibility of quarter-tones, since the tone did
not admit of equal division. The internal notes of the
tetrachord must, then, have been regarded as of the nature
of the “ unlimited,” and the “ limit” was represented only
by the perfect concords.
§31. Now if we look at the four terms (por) which
we have discovered, we shall find that 8 and 9 are
related to the extremes 6 and 12 as means. The term ὁ,
which represents the note of the mesé, exceeds and 15
exceeded by the same number, namely 3. It is what is
called the arithmetical mean (ἀριθμητικὴ μεσότης). On the
other hand, the term 8, which represents the note of the
paramesé, exceeds and is exceeded by the same fraction of
the extremes; for 8=12-12=6+48. This was called
the subcontrary (ὑπεναντία), or later, for obvious reasons,
the harmonic mean (ἁρμονικὴ μεσότης). The geometrical
mean is not to be found within the compass of a single
octave.
Now this discovery of the Mean at once suggests a new
solution of the old Milesian problem of opposites. We
know that Anaximander regarded the encroachment of one
opposite on the other as an “injustice,” and he must
therefore have held there was a point which was fair to
both. That, however, he had no means of determining.
The discovery of the Mean suggests that it is to be found
in a “blend” (κρᾶσις) of the opposites, which might be
numerically determined, just as that of the high and low
notes of the octave had been. The convivial customs of
the Greeks made such an idea natural to them. The
master of the feast used to prescribe the proportions of
wine and water to be poured into the mixing-bowl before
1See Tannery, “A propos des fragments philolaiques sur la musique”
(Rev. de philologie, 1904, pp. 233 599-)-
MEDICINE 40
it was served out to the guests. That is why the ee
ourgos in Plato’s Timaeus uses a mixing-bowl (κρατήρ).
may well have seemed that, if Pythagoras could eee
the rule for blending such apparently elusive things as
high and low notes, the secret of the world had been
found.
§ 32. There remains one point of which the full signi-
ficance will not appear till later, but which must be men-
tioned here. It is plain that the octachord scale could be
increased by the addition of one or more tetrachords at
either end, and that it would therefore be possible to
obtain octave scales in which the smaller and larger inter-
vals} occurred in a different order. We can get some
rough idea of this by playing scales on the white notes of
the piano alone. It is fortunately unnecessary for our
present purpose to discuss the relation of these “ figures of
the octave’ ᾿ (εἴδη τοῦ διὰ πασῶν), as they were called, to
the “‘ modes” (ἁρμονίαι, τρόποι) of which we hear so much
in Greek writers ; for it cannot be said that this problem
has been satisfactorily solved yet All that is important
for us is that these scales were called “figures” (εἴδη) just
because they varied in the arrangement of their parts.
We have the authority of Aristoxenos for that,? and we
shall see that it is a matter of fundamental importance.
Medicine.
§ 33. In Medicine we have also to do with “‘ opposites,”
such as the hot and the cold, the wet and the dry, and it
1The example given by Aristoxenos is taken from the enharmonic
tetrachord, in which, according to his terminology, we may have (1)
+ tone, } tone, ditone, (2) } tone, ditone, 2 tone, or (3) ditone, } tone,
ὦ tone.
2See Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music (1894) ; Macran, The Har-
monics of Aristoxenus (1902); J. D. Dennistoun, “Some Recent Theories
of the Greek Modes” (Classical Quarterly, vii. (1913), pp. 83 599).
8 Aristoxenos, E/. Harm. 111, 74, 18 8 quite clear that εἴδη here means
τ figures,’ Ἵ διαφέρει δ᾽ ἡμῖν οὐδὲν εἶδος λέγειν ἢ σχῆμα᾽ φέρομεν γὰρ
ἀμφότερα τὰ ὀνόματα ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό.
D
50 PYTHAGORAS
is the business of the physician to produce a proper “blend”
(κρᾶσις) of these in the human body. In a well-known
passage of Plato’s Phaedo (86 Ὁ) we are told by Simmias
that the Pythagoreans held the body to be strung like an
instrument to a certain pitch, hot and cold, wet and dry
taking the place of high and low in music. According to
this view, health is just being in tune, and disease arises
from undue tension or relaxation of the strings. We
still speak of “tonics’’ in medicine as well as in music.
Now the medical school of Kroton, which is represented
for us by Alkmaion, based its theory on a very similar
doctrine. According to him, health depended on the
“isonomy”” (ἰσονομίη) of the opposites in the body, and
disease was just the undue predominance of one or the
other. We need not be surprised, then, to find that
Alkmaion was intimately associated with the Pythagoreans,
and that he dedicated his medical treatise to some of the
leading members of the society. Health, in fact, was an
“attunement” (ἁρμονία) depending on a due blend of
opposites, and the same account was given of many other
things with which the physician is concerned, notably
of diet and climate. The word “blend” (κρᾶσις) itself
was used both of bodily temperament, as we still call it,
and of the temperature which distinguished one climate
from another. When we speak of “temperance” in
eating and drinking, we are equally on Pythagorean
ground,
Now we find the word we have translated “ figure’
(εἶδος) used more than once in the literature of the fifth
century B.c. in connexion with disease and death, and, as
has been pointed out,! it occurs in many places in close
connexion with a verb (καθίστασθαι) which has also a
technical sense in ancient medicine. The same verb (and
’
1See A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica (St. Andrews University Publica-
tions, No. ix.), p. 189. Professor Taylor has not cited the εἴδη τοῦ διὰ
πασῶν in confirmation of his view, but it seems to me important, seeing
that we have the express authority of Aristoxenos for εἶδος τε σχῆμα in
that case.
NUMBERS BT
its substantive κατάστασις) is also applied to the individual
constitution of a given body. It is surely natural to inter-
pret these uses of the word in the light of the “ figures
of the octave” explained above. The opposites on which
health and disease depend may combine in various pasterns,
as it were, and such variation of pattern is also the explana-
tion of the differences between the constitutions (κατα-
στάσεις) of individual patients,
Numbers.
§ 34. Having discovered that tuning and health were
alike means arising from the application of Limit to the
Unlimited, and that this resulted in the formation of
certain “figures” (εἴδη), it was natural for Pythagoras to
look for something of the same kind in the world at
large. The Milesians had taught that all things issued
from the Boundless or Unlimited, though they had given
different accounts of this. Anaximenes had identified it
with “air,” and had explained the forms this took by
rarefaction and condensation. He was thinking chiefly
of “air” as a form of mist. Pythagoras would seem to
have regarded it mainly from another point of view ; for
the Pythagoreans, or some of them, certainly identified
“air” with the void. This is the beginning, but no more
than the beginning, of the conception of abstract space
or extension, and what chiefly interested Pythagoras, so
far as we can see, was the problem of how it became
limited so as to present the appearance of the world we
know.
There is a striking confirmation of this in the Second
Part of the poem of Parmenides, if, as we shall see
reason for believing, that is a sketch of Pythagorean
cosmology. There the two “forms” (uop@at), which
men have erroneously assumed are Light and Darkness.
Darkness was still regarded in these days as a thing, not
as a mere privation of light, and “air” was very closely
associated with it. In Plato’s Timaeus (58 d) we have
52 PYTHAGORAS
what is no doubt the traditional Pythagorean view, that
mist and darkness were alike forms of “air.” Now Light
and Darkness are included in the famous Pythagorean
table of ‘ opposites,’’ where they come under the head of
Limit and the Unlimited respectively.
§ 35. Briefly stated, the doctrine of Pythagoras was
that all things are numbers, and it is impossible for us
to attach any meaning to this statement unless we have
a clear idea of what he is likely to have meant by a
“number.” Now we know for certain that, in certain
fundamental cases, the early Pythagoreans represented
numbers and explained their properties by means of dots
arranged in certain “figures” (εἴδη, σχήματα) or patterns.
That is, no doubt, very primitive; for the practice is
universal on dice and such things from the earliest times,
The most celebrated of these Pythagorean figures was the
tetraktys,+ by which the members of the Order used to
swear. This showed at a glance what the Pythagoreans
conceived to be the most important property of the
number ten—namely, that it is the sum of the first four
natural integers (1+2+3+4=10), thus—
It is obvious that this figure could be extended indefinitely,
and that it takes the place of a formula for the sums of
the series of successive natural integers, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21,
and so on. These, therefore, were called “triangular
numbers.”
We hear in the next place of square (τετράγωνοι) and
oblong (ἑτερομήκεις) numbers. A square number meant
(as it still does) a number which is the product of equal
1For the form of this word cp. τρικτύς (Att. τριττύς). The forms
τρικτύαρχος and τρικτυαρχεῖν occur in Delian inscriptions (Dittenberger,
Sylloge?, 588, 19 599.).
FIGURES 53
factors, an oblong number, one which is the product of
unequal factors. ‘These may be presented thus—
We see at once from these figures that the addition of
successive odd numbers in the form of a guomon produces
square numbers (4, 9, 16, etc.), while the addition
of successive even numbers produces oblong numbers
(6, 12, 20, etc.). We might go on in the same way to
study the properties of cubic numbers, but we cannot tell
how far Pythagoras had advanced in this direction. The
important thing to notice is that all these figures express
the sums of series of different kinds. The series of
integers yields triangular numbers, that of odd numbers
yields square numbers, and that of even. numbers yields
oblong numbers. Aristotle notes further that the form
(εἶδος) of the square numbers is always the same; it is
the ratio 1:1. On the other hand, each successive oblong
number has a different form (εἶδος). These correspond
exactly to the concordant intervals of the octave.!
Our knowledge of these things comes chiefly from
Neopythagorean writers, who regarded the “figures” as
more “natural” than the ordinary notation by letters of
the alphabet, but they certainly were known to Aristotle,?
1'Thus the ratio between the sides of 2 (2:1) is the διπλάσιος λόγος
(the octave) ; the ratio between the sides of 6 (3 : 2) 1s the ἡμιόλιος λόγος
(the fifth); the ratio between the sides of 12 (4:3) is the ἐπίτριτος
λόγος (the fourth).
2Cp. especially Met. N, 5. 1092 b, 8 (Eurytos and οἱ τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς
ἄγοντες εἰς τὰ σχήματα τρίγωνον καὶ τετράγωνον). In Phys. Τ᾽, 4.
203 a, 13, in explaining square and oblong numbers, he uses the old
word εἶδος instead of the more modern σχῆμα. That εἶδος originally
meant “ figure” in the sense of “ pattern” appears from the use of εἴδη
for the figures on a piece of embroidery (Plut. Tem. 29).
a PYTHAGORAS
and we need have no hesitation in referring them to the
very beginnings of Pythagorean science. In spite of the
introduction of the Arabic (or rather Hindu) system,
“fiourate numbers,” as they were called, survived the
Middle Ages, and the term is still used, though in a more
restricted sense. It is not a little remarkable that the
English language has retained the name “ figures,” though
it 1s now applied to the “Arabic” notation. In other
languages the Arabic si/r has been adopted.
§ 36. This way of representing numbers by “ figures”
would naturally lead up to problems of a geometrical
nature. The dots which stood for the units were regu-
larly called “terms” (ὅροι, termini, ‘boundary stones’’),
and the spaces marked out by them were called “ fields”
(χῶραι). The question would naturally arise, “How many
terms are required to mark out a square which i is double
of a given square?” ‘There is no reason for doubting
that Pythagoras discovered that the square of the hypo-
tenuse was equal to the squares on the other two sides ;
but we know that he did not prove this in the same way
as Euclid did later (I. 47). It is probable that his proof
was arithmetical rather than geometrical ; and, as he was
acquainted with the 3:4: 5 triangle, which is always a
right-angled triangle, he may have started from the fact
that 32+ 42= 52. He must, however, have discovered also
that this proof broke down in the case of the most perfect
triangle of all, the isosceles right-angled triangle, seeing
that the relation between its hypotenuse and its sides
cannot be expressed by any numerical ratio. The side of
the square is incommensurable with the diagonal. That
is just the same sort of difficulty we meet with when we
attempt to divide the tone or the octave into two equal
1The following quotations from the New English Dictionary are
of interest in this connexion :—1551 Recorpr Pathw. Knowl. .
‘“‘Formes (sc. produced by arrangements of points in rows) ... whiche
I omitte ... considering that their knowledge appertaineth more to
Arithmetike figurall than to Geometrie.” 1614 T. Bedwell, Nat. Geom.
Numéers, i. 1, “A rationall figurate number is a number that is made
by the multiplication of numbers between themselves.”
THE PENTAGRAM δ8
parts. There is no indication that Pythagoras formed any
theory on the subject. He probably referred it simply to
the nature of the Unlimited.
§ 37. Another problem which must have exercised him
was the construction of the sphere. This he seems to
have approached from the consideration of the dodeca-
hedron, which, of all the regular solids, approaches most
nearly to the sphere. Now the side of the dodecahedron
is the regular pentagon; and for its construction it 1s
necessary to divide a line in extreme and mean ratio, the
so-called “golden section” (Euclid, 11. 11). That intro-
duces us to another “irrational magnitude,”! and we have
evidence that this too played an important part as one of
the Pythagorean mysteries. The pentalpha (so-called from
its shape) or pentagram was used in its construction, and
the Pythagoreans are said to have appended it to their
letters. It continued to be used long afterwards for
magical purposes, and we meet with it in Goethe’s Faust,
and elsewhere. Tradition represented Hippasos as the
man who divulged Pythagorean secrets, and one story
says he was drowned at sea for revealing the incommen-
surability of the side and the diagonal, another that he met
with the same fate for publishing the construction of the
1In the scholium on Euclid, II. 11 (vol. v. p. 249, Heiberg) we have
what appears to be a Pythagorean way of expressing this. ‘This problem,
we are told, ov δείκνυται διὰ ψήφων, “is not to be exhibited by means of
pebbles,”
“ὃ PYTHAGORAS
regular dodecahedron. This is one of the cases where
tradition has preserved the memory of something which
was real and important.
§ 38. It was natural for Pythagoras to apply his discovery
to the heavenly bodies, and it 1s extremely probable that
he regarded the intervals between the three wheels of
Anaximander as corresponding to the fourth, the fifth,
and the octave. That would be the most natural explana-
tion of the doctrine generally known by the somewhat
misleading name of “‘the harmony of the spheres.” There
is no reason to believe that the celestial spheres are older
‘than Eudoxos, and everything points to the conclusion
that the Pythagoreans retained the rings or wheels of
Anaximander. They appear in the Second Part of the
poem of Parmenides and also in the myth of Er in Plato’s
Republic. We must further remember that there is no
question of “harmony” in our sense of the word, but
only of the concordant intervals, which seemed to express
the law of the world. They yield the conception of
“ form” as correlative to “ matter,” and the form is always
in some sense a Mean. That is the central doctrine of
all Greek philosophy to the very end, and it 1s not too
much to say that it is henceforth dominated by the idea of
ἁρμονία or the tuning of a string.
CHAPTER ΠῚ
HERAKLEITOS AND PARMENIDES
Herakleitos
§ 39. It is above all in dealing with Herakleitos that we
are made to feel the importance of personality in shaping
systems of philosophy. The very style of his fragments?
is something unique in Greek literature, and won for him
in later times the epithet of “the dark” (s σκοτεινός). He
is quite conscious himself that he writes an oracular style,
and he justifies it by the example of the Sibyl (fr. 12) and
of the God at Delphoi (fr. 11), who “neither utters nor
hides his meaning, but signifies 11, Here we see the
influence of what has been called the prophetic movement
of the sixth century B.c., though we are not entitled to
assume without more ado that Herakleitos was influenced
by that in other respects. The truth is that his central
thought is quite simple, and that it is still quite possible to
disentangle it from its enigmatic surroundings. Only,
when we have done this, we must not suppose we have
given a complete account of the man. He is much too
big for our formulas.
The date of Herakleitos is roughly fixed by his refer-
ence in the past tense to Hekataios, Pythagoras, and
Xenophanes (fr. 16), and by the fact that Parmenides
appears to allude to him in turn (fr. 6). This means that
he wrote early in the fifth century B.c. He was an
1¥or references to authorities and a translation of the fragments, see
E. Gr. Ph. § 63 s¢g. The fragments are quoted by Bywater’s numbers.
58 HERAKLEITOS
Ephesian noble, and it appears that the ancient dignity of
Basileus (at this date no doubt a religious office) was
hereditary in his family ; for we are told that he resigned
it in favour of his brother. We get a glimpse of his
political attitude in the quotation (fr. 114) where he says :
“The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every
grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads ;
for they have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among
them, saying, ‘ We will have none that is best among us ;
if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among
others.’” There can be no doubt that Herakleitos was a
convinced aristocrat and had a sovereign contempt for the
mass of mankind.
But it was not only the common run of men that
Herakleitos despised ; he had not even a good word for
any of his predecessors. He agrees, of course, with
Xenophanes about Homer (with whom he classes Archi-
lochos), but Xenophanes himself falls under an equal
condemnation. In a remarkable fragment (fr. 16) he
mentions him along with Hesiod, Pythagoras, and Heka-
taios as an instance of the truth that much learning
(πολυμαθώ) does not teach men to think (νόον οὐ διδασκει).
The researches (ἱστορίη) of Pythagoras, by which we are
to understand in the first place his harmonic and arith-
metical discoveries, are rejected with special emphasis
(fr. 17). Wisdom is not a knowledge of many things ;
it is the clear knowledge of one thing only, and this
Herakleitos describes, in true prophetic style, as his Word
(λόγος), which is ‘true evermore,’ though men cannot
understand it even when it is told to them (fr. 2). We
must endeavour, then, to discover, if we can, what
Herakleitos meant by his Word, the thing he felt he
had been born to say, whether anyone would listen to him
or not.
§ 40. In the first place, it is plain that the Word must
be something more than the doctrine of Fire as the
primary substance, or even the theory of Flux (πάντα ῥεῖ).
If Herakleitos had merely substituted fire for the “air” of
SOUL 59
Anaximenes, that would only have been a further advance
on the lines of Anaximenes himself, who had substituted
“air” for the water of Thales. It is not at once obvious
either that the doctrine of flux is an improvement on that
of rarefaction and condensation; and, even if it were,
such an improvement would hardly account for the tone
in which Herakleitos speaks of his Word. It is not in
this direction we must seek for his innermost thought.
The doctrine of flux is, no doubt, a great scientific
generalisation, but no single scientific discovery is
attributed to Herakleitos. That is significant. Further,
everything we are told about his cosmology shows it to
have been even more reactionary than that of Xenophanes
or the school of Anaximenes. On the other hand, though
he uses the language of the mysteries, he condemns them
in the strongest terms. The “ Night-walkers, magicians,
Bakchoi, Lenai, and Mystai” of whom he speaks (fr. 124)
must be the contemporary Orphics, and we are told by
Clement of Alexandria, who quotes the words, that
Herakleitos threatened them with the wrath to come.
Yet Herakleitos has one thing in common with the
religious teachers of his time, and that is his insistence on
the idea of Soul (ψυχή). To him, as to them, the soul
was no longer a feeble ghost or shade, but the most real
thing of all, and its most important attribute was thought
(γνώμη) or wisdom (τὸ σοφόν). Now Anaximenes had
already illustrated the doctrine of “air” by the remark
that it is breath which keeps us in life (§ 9), and we
have seen how the same idea affected the Pythagorean
cosmology (ὃ 28). The Delphic precept ‘Know thyself”
was a household word in those days, and Herakleitos says
“1 sought myself” (ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν, fr. 80). He also
said (fr. 71): “ You cannot find out the boundaries of
soul ; so deep a measure hath it.” If we follow up these
hints we may perhaps find ourselves on the right track.
§ 41. A glance at the fragments will show that the
thought of Herakleitos was dominated by the opposition
of sleeping and waking, life and death, and that this
60 HERAKLEITOS
seemed to him the key to the traditional Milesian problem
of the opposites, hot and cold, wet and dry. More pre-
cisely, Life, Sleep, Death correspond to Fire, Water,
Earth, and the latter are to be understood from the
former. Now we see that the soul is only fully alive
when it is awake, and that sleep is really a stage between
life and death. Sleep and death are due to the advance of
moisture, as is shown by the phenomenon of drunkenness
(fr. 73). ‘It is death to souls to become water”’ (fr. 68).
Waking and life are due to the advance of warmth and
fire, and “the dry soul is the wisest and the best” (fr. 74).
We see further that there is a regular alternation of the
two processes ; sleep alternates with waking, and life with
death. Fire is fed by the exhalations of water, and these
exhalations are in turn produced by the warmth of the
fire. If there were no water, there could be no fire; and,
if there were no fire, there could be no exhalations from
the water.
If we look next at the macrocosm, we shall see the
explanation is the same. Night and day, summer and
winter, alternate in the same way as sleep and waking,
life and death, and here too it is clear that the explanation
is to be found in the successive advance of the wet and the
dry, the cold and the hot. It follows that it is wrong to
make the primary substance an intermediate state like
“air.” It must be the most living thing in the world,
and therefore it must be fire like the life of the soul ; and
as the fiery soul is the wisest, so will the wisdom which
“steers”? the world be fire. Pure fire is to be seen best
in the sun, which is lit up afresh every morning, and put
out at night. It and the other heavenly bodies are just
masses of pure fire ignited in a sort of basin in which they
traverse the heavens, and this fire is kept up by exhala- Ὁ
tions from the earth. The phases of the moon and
eclipses are due to a partial or total turning round of the
basins. Darkness too is an exhalation from the earth of
_ another kind. These last remarks prove we are not dealing
with a scientific man, as science was understood in Italy.
FIRE AND FLUX 61
§ 42. But, if fire is the primary form of reality, it
seems that we may gain aclearer view of what Anaxi-
mander had described as “separating out” (δ 7), and
Anaximenes had explained by rarefaction and condensa-
tion” (§9). The process of combustion is the key
both to human life and to that of the world. It is a pro-
cess that never rests ; for a flame has always to be fed by
fresh exhalations as fuel, and it is always turning into
vapour or smoke. ‘The steadiness of the flame depends
on the “measures” of fuel kindled and the “ measures”
of fire extinguished in smoke remaining constant. Now
the world is “an everliving fire” (fr. 20), and therefore
there will be an unceasing process of “ flux.” That will
apply to the world at large and also to the soul of man.
“ You cannot step twice into the same river” (fr. 41),
and it is just as true that “we are and are not” at any
given moment. ‘The way up and the way down,”
which are “one and the same” (fr. 69) are also the same
for the microcosm and the macrocosm. Fire, water,
earth is the way down, and earth, water, fire is the way up.
And these two ways are forever being traversed in opposite
directions at once, so that everything really consists of two
parts, one part travelling up and the other travelling down.
Now Anaximander had held (§ 6) that all things must
return to the Boundless, and so pay the penalty to one
another for their injustice, and what Herakleitos regarded
as his great discovery seems to attach itself to this very
pronouncement. It is just the fact that the world is “an
everliving fire” which secures its stability ; for the same
‘“‘measures” of fire are always being kindled and going
out (fr. 20). It is impossible for fire to consume its
nourishment without at the same time giving back what it
has consumed already. It is a process of eternal ‘‘ ex-
change” (ἀμοιβή) like that of gold for wares and wares for
gold (fr. 22); and “the sun will not exceed his measures;
if he does, the Erinyes, the auxiliaries of Justice, will find
him out” (fr. 29). For all this strife is really justice
(fr. 22), not injustice, as Anaximander had supposed, and
62 HERAKLEITOS
‘War is the father of all things”’ (fr. 44). It is just this
opposite tension that keeps things together, like that of
the string in the bow and the lyre (fr. 45), and though it
is a hidden attunement, it is better than any open one
(fr.47). For all his condemnation of Pythagoras, Hera-
kleitos cannot get away from the tuned string.
But, in spite of all this, it is possible for the “ measures”
to vary up to acertain point. We see that from the facts
of sleeping and waking, death and life, with which we
started, and also from the corresponding facts of night and
day, summer and winter. These fluctuations are due to
the processes of evaporation or exhalation (ἀναθυμίασις) and
liquefaction (χύσις) which formed the starting-point of all
early Ionian physics, Yet these fluctuations exactly
balance one another, so that, in the long run, the
‘“‘measures”” are not exceeded. It appears to be certain
that Herakleitos inferred from this periodicity the survival
of soul in some form or other. We see that day follows
night and summer follows winter, and we know that
waking follows sleep. In the same way, he seems to have
argued, life follows death, and the soul once more begins
its upward journey. ‘It is the same thing in us that is
quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old”
(fr. 78). That is the game of draughts that Time plays
everlastingly (fr. 79).
§ 43. Such, so far as we can make it out, is the general
view of Herakleitos, and now we may ask for his secret,
the one thing to know which is wisdom. It is that, as the
apparent strife of opposites in this world is really due to
the opposite tension which holds the world together, so in
pure fire, which is the eternal wisdom, all these opposi-
tions disappear in their common ground. God 15 ‘“‘beyond
good and bad” (fr. 57,61). Therefore what we must do
to attain wisdom is to hold fast to “the common.” ‘The
waking have one andthe same world, but sleepers turn
aside, each into a world of his own” (fr. 95). If we keep
our souls dry, we shall understand that good and evil are
one, that is, that they are only passing forms of one reality
“BEYOND GOOD AND BAD” 63
that transcends them both. Such was the conclusion a
man of genius drew from the Milesian doctrine of evapora-
tion and liquefaction.
§ 44. For, with all his originality, Herakleitos remains
an Ionian. He had learnt indeed the importance of soul,
but his fire-soul is as little personal as the breath-soul of
Anaximenes. There are certainly fragments that seem to
assert the immortality of the individual soul; but, when
we examine them, we see they cannot bear this interpreta-
tion. Soul is only immortal in so far as it is part of the
everliving fire which is the life of the world. Seeing that
the soul of every man is in constant flux like his body,
what meaning can immortality have?’ It is not only true
that we cannot step twice into the same river, but also
that we are not the same for two successive instants. That
is just the side of his doctrine that struck contemporaries
most forcibly, and Epicharmos already made fun of it by
putting it as an argument into the mouth of a debtor who
did not wish to pay. How could he be liable, seeing he
is not the same man that contracted the debt? And
Herakleitos is an Ionian, too, in his theology. His
wisdom, which is one and apart from all things, ‘ wills
and wills not to be called by the name of Zeus” (fr. 65).
That is to say, it is no more what the religious conscious-
ness means by God than the Air of Anaximenes or the
World of Xenophanes. Herakleitos, in fact, despite his
prophetic tone and his use of religious languages, never
broke through the secularism and pantheism of the Ionians.
Belief in a personal God and an immortal soul was already
being elaborated in another quarter, but did not secure a
place in philosophy till the time of Plato.
Parmenides.
§ 45. We have now to consider the criticisms directed
against the fundamental assumptions of Ionian cosmology
from another side. That Parmenides wrote after Hera-
kleitos, and in conscious opposition to him, seems to be
64 PARMENIDES
proved by what must surely be an express allusion in his
poem. The words “for whom it is and is not the same
and not the same, and all things travel in opposite direc-
tions” (fr. 6, 8), cannot well refer to anyone else, and
we may infer that these words were written some time
between Marathon and Salamis. We know from the
poem that Parmenides was a young man when he wrote
it, for the goddess who reveals the truth to him addresses
him as “youth,” and Plato says that Parmenides came to
Athens in his sixty-fifth year and conversed with Sokrates,
who was then “very young.” ‘That must have been in
the middle of the fifth century B.c., or shortly after it. Par-
menides was a citizen of Elea, for which city he legislated,
and he is generally represented as a disciple of Xenophanes.
It has been pointed out, however, that there is no evidence
for the settlement of Xenophanes at Elea (ὃ 16), and the
story that he founded the Eleatic school seems to be
derived from a playful remark of Plato’s, which would
also prove Homer to have been a Herakleitean.’ We have
much more satisfactory evidence for the statement that
Parmenides was a Pythagorean. We are told that he
built a shrine to the memory of his Pythagorean teacher,
Ameinias, son of Diochaitas, and this appears to rest on
the testimony of the inscription in which he dedicated it.
The authorities Strabo followed, in referring to the
legislation of Elea, expressly called Parmenides and Zeno
Pythagoreans, and the name of Parmenides occurs in the
list of Pythagoreans preserved by Iamblichos.?
§ 46. Parmenides broke with the older Ionic tradition
by writing in hexameter verse. It was not a happy
thought. The Hesiodic style was doubtless appropriate
enough for the cosmogony he described in the second
part of his poem, but it was wholly unsuited to the arid
dialectic of the first. It is clear that Parmenides was no
born poet, and we must ask what led him to take this new
1Plato, Soph. 242d. See E. Gr. Ph.? p. 140.
2 For all this, see δ, Gr. P4.? 88 84 579.
THE PROEM 65
departure. The example of Xenophanes is hardly an
adequate explanation ; for the poetry of Parmenides is
as unlike that of Xenophanes as it well can be, and his
style is rather that of Hesiod and the Orphics. Now it
has been clearly shown! that the well-known Proem, in
which Parmenides describes his ascent to the home of the
goddess who is supposed to speak the remainder of the
verses, is a reflexion of the conventional ascents into
heaven which were almost as common as descents into
hell in the apocalyptic literature of those days, and of
which we have later imitations in the myth of Plato’s
Phaedrus and in Dante’s Paradiso. But, if it was the
influence of such an apocalypse that led Parmenides to
write in verse, it will follow that the Proem is no mere
external ornament to his work, but an essential part of it,
the part, in fact, which he had most clearly conceived when
he began to write. In that case, it is to the Proem we
must look for the key to the whole.
Parmenides represents himself as borne on a chariot and
attended by the Sunmaidens who have quitted the Halls
of Night to guide him on his journey. They pass along
the highway till they come to the Gate of Night and Day,
which is locked and barred. The key is in the keeping of
Diké (Right), the Avenger, who is persuaded to unlock it
by the Sunmaidens. They pass in through the gate and
are now, of course, in the realms of Day. The goal of
the journey is the palace of a goddess who welcomes Par-
menides and instructs him in the two ways, that of Truth
and the deceptive way of Belief, in which is no truth at
all. All this is described without inspiration and in a
purely conventional manner, so it must be interpreted by
the canons of the apocalyptic style. It is clearly meant to
indicate that Parmenides had been converted, that he had
passed from error (night) to truth (day), and the Two
Ways must represent his former error and the truth which
is now revealed to him. We have seen reason to believe
that Parmenides was originally a Pythagorean, and there
1 Diels, Parmenides Lehrgedicht, pp. 11 599.
z
66 PARMENIDES
are many things which suggest that the Way of Belief
is an account of Pythagorean cosmology. In any case, it
is surely impossible to regard it as anything else than a
description of some error. The goddess says so in words
that cannot be explained away. Further, this erroneous
belief is not the ordinary man’s view of the world, but an
elaborate system, which seems to be a natural develop-
ment of the Ionian cosmology on certain lines, and there
is no other system but the Pythagorean that fulfils this
requirement.
To this it has been objected that Parmenides would not
have taken the trouble to expound in detail a system he
had altogether rejected, but that is to mistake the character
of the apocalyptic convention. It is not Parmenides, but
the goddess, that expounds the system, and it is for this
reason that the beliefs described are said to be those of
« mortals.” Now a description of the ascent of the soul
would be quite incomplete without a picture of the region
from which it had escaped. The goddess must reveal the
two ways at the parting of which Parmenides stands, and
bid him choose the better. That itself is a Pythagorean
idea. It was symbolised by the letter Y, and can be traced
right down to Christian times. The machinery of the
Proem consists, therefore, of two well-known apocalyptic
devices, the Ascent into Heaven, and the Parting of the
Ways, and it follows that, for Parmenides himself, his
conversion from Pythagoreanism to Truth was the central
thing in his poem, and it is from that point of view we
must try to understand him. It is probable too that, if
the Pythagoreans had not been a religious society as well
as a scientific school, he would have been content to say
what he had to say in prose. As it was, his secession
from the school was also a heresy, and had, like all
heresies, to be justified in the language of religion.
§ 47. All the Ionians had taken for granted that the
primary substance could assume different forms, such as
earth, water, and fire, a view suggested by the observed
phenomena of freezing, evaporation, and the like. Anaxi-
ES El Ueki NOT?” 67
menes had further explained these transformations as due
to rarefaction and condensation (§ 9). That, of course,
really implies that the structure of the primary substance
is corpuscular, and.that there are interstices of some kind
between its particles. It is improbable that Anaximenes
realised this consequence of his doctrine. Even now it is
not immediately obvious to the untrained mind. The
problem was raised at once, however, by the use the
Pythagoreans had made of the theory. According to
them, as we have seen (ὃ 28), the world inhaled “ air,”
or void, from the boundless mass outside it, and this
accounted for the extension of the bodies whose limits
were marked out by the “figures.” When the thing was
put in this way, further questions were inevitable.
§ 48. Now the rise of mathematics in this same Pytha-
gorean school had revealed for the first time the power of
thought. To the mathematician of all men it is the same
thing that can be thought (ἔστι νοεῖν) and that can be
(ἔστιν εἶναι), and this is the principle from which Par-
menides starts. It is impossible to think what is not, and
it is impossible for what cannot be thought to be. The
great question, /s if or is tt not? is therefore equivalent to
the question, Can it be thought or not?
_ Parmenides goes on to consider in the light of this
principle the consequences of saying that anything 15. In
the first place, it cannot have come into being. If it had,
it must have arisen from nothing or from something. It
cannot have arisen from nothing ; for there is no nothing.
It cannot have arisen from something ; for there is nothing
else than what és. Nor can anything else besides itself
come into being; for there can be no empty space in
1This is how Zeller (Phil. d. griech 1.5 p. 558, m. 1) took fr. 5 τὸ
γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι, and it still seems to me the only
possible rendering. I cannot separate εἰσὶ νοῆσαι in fr. 4, which
everyone takes to mean “are thinkable” from ἔστι νοεῖν in fr. 5. Nor
do I believe that the infinitive is ever the subject of a sentence even in
such places as //. x. 174 (see Leaf’snote), The traditional view (given e.g.
by Goodwin, M.T.§ 745) implies that ποιεῖν is the subject in δίκαιόν
ἐστι τοῦτο ποιεῖν, which is refuted by δίκαιός εἰμι τοῦτο ποιεῖν.
68 PARMENIDES
which it could do so. Js it or is itnot? If it és, then it 1s
now, all at once. In this way Parmenides refutes all
accounts of the origin of the world. Ex nthilo nihil fit.
Further, if it és, it simply is, and it cannot de more or
less. There is, therefore, as much of it in one place as in
another. (That makes rarefaction and condensation im-
possible.) It is continuous and indivisible; for there is
nothing but itself which could prevent its parts being in
contact with one another. It is therefore full, a continuous
indivisible plenum. (That is directed against the Pytha-
gorean theory of a discontinuous reality.)
Further, it is immoveable. If it moved, it must move
into empty space, and empty space is nothing, and there 18
no nothing. Also it is finite and spherical ; for it cannot
be ii one direction any more than in another, and the
sphere is the only figure of which this can be said.
What is (ro ἐόν) is, therefore a finite, spherical, motion-
less, continuous plenum, and there is nothing beyond it.
Coming into being and ceasing to be are mere “ names,”
and so is motion, and still more colour and the like. They
are not even thoughts ; for a thought must be a thought
of something that is, and none of these can de,
§ 49. Such is the conclusion to which the view of the
real as a single body inevitably leads, and there 1s no escape
from it. The “ matter” of our physical text-books is just
the real (τὸ ἐόν) of Parmenides ; and, unless we can find
room for something else than matter, we are shut up to
his account of reality. No subsequent system could afford
to ignore this, but of course it was impossible to acquiesce
permanently in a doctrine like that of Parmenides, It
deprives the world we know of all claim to existence, and
reduces it to something which is hardly even an illusion,
If we are to give an intelligible account of the world, we
must certainly introduce motion again somehow. That
can never be taken for granted any more, as it was by the
early cosmologists; we must attempt to explain it if we are
to escape from the conclusions of Parmenides,
CHAPTER IV
THE PLURALISTS
§ 50. It was only possible to escape from the con-
clusions of Parmenides on two conditions. In the first
place, the belief that all that zs is one, which had been
held by everyone since the days of Thales, must be given
up. There was no reason why Parmenides should have
denied motion except this. Motion iz p/eno is quite con-
ceivable, though it would not explain anything on the
assumption of unity. If any part of the Parmenidean
One were to move, that could only mean that its place
was taken at once by an equal part of it. As, however,
this part would be precisely the same as that which
it displaced, the result of the motion would be wil,
and it could not be distinguished from rest. We find
accordingly that both Empedokles and Anaxagoras, whose
systems we have now to consider, while accepting and
insisting on the Parmenidean doctrine that the real is
without beginning and without end, agree in maintaining
also that there are more kinds of real than one. The world
we know may be explained as due to the mixture and
separation of a number of primary “ elements.” The word
elementum is a Latin translation of the Greek στοιχεῖον,
“letter of the alphabet,” which does not occur in this
sense till a later date, though the conception of an
element was quite clearly formed. Empedokles called
his elements ‘ roots,” and Anaxagoras called his ‘“ seeds,”
but they both meant something eternal and irreducible
to anything else, and they both held the things we
70 PLURALISM
perceive with the senses to be temporary combinations
of these.
The second condition that must be satisfied, if the
world is to be explained in spite of Parmenides, is that
some account must be given of the origin or source of the
motion which had hitherto been taken for granted as
something inherent in the nature of body. Accordingly,
both Empedokles and Anaxagoras postulate causes of
motion, which the former calls Love and Strife, and the
latter calls Mind (νοῦς). What they were feeling after was
obviously the later physical conception of force, but it is
equally clear that they were still unable to disentangle this
completely from that of body. They both use language
with regard to the forces they assume which makes it
plain that they were pictured as something corporeal, and
this will seem quite intelligible if we remember the part
played by “fluids” in the science of fairly recent times.
It is to be observed further that Empedokles felt obliged
to assume two sources of motion, like the force of attrac-
tion and the force of repulsion, or the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of later days, while Anaxagoras only
required a single force which was capable of producing
rotation. The rotatory motion itself could account for
everything else.
Taking these two things together, we can under-
stand the doctrine which is common to Empedokles
and Anaxagoras, and which they both express in almost
exactly the same words. It is, firstly, that there 1s
in reality no such thing as coming into being (γένεσις)
and ceasing to be (φθορά). That has been settled by
Parmenides. But, secondly, it is obvious that the things
in this world do come into being and cease to be. That
is proved by the evidence of the senses. The only way
in which these two things can be reconciled is by regarding
what is commonly called coming into being as mixture,
and ceasing to be as separation. From this it follows, in
the first place, that the real must be such as to admit
of mixture, or, in other words, that there must be
EMPEDOKLES 71
different kinds of real; and, in the second place, that
there must be a cause of mixture and separation.
Empedokles.
§ 51. Empedokles was a citizen of Akragas in Sicily,
and he played a considerable part in his native city as a
democratic leader... His date is roughly fixed for us by
the well-attested fact that he went to Thourioi shortly
after its foundation in 444/3 B.c. That was probably
after his banishment from his native city. He was,
therefore, contemporary with the meridian splendour of
the Periklean age at Athens, and he must have met
Herodotos and Protagoras at Thourioi. In his case we
know for certain that he combined scientific study with
a mystical religion of the Orphic type, but he differed
from Pythagoras in the direction his scientific inquiries
took. We know that Pythagoras was first and foremost
a mathematician, while Empedokles was the founder of
the Sicilian school of medicine. That accounts for the
physiological interest that marks his speculations. It is
the same difference as that between Plato and Aristotle
at a later date.
We are not directly concerned here with the religious
teaching of Empedokles, though we may note in passing
his horror of bloody sacrifices, which he justified from
the doctrine of Rebirth or transmigration. His “ Purifi-
cations” (Καθαρμοί), of which considerable fragments
remain, are, indeed, our oldest and best authority for
this type of religion. They are written in hexameters,
and so is his more strictly philosophical poem. In this
matter he imitated Parmenides, as is proved by his some-
times reproducing his actual words. The only difference
is that he was a real poet, and Parmenides was not.
§ 52. As has been indicated, Empedokles unreservedly
accepts the doctrine of Parmenides that “what is” 15
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 97 sqg. For a
translation of the fragments, see id. § 105.
72 EMPEDOKLES
uncreated and indestructible, and he only escapes from
the further conclusions of the Eleatic by introducing the
theory of elements or “roots.” Of these he assumed
four—fire, air, earth, and water,—and in some respects
this was a return to primitive views which the Milesians
had already left behind them (§ 10). In particular, it
was reactionary to put earth on a level with the other
three. It must be noticed, however, that Empedokles at
the same time made an advance by co-ordinating air with
fire and water, instead of identifying it with vapour and
regarding it as a transitional form between the two. He
had in fact discovered that what we call atmospheric air
was a body, and was quite distinct from empty space on
the one hand and from vapour or mist on the other.
He was doubtless led to this discovery by the polemic of
Parmenides against the existence of empty space. The
plain man can imagine he has a direct perception of this,
and it was necessary for Empedokles to show he was
wrong. ‘This he did by means of an experiment with the
klepsydra or water-clock. He showed that air could keep
water out of a vessel, and that the water could only enter
as the air escaped. This important discovery outweighs
his error in regarding air and water as elements. He
had no means of discovering they were not. He might,
perhaps, have got a hint of the true nature of fire
from Herakleitos, but here we must remember that, so
long as the sun and stars were believed to consist of fire,
it was not easy to discern the truth. Even Aristotle
adopted the four elements of Empedokles, though Plato
and his Pythagorean friends had declared that so far from
being “letters ’’ (στοιχεῖα), they were not even syllables.
§ 53. Besides these four “roots,” Empedokles postu-
lated something called Love (φιλία) to explain the attrac-
tion of different forms of matter, and of something called
Strife (νεῖκος) to account for their separation. He speaks
of these quite distinctly as bodies. The way in which they
act seems to have been suggested by the experiment with
the k/epsydra already referred to. We start with something
LOVE AND STRIFE 73
like the sphere of Parmenides, in which the four elements
are mingled in a sort of solution by Love, while Strife
surrounds the sphere on the outside. When Strife begins
to enter the Sphere, Love is driven towards its centre, and
the four elements are gradually separated from one
another. That is clearly an adaptation of the old idea of
the world breathing. Empedokles also held, however,
that respiration depended on the systole and diastole of
the heart, and therefore we find that, as soon as Strife has
penetrated to the lowest (or most central) part of the
sphere, and Love is confined to the very middle of it, the
reverse process begins. Love expands and Strife is driven
outwards, passing out of the Sphere once more in propor-
tion as Love occupies more and more of it, just as air is
expelled from the k/epsydra when water enters it. In fact,
Love and Strife are to the world what blood and air are
to the body. The physiological analogy naturally influ-
enced the founder of a medical school, who had for the
first time formulated a theory of the flux and reflux of
blood from and to the heart. The conception of the
attractive force as Love is also, as Empedokles says him-
self, of physiological origin. No one had observed, he
tells us (fr. 17, 21-26) that the very same force men know
in their own bodies plays a part in the life of the great
world too. He does not seem to have thought it neces-
sary to give any mechanical explanation of the cosmic
systole and diastole. It was just the life of the world.
§ 54. A world of perishable things such as we know can
only exist when both Love and Strife are in the world.
There will, therefore, be two births and two passings away
of mortal things (fr. 17, 3-5), one when Love is increasing
and all the elements are coming together into one, the
other when Strife is re-entering the Sphere and the
elements are being separated once more. The elements
alone are everlasting ; the particular things we know are
unstable compounds, which come into being as the
elements “trun through one another” in one direction or
another. They are mortal or perishable just because they
74 EMPEDOKLES
have no substance (φύσις) of their own; only the “ four
roots” have that. There is, therefore, no end to their
death and destruction (fr. 8). Their birth is a mixture
and their death is but the separation of what has been
mixed. Nothing is imperishable but fire, air, earth and
water, with the two forces of Love and Strife.
We have little information as to how Empedokles ex-
plained the constitution of particular things. He regarded
the four elements, which could be combined in an
indefinite number of proportions, as adequate to explain
them all, and he referred in this connexion to the great
variety painters can produce with only four pigments
(fr. 23). He saw, however, that some combinations are
possible, while others are not. Water mixes easily with
wine, but not with oil (fr. 91). This he accounted for
by the presence or absence of symmetry in the “‘passages”
(wdpor) or “ pores”’ of the elements which enter into the
mixture. It is unprofitable to inquire how he reconciled
this view with the denial of the void he had adopted
from Parmenides, For the rest, Aristotle attaches great
importance to his doctrine of the ‘ratio of mixture”
(λόγος τῆς μείξεως), which is pretty certainly an adaptation
of the Pythagorean theory of “blending” (κρᾶσις) in
fixed ratios (λόγοι). The tuned string makes itself felt
once more.
§ 55. The details of the cosmology present considerable
difficulties. We are told that, when the elements first
separated, fire occupied the upper hemisphere and air the
lower. That disturbed the equilibrium of the sphere and
produced the diurnal rotation (δίνη) of the heavens. This
rotation, in turn, keeps the earth in the centre. The idea
was apparently that it would naturally fall into the lower
hemisphere, but is prevented from doing so by the lower
hemisphere constantly becoming the upper. It is clear
that there is great confusion of thought here. Empedokles
has reverted to the idea of an absolute up and down in
11 have adopted the interpretation of these verses suggested by Love-
joy (Philosophical Review, xvill. pp. 371 599.).
PHYSIOLOGY 75
the world, which Anaximander had discarded already, and
he does not seem to have been consistent even in this.
The fiery hemisphere is day, and the airy hemisphere 18
night. The sun is only the light of the fiery hemisphere
reflected back from the earth and gathered in a sort of
focus. We have no means of telling how Empedokles
worked out this singular theory in detail, We can only
say that he was primarily a physiologist, and that astro-
nomy was not his strong point.
And it is certainly the case that his physiology, though
primitive enough, makes a far more favourable impression.
We have seen the importance he attached to respiration,
and how he connected it with the heart’s action. It was
natural, therefore, for him to regard the blood as “ what
we think with” (ᾧ dpovoduer),! and to make the heart the
central sensorium, In this he departed from the theory of
Alkmaion of Kroton, who had discovered the importance
of the brain for sense-perception, but he adopted from him
the explanation of the various senses by “pores” or
passages (πόροι). Sensation was produced by ‘‘effluences”
(aroppoat) fitting into these. The origin of species was
ascribed to the increasing action of Strife. At the begin-
ning of this world there were undifferentiated living
masses (οὐλοφυεῖς τύποι), which were gradually differen-
tiated, the fittest surviving. Empedokles also described
how mortal beings arose in the period when Love was
gaining the mastery, and when everything happened in
just the opposite way to what we see in our world, In
that case, the limbs and organs first arose in separation,
and were then joined together at haphazard, so that
monsters were produced, ‘“‘oxen with heads of men and
men with heads of oxen.” This strange picture of a re- |
versed evolution may possibly have been suggested by the
Egyptian monuments,
1 Plato, Phaedo, 96 Ὁ.
76 ANAXAGORAS
Anaxagoras.
§ 56. Anaxagoras of Klazomenai is said by Aristotle to
have been older than Empedokles, but to come “after
him in his works”’ (τοῖς δ᾽ ἔργοις ὕστερος). It is not clear
whether this means that he wrote later than Empedokles
or that he was inferior to him in his achievement. His
date is quite uncertain, but we know he settled at Athens
and enjoyed the friendship of Perikles. Plato makes
Sokrates attribute the eloquence of Perikles to his associa-
tion with Anaxagoras. It was no doubt this very intimacy
that exposed Anaxagoras to the accusation for irreligion
(ἀσέβεια) which was brought against him. That is usually
said to have happened just before the Peloponnesian War,
but we do not really know either the date of it or the
precise nature of the charge. It must have been some-
thing more definite than his speculations about the sun.
We happen to know that even Diagoras, the typical atheist
of those days, was not tried for his opinions, but for
offences in language against the temples and festivals.?
Perikles got Anaxagoras off in some way, and he retired
to Lampsakos, where he founded a school. It is a re-
markable fact that Plato never makes Sokrates meet him,
though he was interested in his system, and that of itself
suggests that the accusation for irreligion took place at
an earlier date than the one usually given. Like a true
Ionian, Anaxagoras wrote in prose, and considerable frag-
ments of his book remain.
§ 57. Anaxagoras lays down that the Hellenes are
wrong in speaking of coming into being (γίνεσθαι) and
ceasing to be (ἀπόλλυσθαι). They ought to call these
“ commixture ” (συμμίσγεσθαι) and “ decomposition ” (δια-
κρίνεσθαι) (fr. 17). That is almost in so many words the
doctrine of Empedokles, with which Anaxagoras certainly
seems to have been acquainted. In any case, it is certain
1 References to authorities are given in EF. Gr. Ph.? §§ 120 599.
2See the speech against Andokides preserved among the works of
Lysias (6, 17).
“SEEDS ” 77
that he started, like Empedokles, from the Parmenidean
account of ‘‘ what zs.” On the other hand, Anaxagoras was
an Ionian. We are told that he had been an adherent of
“the philosophy of Anaximenes,” and it is evident from
the details of his cosmology that the statement is correct.
We shall be prepared to find, then, that he started from
quite different presuppositions, though these were also
derived from medical sources. Medicine was the great
interest of the time.
Like Empedokles, Anaxagoras postulated a plurality of
independent elements which he called “seeds.” They
were not, however, the “four roots,” fire, air, earth, and
water ; on the contrary, these were compounds. Empe-
dokles had supposed that bone, for instance, could be
explained as a compound of the elements in a certain
proportion, but this did not satisfy Anaxagoras. He
pointed out that from bread and water arose hair, veins,
‘‘arteries,’! flesh, muscles, bones, and all the rest, and he
asked ‘“‘ How can hair be made of what is not hair, and
flesh of what is not flesh?” (fr. 10). These words certainly
read like a direct criticism of Empedokles.
This way of speaking, however, led to a serious mis-
understanding of the theory. In Aristotle’s biological
works the various “tissues,” some of which Anaxagoras
enumerates, are called “‘homoeomerous”’ (ὁμοιομερῆ), ἃ term
which means that all their parts are similar to the whole.
The parts of bone are bone, and the parts of blood are
blood. That is just the distinction between such things
as bone, flesh, and blood, and “organs” like the heart or
the lungs. There is no evidence that Anaxagoras himself
used this terminology, and indeed it is incredible that no
fragment containing it should have been quoted if he had.
The Epicureans, however, attributed it to him, and they
also understood it wrongly. They supposed it to mean that
there must be minute particles in bread and water which
1The true distinction between veins and arteries was not yet known.
The arteries were supposed to contain air and were connected with the
wind-pipe or frachea (τραχεῖα, sc. ἀρτηρία).
78 ANAXAGORAS
were like the particles of blood, flesh, and bones, and the
adoption of this interpretation by Lucretius has given it
currency.
58. We have seen that Anaxagoras had been an
adherent of “the philosophy of Anaximenes,” and he
kept as close to it as he could in the details of his cos-
mology. He could not say that everything was “air”
more or less rarefied or condensed, for that view had
been destroyed by Parmenides. If the world was to be
explained at all, an original plurality must be admitted.
He therefore substituted for the primary “ air”’ a state of
the world in which “all things (χρήματα) were together,
infinite both in quantity and in smallness” (fr. 1). This
is explained to mean that the original mass was infinitely
divisible, but that, however far division was carried, every
part of it would still contain all “things” (χρήματα), and
would in that respect be just like the whole. That is the
very opposite of the doctrine of “ elements,” which seems
to be expressly denied by the dictum that “the things
that are in one world are not separated from one another
or cut off with a hatchet” (fr. 8). Everything has ‘ por-
tions ’’ (μοῖραι) of everything else in it.
But if that were all, we should be no nearer an explana-
tion of the world than before; for there would be nothing to
distinguisn one ‘‘seed”’ from another. The answer to this
is that, though each has a ‘“‘ portion” of everything in it,
however minutely it may be divided, some have more of
one thing and others more of another. This was to be
seen already in the original undifferentiated mass where
‘all things were together”; for there the portions of air
and “aether” (by which word Anaxagoras means fire)
were far more numerous than the others, and therefore
the whole had the appearance of air and ‘“‘aether.” Anaxa-
goras could not say it actually was air, as Anaximenes had
done, because he had discovered for himself or learned from
Empedokles the separate corporeal existence of atmospheric
air. We have some references to the experiments by which
he demonstrated this. He used inflated skins for the
MIND 79
purpose. The effort to depart as little as possible from
the doctrine of Anaximenes is nevertheless apparent.
g. We see, then, that the differences which exist in
the world as we know it are to be explained by the varying
proportions in which the portions are mingled. “ Every-
thing is called that of which it has most in it,” though,
as a matter of fact, it has everything in it. Snow, for
instance, is black as well as white,! but we call it white
because the white so far exceeds the black. As was natural,
the “things” Anaxagoras chiefly thought of as contained
in each ‘“‘seed”’ were the traditional opposites, hot and cold,
wet and dry, and so forth. It is of these he is expressly
speaking when he says that “the things in one world are
not cut off from one another with a hatchet” (fr. 8).
Empedokles had made each of these four opposites a
“root” by itself; each of the “seeds” of Anaxagoras
contains them all. In this way he thought he could
explain nutrition and growth; for it is clear that the
product of a number of “‘seeds’’ might present quite a
different proportion of the opposites than any one of them
if they were taken severally.
δ 60. The other problem, that of the source of motion,
still remains. How are we to pass from the state of the
world when all things were together to the manifold reality
we know? Like Empedokles, Anaxagoras looked to the
microcosm for a suggestion as to the source of motion,
but he found one such source sufficient for his purpose.
He called it Mind (νοῦς) ; for that is the source of motion
as well as of knowledge in us. He did not, however,
succeed in forming the conception of an incorporeal force
any more than Empedokles had done. For him, too, the
cause of motion isa sort of “fluid.” It is “ the thinnest
of all things” (fr. 12), and, above all, it is “ unmixed,” that
is to say, it has no portions of other things in it, and this
is what gives it the ““ mastery,” that is, the power both of
knowing and of moving other things. Further, it enters
Into some things and not into others, and that explains the
1 Sextus, Pyrrh, ἀγροῖς, 1. 33.
80 ANAXAGORAS
distinction between the animate and the inanimate. The
way in which it separates and orders things is by producing
a rotatory motion (περιχώρησις), which begins at the centre
and spreads further and further. That is really all Anaxa-
goras had to say about it, and in the Phaedo Plato makes
Sokrates complain that he made Mind a mere deus ex
machina (98b). Like a true Ionian he tried to give a
mechanical explanation of everything he could, and, when
once he had got the rotatory motion started, he could leave
that to order the rest of the world.
$61. It is hard to believe, however, that Anaxagoras
was wholly ignorant of Pythagorean science. Oinopides of
Chios was introducing a more highly developed geometry
into Jonia from the west, and Anaxagoras himself is
credited with certain mathematical discoveries. He also
knew, though he certainly did not discover, that the
sun is eclipsed by the interposition of the moon, and that
the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, but he
cannot have been able to give the true account of lunar |
eclipses, seeing that he was either ignorant of or deliberately
rejected the discovery that the earth was a sphere. In
this respect, too, he adhered to the doctrine of Anaximenes
and regarded it as a disc. That being so, he had to assume
dark bodies invisible to us to account for eclipses of the
moon. That is probably connected with the theory which
seems to have struck his contemporaries most. His
attention had been directed in some way to the huge
meteoric stone which fell into the Aigospotamos in 468/7
B.c., and this suggested to him that portions of the earth
might be detached and flung to a distance as from a sling
by the rotatory motion. That had once been far more
rapid than it is now, and so the sun, which was a mass of
red-hot iron “larger than the Peloponnesos,” and the
moon, which was made of earth, had reached their present
places. All this seems retrograde enough when we com-
pare it with Pythagorean science. That was a thing the
Ionians could never really assimilate. Even Demokritos
was nearly as backward in these matters as Anaxagoras,
RELIGION 81
and Aristotle himself could not grasp the Pythagorean
conception completely.
§62. Though Empedokles had distinguished Love and
Strife as the causes of mixture and separation from the
four elements which are mixed and separated, he continued
to call them all ‘‘gods”’ in the sense with which we are
now familiar, and he gave the name also to the Sphere in
which they were all mixed together, Anaxagoras seems to
have taken the step of calling only the source of motion
“ood.” In that sense and to that extent it is not incor-
rect to call him the founder of theism. On the other
hand, it seems to have been precisely for this that his con-
temporaries called him an atheist. In his desire to exalt
Nous, he seems to have followed the lead of Xenophanes
in denying the divinity of everything else, and his state-
ments about the sun and the moon are usually mentioned
in connexion with the charge of irreligion brought against
him, though we cannot tell now what that referred to, or
whether the charge was well founded or not. We can
only say that Perikles shared the secular spirit of the
Ionians, and it is quite conceivable that his immediate
circle may have offended the religious susceptibilities of
old-fashioned Athenians by ridiculing ceremonies which
were still sacred in their eyes.’
1The worship of Sun and Moon was no part of Athenian religion,
but Anaxagoras may have ridiculed the measures prescribed by the
ἐξηγηταί on the occasion of the solar eclipse of 463 Bc. That, no
doubt, would be ἀσέβεια.
CHAPTER V
ELEATICS AND PYTHAGOREANS
Zeno
§63. We have seen (ὃ 46) how Eleaticism originated in
a revolt from Pythagoreanism, and we have now to con-
sider its detailed criticism of that doctrine. The great
critic was Zeno. According to Plato,! his work, written
when he was a young man, was intended to support the
teaching of Parmenides by showing that the hypothesis of
his opponents, “if things are a many” (εἰ πολλά ἐστι) led
up, if thoroughly worked out, to consequences at least as
paradoxical as his master’s. We learn further from Plato
that Zeno was twenty-five years younger than Parmenides,
and that he was forty years old when he accompanied him
on his celebrated visit to Athens just after the middle of
the fifth century B.c. All that agrees admirably with the
well-authenticated statement that Perikles “heard” Zeno
as well as Anaxagoras, and also with the accounts which
represent Zeno as engaged in controversy with Protagoras,
He also appears to have written against Empedokles.?
§ 64. It is significant that a work of Zeno’s is cited by
the title, 4 Reply to the Philosophers (Πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσόφους);
for there is reason to believe that in these days “ philo-
sopher” meant Pythagorean. At any rate, it is only if we
regard the arguments of Zeno as directed against the
1 Parm, 128 ς,
3 References to authorities are given in &, Gr. Ph.* §§ 155 599.
THE UNIT-POINT 83
assumption that things are a many, that is to say a
“multitude of units” (μονάδων πλῆθος), that their real
significance can be understood. According to the Pytha-
gorean view, geometry was simply an application of arith-
metic, and the point only differs from the arithmetical
unit in so far as it is a “unit having position” (μονὰς θέσιν
ἔχουσα). From this it ought to follow, though we need
not suppose the Pythagoreans to have said so in so many
words, that we should be able to say how many points
there are in a given terminated straight line, and further
that all magnitudes must be commensurable. The Pytha-
goreans themselves, however, had discovered at least two
striking instances to the contrary. We have seen that
neither the most perfect triangle, the isosceles right-angled
triangle, nor the most perfect solid, the regular dodeca-
hedron, can be expressed numerically; for, as we should
put it, V2 and V5 are “surds.” The Pythagoreans must
have been quite well aware of these facts, though, as we
have seen, they probably explained them by referring them
to the nature of the “unlimited,” along with such similar
cases as the impossibility of dividing the octave and the
tone into equal parts.
Zeno’s arguments are directed to showing that the
“unlimited” or, as the Eleatics call it, the continuous
(συνεχές, lit. “hanging together”) cannot be composed of
units however small and however many. We can always
bisect a line, and every bisection leaves us with a line that
can itself be bisected. We never come to a point or unit.
It follows that, if a line is made up out of unit-points,
there must be an infinite number of such points in any
given terminated straight line. Now if these points have
magnitude, every line will be of infinite length; if they
have no magnitude, every line will be infinitely small.
Again, if a point has magnitude, the addition of a point to
a line will make it longer and its subtraction will make it
smaller ; but, if points have no magnitude, neither their
addition nor their subtraction will make any difference to
the line. But that of which the addition or subtraction
84 ZENO
makes no difference is nothing at all. It follows that, if
number is a sum of units (and no other account of it has
been suggested), there is an impassable gulf between the
discrete and the continuous, between arithmetic and
geometry. Things are not numbers. To put the thing
in another way, geometry cannot be reduced to arithmetic
so long as the number one is regarded as the beginning of
the numerical series. What really corresponds to the
point is what we call zero.!
§ 65. The celebrated arguments of Zeno concerning
motion introduce the element of time, and are directed to
showing that it is just as little a sum of moments as a line
is a sum of points. (1) If a thing moves from one point
to another, it must first traverse half the distance. Before
it can do that, it must traverse a half of the half, and so on
ad infinitum. It must, therefore, pass through an infinite
number of points, and that is impossible in a finite time.
(2) Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. Before he
comes up to the point at which the tortoise started, the
tortoise will have got a little way on. The same thing
repeats itself with regard to this little way, and so on ad
infinitum. (3) The flying arrow is at rest. At any given
moment it is in a space equal to its own length, and there-
fore at rest. ‘The sum of an infinite number of positions
of rest is not a motion. (4) If we suppose three lines,
one (A) at rest, and the other two (B, C) moving in
opposite directions, B will pass in the same time twice the
number of points in C that it passes in A. From the
interpreter’s point of view this last argument is the most
important of all. If it is directed against the view that the
line is a sum of points and time a sum of moments, it is
a perfectly legitimate reductio ad absurdum of these views,
otherwise it has no meaning at all.
1This is the ultimate explanation of the dispute between mathe-
maticians and historians as to whether 1900 was the last year of the
nineteenth century or the first year of the twentieth. Astronomers call
the year preceding I a.p. the year 0, while historical chronologists make
3 a.D. the year after 1 B.C.
MELISSUS 85
§ 66. The arguments of Zeno are valid only on the
assumption that the nature of number is completely ex-
pressed by the natural series of integers, but on that
assumption they are unanswerable, and no other view of
number had yet been suggested. Even rational fractions
are unknown to Greek mathematics, aid what we treat as
such are expressed as ratios of one integer to another.
Still harder was it for the Greeks to regard a surd, for
instance, as a number, and it was only in the Academy
that an effort was made at a later date to take a larger
view. What Zeno actually does prove is that space and
time cannot consist of points or moments which themselves
have magnitude, or that the elements of a continuum can-
not be units homogeneous with the continuum constructed
out of them. He shows, in fact, that there must be more
points on the line, more moments in the shortest lapse of
time, than there are members of the series of natural
numbers, or, what comes to the same thing, that, though
every continuum is infinitely divisible, infinite divisibility
is not an adequate criterion of continuity.2 That, how-
ever, is all he undertook to prove. We know from Plato
that his work was an argumentum ad homines, and as such
it is entirely successful.
Melissos.
§ 67. It is very significant that the next representative
of the Eleatic doctrine is a Samian. As a result of the
Persian wars, the Italic and Ionic philosophies had come
into contact once more, and their common meeting-ground
was Athens. Both Empedokles and Anaxagoras came
under the influence of Parmenides, who had himself visited
Athens along with Zeno, who apparently continued to
reside there for some time. Anaxagoras lived at Athens
for many years, and Empedokles took part in the Athenian
1Cf. e.g. the ἡμιόλιος λόγος 3 : 2 and the ἐπίτριτος λόγος 4 : 3.
21 take this way of stating the matter from Prof. A. E. Taylor’s article
“Continuity” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
86 MELISSOS
colonisation of Thourioi. None of these men were them-
selves Athenians, but they had Athenian disciples, and
Sokrates was already in his ’teens,
Melissos was in command of the Samian fleet that
fought against Perikles in 441 B.c. We know nothing
else about him. We can only guess that he had become
acquainted with Eleaticism at Athens, and we can see that
the modifications he introduced into it were due to “ the
philosophy of Anaximenes,” which still survived in
Tonia.
§ 68. The main arguments of Melissos are just those
of Parmenides, except that they are expressed in simple
Ionic prose. His great innovation was that he regarded
the real as infinite instead of making it a finite sphere. It
is said that he inferred its spatial infinity from its eternity,
and he does appear to have used language that might sug-
gest such an argument. He had, however, a much more
cogent reason than that. The real, he said, could only be
limited by empty space, and there is no empty space. For
the same reason there can be no motion and no change.
The real was, of course, corporeal, as it was for Parmeni-
des. The statement sometimes made that Melissos held
it to be incorporeal is based on a misunderstanding.
There can be no doubt that Melissos was looked upon
in his own day as the most advanced representative of
Eleaticism, and “the thesis of Melissos” is an object of
special aversion to the writer of the Hippokratean treatise
on The Nature of Man, while Plato makes Sokrates couple
his name with that of the great Parmenides himself
(Theaet. 180 6). From a historical point of view his
most remarkable saying is that, if things are a many, each
one of them would have to be such as he has shown the
One to be. That is just the formula of Atomism, as we
shall see, and Melissos rejected it because he denied the
existence of empty space. In that, too, he prepared the way
for the atomic theory by making it necessary for Leukippos
to affirm the existence of the Void.
1E, Gr. Ph.2§ 169.
PHILOLAOS 87
The Later Pythagoreans.
§ 69. It has been said already (§ 27) that the Pytha-
goreans had a singular power of adapting their theories
to new conditions, and it is certain that at some time
or other they felt called upon to give an account of the
new doctrine of elements in terms of their own system.
It is probable that this was the work of Philolaos, who
lived at Thebes towards the end of the fifth century B.c.,
but returned to South Italy as soon as it was safe for
Pythagoreans to show themselves in those parts once
more. From that time forward Taras (Tarentum) was
the chief seat of the school, and we shall hear more of
it when we come to consider the relations of Plato with
Archytas. For reasons I have given elsewhere, I cannot
regard the fragments which have come down to us under
the name of Philolaos as authentic, but for all that they
are old and contain some valuable hints as to the develop-
ment of Pythagorean doctrine.?
§ 70. The most remarkable feature of later Pytha-
goreanism is the way the religious side of the doctrine
was dropped and the effort that was made to clear the
memory of Pythagoras himself from the imputation of
mysticism. We have the echo of this in the remains of
Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, but it must be older; for
in their day scientific Pythagoreanism had ceased to exist.
The statement that Hippasos of Metapontion was guilty
of publishing a mystic discourse “ with the view of mis-
representing Pythagoras”’* must go back to this generation
of the school ; for at a later date no one would have any
interest in making it. A book by Hippasos almost cer-
tainly existed ; for Aristotle is able to state that he made
fire the first principle like Herakleitos. That agrees very
well with what we can infer as to the earliest Pythagorean
cosmology. There are all sorts of stories about this
1K. Gr. Ph.? 88 138 599.
2Diog. viii. 7 τὸν δὲ Μυστικὸν λόγον Ἱππάσου... εἶναι yeypau-
μένον ἐπὶ διαβολῇ Πυθαγόρου.
88 THE LATER PYTHAGOREANS
Hippasos, who is said to have been drowned at sea or
to have been expelled from the order, which then made a
sepulchre for him as if he were dead. Finally, the story
was put about that there had from the first been two grades
in the order, Mathematicians and Akousmatics, or Pytha-
goreans and Pythagorists, and Hippasos was represented
as the leader of the lower grade. It is impossible, of
course, for us to disentangle truth from falsehood in all
this; but we are, I think, entitled to infer that there was
a real struggle between those who held to the Pythagorist
religion and those who attached themselves exclusively to
the scientific side of the doctrine. In the fourth century
the Pythagorean scientific school expired and its place was
taken by the Academy ; the Pythagorist religion, on the
other hand, maintained its existence even later,as we know
from the fragments of the comic poets.
§ 71. The distinctive feature of the later Pythagoreanism
is its effort to assimilate the Empedoklean doctrine of the
four “elements,” and there is reason for believing that the
name itself (στοιχεῖον) originated at this time. If Philolaos
was the author of the theory, that is natural enough. The
fragment of Menon’s Jatrika recently discovered in a
London medical papyrus has revealed the fact that he
belonged to the Sicilian medical school, and that the
theories of that school depended on the identification of
the old ‘‘ opposites,” hot and cold, wet and dry, with the
four elements of Empedokles.1 The Pythagoreans had
to find room for the elements in their system somehow,
though they continued to resist the doctrine that they were
ultimate. Plato has preserved this touch in his Timaeus
(48 b), where he makes the Pythagorean protest that,
so far from being “letters,” the four elements are not
even syllables.
The view they actually took of them was that they
were “figures,” or, in other words, that they were
1 The hot and cold, wet-and dry are spoken of as εἴδη in Περὶ dpyains
ἰατρικῆς 15, and Philistion called the four elements ἰδέαι (Εν, Gr. P28
ΒΡ. 115... 2)
IMITATIONS OF NUMBERS 89
made up of particles which had the shapes of the regular
solids. We need not doubt that the derivation of those
figures from the elementary triangles given in Plato’s
Timaeus is in substance Pythagorean, though, as the
doctrine of the five regular solids was only completed by
Theaitetos, some of the constructions must belong to a
later date than Philolaos.
§ 72. The later Pythagoreans appear to have said that
things were “ke numbers rather than that they actually
were numbers, and here we shall probably be right in
tracing the effect of Zeno’s criticism. Aristotle quotes
the doctrine in both forms, and he hardly seems to be
conscious of any great difference between them. Further,
he treats what is usually called the Platonic “theory of
ideas”’ as practically identical with some form of Pytha-
goreanism. That raises questions we shall have to deal
with later ; for the present, it will be enough to consider
what the ie Pythagoreans probably meant by saying
things were “like numbers” instead of saying that they
actually were numbers. So far as we can see, it must
have been something like this. For the constriction ot
the elements we require, not merely groups of “units
having position,” but plane surfaces limited by lines and
capable in turn of forming the limits of solids. Now Zeno
had shown that lines cannot be built up out of points or
units, and therefore the elementary triangles out of which
the ‘‘figures’’ are constructed cannot be identical with
triangular numbers such as the f¢efraktys. In particular,
the isosceles right-angled triangle is of fundamental im-
portance in the construction of the regular solids, and it
cannot be represented by any arrangement of “ pebbles ”
(iior),’ seeing that its hypotenuse is incommensurable
with its other two sides. It only remains for us to say,
then, that the triangles of which the elements are ultimately
composed are “likenesses” or “imitations” of the tri-
angular numbers. The fateful doctrine of two worlds,
the world of thought and the world of sense, in fact
ICE p. 55, κα τὶ
90 EURYTOS
originated from the apparent impossibility of reconciling
the nature of number with continuity (ro συνεχές) as the
Eleatics called it, or the unlimited {τὸ ἄπειρον) as the
Pythagoreans said. There was something in the latter
that seemed to resist the power of thought, and it was
inferred that it could not have true reality (οὐσία), but was
at best a process of becoming (γένεσις). You may go on
bisecting the side and the diagonal of a square as long as
you please, but you never come to a common measure,
though you are always getting nearer to it.
§ 73. The “figures” (etd) are now regarded, then,
not as identical with the numbers, but as likenesses of
them, and we shall not be surprised to find that, once the
demand for a complete identification had been given up,
an attempt was made to explain other things than the
elements in this way. According to Aristotle, that is
exactly what happened. The Pythagoreans went on to
say that Justice was a square number, and to give similar
accounts of marriage, opportunity, and the like. They
only gave a few such definitions, however, and Aristotle
observes that they were based on mere superficial like-
nesses between numbers and things. The most valuable
piece of information he gives us 1s that Eurytos, a disciple
of Philolaos, and therefore one of the last of the pure
Pythagoreans, went on to express the nature of horse,
man, and plant “by means of pebbles” or counters.
Theophrastos said the same thing, and there seems to be
no doubt that the statement rests on the authority of
Archytas. Alexander gives, doubtless from the same
source, an account of this extraordinary method. ‘“ Let
us assume, for example,’ he says, “that 250 is the
number which defines man, and 360 that which defines
plant. Having laid this down, he took 250 counters,
some green and some black, and others red, and all sorts
of other colours, and then, smearing the wall with plaster
and sketching on it a man and a plant, he proceeded
to fix some of the counters in the outline of the face,
some in that of the hands and some in that of other parts,
THE FORMS gi
and so he completed the outline of the man he had
imaged by a number of counters equal in number to the
units which he said defined the man.”
This precious testimony shows what the doctrine of
“ figures’? was capable of becoming when it ventured
beyond its proper sphere, and we must remember that
Eurytos was not an early Pythagorean, but a leading
man in the latest generation of the school. According to
Aristotle, it was Sokrates that directed the theory into
another channel by his study of moral (and aesthetic)
forms, and Plato represents him in the Parmenides (130 c-d)
as saying that at one time he had thought such things
as man, fire, and the like should have forms as well, but
that he had given up the idea of finding forms for every-
thing from fear of falling into an ocean of nonsense
(βυθὸς pAvapias). We now see what that means. Never-
theless it is quite clear that Aristotle regards all this as
the origin of what we call “the theory of ideas,” and he
even seems anxious to minimise the differences between
the Platonic and the Pythagorean form of the theory,
which did not, of course, in all cases assume such an
extravagant form as Eurytos gave it. It was also the
tradition of the Academy that the doctrine in question
was of Pythagorean origin. Proklos was well read in the
ancient commentaries on Plato, some of which went back
to the early days of the Academy, and he distinctly attri-
butes the original form of the theory to the Pythagoreans
and its elaboration to Sokrates. His words are: “Τῆς
Pythagoreans, too, had the doctrine of forms. Plato him-
self shows that by calling the wise men of Italy friends
of the forms (Soph. 248a). But it was Sokrates above
all that held the forms in honour and most explicitly
postulated them.” We shall return to this when we
1Proclus in Parm. p. 149, Cousin: ἦν μὲν yap καὶ παρὰ τοῖς Πυθα-
γορείοις ἡ περὶ τῶν εἰδῶν θεωρία, καὶ δηλοῖ Kai αὐτὸς ἐν Σοφιστῇ
τῶν εἰδῶν φίλους προσαγορεύων τοὺς ἐν ᾿Ιταλίᾳ σοφούς, ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γε
/ ’ » Ἶ / « ΄ \ μὴ 3
μάλιστα πρεσβεύσας καὶ διαρρήδην ὑποθέμενος τὰ εἴδη Σωκράτης
3 /
ἐστίν.
02 THE —EARTH- A. PLANET
come to Sokrates ; for the present it is sufficient to point
out that Proklos could hardly have spoken as he does if
any other interpretation of the phrase “friends of the
forms” (εἰδῶν φίλοι had been known in the Academy.
§ 74. To the same generation of the school belongs a
remarkable advance in cosmology. It is probable that
Philolaos still held the geocentric theory, for that is the
only one of which we get a hint in the Phaedo; but there
can be no doubt that the Pythagoreans in Italy made
the all-important discovery that the earth was one of
the planets. They did not, indeed, make it go round the
sun, but they postulated a Central Fire, round which the
sun, moon, and planets all revolved. This Central Fire was
invisible to us because the revolution of all the heavenly
bodies was naturally explained on the analogy of the moon,
which is the only heavenly body that can be properly
observed by the naked eye. In other words, as the
moon always presents the same face to us, it was supposed
that the sun and the planets, including the earth, all
turned the same face to the centre. It follows that we
on the earth can see the Central Fire just as little as we
can see the other side of the moon. In this system there
was also a body called the Counter-earth (ἀντίχθων), which
is invisible to us because it is between the earth and
the Central Fire. This body seems to have been assumed
in order to explain eclipses of the moon. The shadow
of the earth did not seem to account for them all, and
another body casting a shadow was required. It will be
seen that this implies the view that the moon shines by
light reflected from the Central Fire, and it is not sur-
prising that the same explanation should have been given
of the sun’s light. The whole cosmology of this period
depends, in fact, on the extension of the observed facts
regarding the moon to other bodies.
§ 75. Perhaps the most remarkable thing in the Pytha-
gorean doctrine of this generation 15 that the soul has
come to be regarded as an “attunement” (ἁρμονία) of the
body. That ‘is the belief expounded by Simmias, the
THE SOUL AN ATTUNEMENT 93
Theban disciple of Philolaos, in the Phaedo (86 Ὁ sg.),
and we are also told that it was held by those Pytha-
goreans who had settled at Phleious (88 d), from whom
Aristoxenos adopted it at a later date. It cannot be
denied that such a doctrine seems to follow quite naturally
from the analogy of the tuned string ; but, on the other
hand, nothing can be more inconsistent with the earlier
Pythagorean view of the soul as something that existed
before the body, and will continue to exist after it has left
the body. This doctrine, on the contrary, makes the soul
a mere function of the body, and leaves no room for the
belief in immortality. It is probable, therefore, that its
adoption is connected with the desire, which has been
noted already, to drop the religious side of the Master’s
teaching.
CHAPTER VI
LEUKIPPOS
§ 76. The first part of our story ends with Leukippos,
the founder of Atomism ; for it was he that really answered
the question of Thales.1 We know next to nothing about
his life, and his book appears to have been incorporated in
the collected works of Demokritos. No writer subsequent
to Theophrastos seems to have been able to distinguish
his teaching from that of his more famous disciple. Indeed
his very existence has been denied, though on wholly in-
sufficient grounds. It is certain that Aristotle and Theo-
phrastos both regarded him as the real author of the
atomic theory, and it is out of the question that they
should have been deceived in such a matter, especially as
Theophrastos distinguished the teaching of Leukippos
from that of Demokritos on certain points.
Theophrastos was uncertain whether Leukippos was a
native of Miletos or of Elea. The latter view is doubtless
based on the statement that he had been a disciple of the
Eleatics, and, in particular, of Zeno. We shall see that
this is fully borne out by all we know of the origin of his
doctrine, and we may infer with some probability that he
was a Milesian who had come under the influence of Par-
menides at Elea or elsewhere. It is not likely that it was
at Athens; for the atomic theory does not appear to have
been well known there till the time of Aristotle. Plato,
in particular, does not appear to allude to it, though it
would certainly have interested him if he had known it.
1B. Gr. Ph? &§ 171 599.
ATOMS AND THE VOID 95
§ 77. Aristotle, who in default of Plato is our chief
authority cn the subject of atomism, gives a perfectly clear
and intelligible account of the way it arose. It almost
appears as if he were anxious to give a more strictly his-
torical statement than usual just because so little was known
about atomism in the Academy. According to him, it
originated in the Eleatic denial of the void, from which the
impossibility of multiplicity and motion had been deduced
Leukippos supposed himself to have discovered a theory
which would avoid this consequence. He admitted that
there could be no motion if there was no void, and he
inferred that it was wrong to identify the void with the
non-existent. What is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν) in the Parmenidean
sense is just as much as what is (τὸ ov). In other words,
Leukippos was the first philosopher to affirm, with a full
consciousness of what he was doing, the existence of empty
space. The Pythagorean void had been more or less
identified with “air,” but the void of Leukippos was
really a vacuum.}
Besides space there was body, and to this Leukippos
ascribed all the characteristics of the Eleatic real. It was
“full” (ναστόν), or, in other words, there was no empty
space in it, but it was not one. The assumption of empty
space, however, made it possible to affirm that there was
an infinite number of such reals, invisible because of their
smallness, but each possessing all the marks of the one
Eleatic real, and in particular each indivisible (ἄτομον) like
it. ‘These moved in the empty space, and their combina-
tions can give rise to the things we perceive with the senses.
Pluralism was at least stated in a logical and coherent way.
As we have seen (§ 68), Melissos had already suggested
1The Aristotelian derivation of Atomism from Eleaticism has been
contested, especially by Gomperz. It is true, of course, that the Milesian
Leukippos was concerned to vindicate the old Ionic cosmology, and, in
particular, to save as much of the “ philosophy of Anaximenes” as he
could, So was Anaxagoras (§ 61), That, however, has no bearing on
the point at issue. Theophrastos stated distinctly that Leukippos had
been a member of the school of Parmenides and Zeno.
96 LEUKIPPOS
that, if things were a many, each one of them must be
such as he held the One to be. He intended that for a
reductio ad absurdum of pluralism, but Leukippos accepted
it, and made it the foundation of his system.
§78. The nature of the original motion ascribed by
Leukippos to the atoms has been much discussed. Ata
later date the Epicureans held that all the atoms are falling
eternally downwards through infinite space, and this made
it very hard for them to explain how they could come in
contact with one another. ‘There is no need to attribute
this unscientific conception to the early atomists. In the
first place they did not, as we shall see, regard weight as a
primary property of the atoms; and, in the second place,
we have evidence that Demokritos said there was neither
up or down, middle or end in the infinite void. Aristotle
criticised all this from the point of view of his own theory
of absolute weight and lightness resulting in the “ natural
motions” of the elements upwards or downwards, as the
case might be, and the Epicurean doctrine is probably the
result of this criticism. Even Epicurus, however, had
the grace to dispense with Aristotle’s absolute lightness.
We may therefore regard the original motion of the atoms
as taking place in all directions, and we shall see that this
alone will account for the formation of the worlds.
Demokritos compared the motions of the atoms of the
soul to that of the motes in the sunbeam which dart
hither and thither in all directions even when there is no
wind,? and we may fairly assume that he regarded the
original motion of the other atoms in much the same way.
§ 79. The atoms are not mathematically indivisible like
the Pythagorean monads, but they are physically indivisible
because there is no empty space in them. Theoretically,
then, there is no reason why an atom should not be as
large as a world. Such an atom would be much the same
thing as the Sphere of Parmenides, were it not for the
empty space outside it and the plurality of worlds. Asa
1 Cic. de Finibus, i. 17; Diog. Laert. ix. 44.
2 Aristotle, de Anima, 403h, 31.
ATOMISM AND PYTHAGOREANISM 97
matter of fact, however, all atoms are invisible. That
does not mean, of course, that they are all the same size;
for there is room for an infinite variety of sizes below the
limit of the minimum visibile.
Leukippos explained the phenomenon of weight from
the size of the atoms and their combinations, but he did
not regard weight itself as a primary property of bodies,
Aristotle distinctly says that none of his predecessors had
said anything of absolute weight and lightness, but only
of relative weight and lightness, and Epicurus was the
first to ascribe weight to atoms. Weight for the earlier
atomists is only a secondary phenomenon arising, in a
manner to be explained, from excess of magnitude! It
will be observed that in this respect the early atomists
were far more scientific than Epicurus and even than
Aristotle. The conception of absolute weight has no
place in science, and it is really one of the most striking
illustrations of the true scientific instinct of the Greek
philosophers that no one before Aristotle ever made use
of it, while Plato expressly rejected it.
§ 80. The differences between groups of atoms are
due to (1) arrangement and (2) position. It is not clear
whether the illustration from the letters of the alphabet
quoted by Aristotle was given by Leukippos or Demo-
kritos, but in any case it is probably Pythagorean in
origin, for it accounts satisfactorily for the use of the
word στοιχεῖον in the sense of element, and that is found
in Plato, who, as I believe, knew nothing of Atomism.
However that may be, the points of resemblance between
Pythagoreanism and Atomism were already noted by
Aristotle, and he had direct knowledge on the subject.
**Leukippos and Demokritos,” he says, ‘“ virtually make
all things numbers too and produce them from numbers.”
I do not see how this statement can have any meaning
unless we regard the Pythagorean numbers as patterns
or “‘figurate numbers,” and, in that case, it is still more
1'There can be no question of mass; for the φύσις of all the atoms is
identical, and each atom is a continuum.
G
98 LEUKIPPOS
striking that Demokritos called the atoms “ figures” or
“forms” (ἰδέαι). The void is also a Pythagorean concep-
tion, though, as we have seen, it was not formulated with
precision before Leukippos. It is hardly, then, too much
to say that the atoms are Pythagorean monads endowed
with the properties of Parmenidean reality, and that
the elements which arise from the various positions and
arrangements of the atoms are, so far, like the Pytha-
gorean “numbers.” Such, at any rate, seems to be the
view of Aristotle, though we should have been glad if he
had explained himself more fully.
§ 81. The first effect of the motion of the atoms is that
the larger atoms are retarded, not because they are “heavy,”
but because they are more exposed to impact than the
smaller. In particular, atoms of an irregular shape become
entangled with one another and form groups of atoms,
which are still more exposed to impact and consequent
retardation. The smallest and roundest atoms, on the
other hand, preserve their original motions best, and these
are the atoms of which fire is composed. It will be
observed that it is simply taken for granted that an
original motion will persist unless something acts upon
it so as to retard it or bring it to a stop. To Aristotle
that appeared incredible, and the truth had to be redis-
covered and established on a firm basis by Galileo and
Newton. It was really the assumption of all the earlier
Greek philosophy. Before the time of Parmenides it was
rest and not motion that required explanation, and now
that Leukippos had discovered a way of escape from the
conclusion of Parmenides, it was possible for him to revert
to the older view.
§ 82. In an infinite void in which an infinite number of
atoms of countless shapes and sizes are constantly imping-
ing upon one another in all directions, there will be an
infinite number of places where a vortex motion is set
up by their impact. When this happens, we have the
beginning of a world. It is not correct to ascribe this to
chance, as later writers do. It follows necessarily from the
THE VORTEX 90
presuppositions of the system. The solitary fragment of
Leukippos we possess is to the effect that ‘ Naught
happens for nothing, but all things from a ground (λόγος)
and of necessity.”” It will be observed that the vortex
theory is derived from that of Anaxagoras (§ 60), which
in turn was a development of the older Ionic doctrine.
So far we see that Leukippos was a Milesian, but he has
thought the matter out much more carefully than his pre-
decessor. Anaxagoras had supposed that the analogy of a
sling would apply, and that the larger or “‘heavier”’ bodies
would, therefore, be driven to the furthest distance from
the centre. Leukippos left weight out of account alto-
gether, as a property which is not primitive, but only arises
when the vortex has already been formed. He therefore
looked rather to what happens in the case of bodies in an
eddy of wind or water, and he saw that the larger bodies
would tend towards the centre.
§ 83. The first effect of the vortex motion thus set up
is to bring together those atoms which are alike in shape
and size, and this is the origin of the four ‘‘ elements,”
fire, air, earth, and water. This process was illustrated
by the image of a sieve which brings the grains of millet,
wheat and barley together. As this image is found also
in Plato’s Timaeus (52 6), it is probably of Pythagorean
origin. Another image was that of the waves sorting the
pebbles on a beach and heaping up long stones with long
and round with round. In this process the finer atoms
are forced out towards the circumference, while the
larger tend to the centre. To understand this, we must
remember that all the parts of the vortex come in contact
(ἐπίψαυσις) with one another, and it is in this way that the
motion of the outermost parts is communicated to those
within them. The larger bodies offer more resistance
(ἀντέρεισις) to this communicated motion than the smaller,
simply because they are larger and therefore more exposed
to impacts in different directions which neutralise the vortex
motion In this way they make their way to the centre
where the motion is least, while the smaller bodies are
ΙΟΟ LEUKIPPOS
squeezed out towards the circumference where it is greatest.
That is the explanation of weight, which is not an “occult
quality,” but arises from purely mechanical causes,
§ 84. When we come to details, we find that Leukippos
showed himself a true Jonian. His Eleatic teachers doubt-
less warned him off the Pythagorean cosmology, but they
could not give him a better. It was natural, then, that
he should turn to the theories of his distinguished fellow-
citizen Anaximenes, and the little we know of his system
shows that he did 80, just as Anaxagoras had done before
him. He deliberately rejected the Pythagorean discovery
that the earth was spherical, a discovery of which he
cannot have been ignorant, and taught that it was in shape
“like a tambourine,” resting on the air. The reason why
it sloped toward the south was that the heat there made
the air thinner and therefore less able to support it. In
fact, the Atomists rejected the Pythagorean theory of the
earth exactly as Anaxagoras had done, and it was only
the fusion of Eastern and Western cosmology at Athens
that finally established the new view. Though Aristotle’s
earth is in the centre of the universe, it never occurs to
him to doubt its spherical shape.
§ 85. It is not worth while to follow in detail the
application of the atomic theory to particular phenomena,
and the atomic explanation of sensation and knowledge
will be better kept till we come to Demokritos, to whom
it was chiefly due. All we need say further here is that
Leukippos has answered the question of Thales in the
sense in which Thales had asked it, and no further
advance was possible on these lines. Before that could
take place it was necessary that attention should be
directed to the kindred problems of knowledge and of
conduct, and we shall see in the next book how that came
about. The very completeness of the mechanical theory
of the world which had now been given brought science
to a standstill for a time, and it also provoked a
revolt against cosmology. On one side that came from
specialists in the particular sciences, especially medicine,
THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE ΤΟΙ
who disliked the sweeping generalisations of the cos-
mologists, and maintained the right of each science to
deal with its own province. The Hippokratean treatise
on Ancient Medicine (by which is meant the art of
medicine based on experience and observation, as con-
trasted with the new-fangled medical theories of the
school of Empedokles and others) is the best evidence
of this. On the other side, there was a revolt against
science which proceeded from men whose chief interest
was in practical life. How do you know these things are
true, they said, and even if they are, what does it matter
to us? Those two questions can only be dealt with by
a theory of knowledge and a theory of conduct.
BOOK II
KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER VII
THE SOPHISTS
Law and Nature
§ 86. We have now to consider a period of breakdown
and reconstruction. Science had done all it could to
make the world intelligible, and the result was a view
of reality in flat contradiction to the evidence ot the
senses. Apparently it was not this world science explained
but another one altogether. What, then, are we to say
about this world? Why should we regard the world
of science as truer than it? After all, that world is a
product of human thinking, and how can we tell that
thought is not as misleading as sense is said to be?
Science proceeds on the assumption that there is some
fundamental reality (φύσις) which we can discover, but
what guarantee have we for that? It is very plain that
men’s views of right and wrong, fair and foul, vary from
_ people to people, and even from city to city, so there is
no fundamental reality in them at any rate. In the same
way the scientific schools only agree in one thing—
namely, that all other schools are wrong. It is surely
just as unlikely that any of these schools should possess
the truth as that any of the nations, Hellenic or barbarian,
should have established among themselves the true law of
nature. Such were the thoughts that must have kept
suggesting themselves to cultivated men in the middle of
the fifth century B.c.
It is very significant that the difficulties which were felt
106 LAW AND NATURE
as to knowledge and conduct should both have been
summed up in the same antithesis, that of nature
(φύσις) and law (νόμος), though the latter term has to do
primarily with conduct and the former with knowledge.
This shows that the two problems were felt to be the
same. The use of the term Law was evidently due to
the great legislative activity of the preceding centuries.
In early days the regularity of human life had been
far more clearly apprehended than the even course
of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of law and
custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless.
So much was this so that, when the regular course
of nature began to be observed, no better name could
be found for it than Right or Justice (δίκη), a word
which properly meant the unchanging custom that
guided human life. We have seen that Anaximander
spoke of the encroachment of one element on another as
‘injustice’ (§6), and, according to Herakleitos, it 1s
the Erinyes, the avenging handmaids of Right, that
keep the sun from “ overstepping his measures”’ (ὃ 42).
But a code of laws drawn up by a human lawgiver whose
name was known, a Zaleukos, or a Charondas, or a Solon,
could not be accepted in the old way as part of the
everlasting order of things. It was clearly something
‘““made,” and it might just as well have been made
otherwise or not made at all. A generation that had
seen laws in the making could hardly help asking itself
whether the whole of customary morality had not after
all been made in the same way. That is why we find
the word which is properly applied to the legislator’s
activity (θέσις) ἢ used synonymously with law (νόμος) in
this connexion.
The best evidence of this state of feeling is the work of
Herodotos. He must certainly have known Protagoras
at Thourioi, and some have thought that they could
detect the influence of Protagoras in his work. It may
be so, but it is just as likely that he is the mouthpiece of
1 Whence “ positive” as opposed to “ natural” law.
THE SOPHISTS 107
a feeling which was widely spread at the time, and to
which Protagoras gave expression in another form. In
any case, it is quite wrong to regard him as a representa-
tive of old-fashioned morality and religion. He is utterly
sceptical, and his respect for conventions is due to his
scepticism, just like that of Protagoras. The strongest
proof he can give of the madness of King Cambyses 18
that he laughed at the rites and customs of other nations
as if his own were a bit less artificial. ‘‘If we were to set
before all men a choice, and bid them pick out the best
uses (νόμοι) from all the uses there are, each people, after
examining them all, would choose those of their own
nation.” So “it is not likely that any one but a madman
would laugh at such things,” and Pindar was right in
saying that ‘ Law is king of all.’’}
The “ Sophists.”
§ 87. It is usual to speak of the men we have now to
deal with as ‘‘ the Sophists,”’ and so they called themselves
and were called by others. For us, however, the name
Sophist is apt to be misleading in more ways than one.
It is misleading if it is used to indicate a contrast between
these men and the thinkers and teachers of an earlier
generation. Herodotos calls Pythagoras a Sophist (iv. 95).
It is still more misleading if it makes us think of them as
forming in any sense a sect or school, or even as teachers
with identical aims and methods. There is the further
difficulty that, by the fourth century B.c., the word had
already begun to acquire the meaning it still bears in
ordinary language. This seems to have originated with
Isokrates, who was anxious to keep what he called “ philo-
sophy” distinct from intellectual pursuits of another order.
Plato, too, for reasons we shall have to consider, was
anxious to distinguish the Sophist from the Philosopher,
1 Herod, iii. 38. The quotation from Pindar is the more significant
that Pindar meant something quite different (see below, § 97). It was
therefore a familiar “ text” that could be made to mean anything.
108 THE SOPHISTS
and in one of his later dialogues defines the former as
a paid huntsman of rich and distinguished young men.
Aristotle formulated all that; and defines the Sophist as
one who makes money out of apparent wisdom. !
Now we must observe that the Sophists here referred to
are primarily contemporaries of Isokrates, Plato, and Aris-
totle themselves, not the distinguished teachers of the fifth
century who commonly go by the name, and we have no
right to transfer the polemics of a later generation to that
of Protagoras and Gorgias. Aristotle’s definition of the
Sophist must, therefore, be left out of account altogether,
and we shall see that the people Isokrates calls Sophists
are certainly not those the word most naturally suggests
to a modern reader. Plato is a safe guide when he is
dealing by name with the great Sophists of the fifth cen-
tury ; his general discussion in the dialogue entitled The
Sophist has, we shall see, another bearing.
We do learn from Plato, however, that, even in the fifth
century, there was a prejudice against the name which
made it possible for it to acquire the unfavourable sense it
had in the fourth. That prejudice took two forms, an
aristocratic and a democratic. From the democratic point
of view, indeed, there was no blame attaching to the title
σοφιστής that did not equally attach to the word σοφός
itself. To be “too clever ’’ was always an offence, and in
the /pology it is just the charge of being a “ wise man”
that Sokrates is most eager to rebut. From the aristo-
cratic point of view, the name was open to another
objection. Its very form suggested professionalism,? a
thing the high-born Hellene shrank from instinctively.
Above all, the fact that these distinguished men were
foreigners made them unpopular at Athens. The Athenian
public was full of prejudices, and that against “the for-
eigner ’’ was particularly well developed. It was in part
1 Plato, Soph. 223 Ὁ ; Arist. Soph. Εἰ 165 a, 22.
2 The σοφιστής makes a profession of “ being clever” or “ playing the
wit ” (τὸ copier Gar) just as the κιθαριστής makes a profession of playing
on the lyre.
REACTION AGAINST SCIENCE 109
the cause and in part the effect of the growing stringency
with which the privilege of citizenship was guarded. An
Athenian orator or comic poet had no more effective
weapon than the charge of foreign extraction. We know
something of such nationalism in our own day, and in
democratic Athens it was a very potent force indeed.
Such considerations as these explain why Plato represents
Protagoras as wearing the name of Sophist with a certain
bravado.}
This view is more or less common ground at the present
day ; but it can hardly be said that all its consequences
have been fully realised. German writers in particular
continue to be much influenced by a superficial analogy
between the ‘‘age of the Sophists” and the eighteenth
century 4ufk/arung, with the result that the Sophists are
represented either as subverters of religion and morality,
or as champions.of free thought, according to the personal
predilections of the writer. The truth is rather that,
so far as there is any parallel to the dufk/arung in the
history of Greek thought at all, it occurs much earlier,
and Xenophanes, not Protagoras, is its apostle. It is not
to religion but to science that Protagoras and Gorgias take
up a negative attitude, and we shall never understand them
if we lose sight of that fundamental distinction. The “age
of the Sophists” is, above all, an age of reaction against
science.
§ 88. It has been pointed out that the Sophists did not
constitute a school, but it is true for all that that their
teaching had something in common. They all aim chiefly
at practical ends. Their profession is that they teach
“‘soodness”’ (ἀρετή), and that is explained to mean the
power of directing states and families aright. In practice
this was apt to work out in a curious way, especially in a
democratic state like Athens. The Sophists quite naturally
taught people who could pay them, and these were generally
the well born and well-to-do, who were the natural prey of
the democracy. To a large extent, then, what they taught
1 Prot. 317 b,
IO THE SOPHISTS
was the art of succeeding in a democratic State when you
do not yourself belong to the ruling democracy, and, in
particular, the art of getting off when you are attacked in
the courts of law. ‘That is the questionable side of the
Sophist’s work, but it is hardly fair to make it a ground of
accusation against the men themselves ; it was the natural
outcome of the political conditions of Athens at the time.
There is no reason to doubt that Protagoras was perfectly
sincere in his profession that he was a teacher of ‘ good-
ness’: only the goodness demanded by his clients was
apt to be of a rather odd kind, and in practice his teaching
became more and more confined to the arts ot rhetoric
and disputation. He would never have been entrusted
by Perikles with the highly responsible task of framing a
code of laws for Thourioi unless he had really possessed
considerable skill in politics and jurisprudence; but the
young men he was called on to train were more likely to
be engaged in conspiracies against the State than in legis-
lation. That was not his fault, and it will help us to
understand the Sophists much better 1f we bear in mind
that, from the nature of the case, they were compelled to
depend mainly for their livelihood on the men who after-
wards made the oligarchic revolutions. In that sense only
were they the products of democracy ; what a sincere
though moderate democrat really thought of them we
may gather from what Anytos is made to say in Plato’s
Meno (91 ς 599.)
Protagoras.
§ 89. The earliest Sophist in the sense just explained
was Protagoras of Abdera. In the dialogue called by his
name, Plato has described his second visit to Athens.
He had been there once before when Hippokrates, the
Athenian youth who asks Sokrates for an introduction to
him, was still a boy This time there is a great gathering
of Sophists from all parts of the Hellenic world in the
house of Kallias, son of Hipponikos, who was known to
have spent more money on Sophists than any man of his
PROTAGORAS III
day. It is obvious that such a gathering would have
been impossible at any time during the first stage of the
Peloponnesian War. Alkibiades is quite a lad, though he
has a beard coming (309 a). Protagoras is represented
as much older than Sokrates, and indeed he says (317 c)
there is no one in the company (which includes Hippias
and Prodikos) whose father he might not be, and also that
he has been engaged in his profession for many years.
All through he addresses his hearers as men who belong
to a younger generation. In the Hippias mator (282 6)
Hippias is made to say that Protagoras was “ far older”
than he was. From the Mezo we get further information.
That dialogue is supposed to take place before the expedi-
tion of Cyrus (401 B.c.) in which Meno took part, and
Protagoras is spoken of (gt 6) as having died some con-
siderable time before, when he was seventy years old and
had been forty years in practice, in which time he had made
more money than Pheidias and any other ten sculptors put
together. Lastly, in the Theaeretus, a dialogue supposed
to take place just before the trial of Sokrates, Protagoras
is spoken of as one long dead.
Now all these statements are perfectly consistent with
one another, and the total impression they make on us
would not be affected by one or two minor anachronisms,
if such there are! They mean that Protagoras was born
not later than 500 B.c., that his second visit to Athens
cannot have been later than 432 B.c., and may have been
some years earlier, and that he died in the early years of
the Peloponnesian War. These dates are perfectly con-
sistent with the well-attested fact that he legislated for
Thourioi in 444/3 B.c.,2 and they are quite inconsistent
1'Though Protagoras is represented as putting up παρὰ Καλλίᾳ τοῦ
Ἱππονίκου (311 a), that does not imply that Hipponikos was dead.
In the Republic (328 b) Sokrates and the rest go εἰς Πολεμάρχου, though
Kephalos is certainly living. The imperfect ἐχρῆτο (315d) rather
implies that Hipponikos was still living.
2 The traditional date of Protagoras is based solely on this. Everyons
connected with Thourioi is supposed to have “flourished” in the year
112 PROTAGORAS
with the statement that he was prosecuted and condemned
for impiety in the time of the Four Hundred (411 B.c.).
Indeed, Plato represents Sokrates as saying things which
make it impossible to believe Protagoras was ever pro-
secuted for impiety at 411.1 In the Mezo a special point is
made (01 6) of the fact that throughout his long life
no one ever suggested that he had done any harm to his
associates, and that his good name remained unsullied
down to the supposed date of the dialogue, several years
after his death. Further, there is no reference to any
accusation of Protagoras in the Apology, though such a
reference would have been almost inevitable if it had ever
taken place. Sokrates has to go back to the trial of
Anaxagoras to find a parallel to his own case. It is there-
fore safer to dismiss the story altogether.
The portrait Plato has drawn of Protagoras has been
called a caricature, but there does not seem to be much
ground for such a view. In the first place, we must
observe that he does not speak of him in his own person.
It is Sokrates that describes him, and he only applies to
Protagoras the irony he habitually applied to himself.
of its foundation, and to “flourish” is to be forty years old. For that
reason Empedokles, Herodotos, and Protagoras are all said to have been
born in 484/3 B.c. It seems probable, however, that a lawgiver would
be over forty.
1The statement that Protagoras was accused by Pythodoros, son of
Polyzelos (Diog. Laert. ix. 54), sounds circumstantial, but the next
words, “ but Aristotle says it was Euathlos,” shows that this notice really
*refers to the celebrated “Suit for his Fee” (Δίκη ὑπὲρ μισθοῦ). The
story was (id. ix. 55) that Euathlos was to pay the fee when he had won
his first case. When Protagoras demanded it, he replied, “I have not
won a case yet.” ‘The answer was that Protagoras would sue him, and
then he would have to pay. “If I win, because I have won; if you
win, because you have won.’
“It is worth while noting that the oldest form of τ story appears to
have made the accusation of Protagoras subsequent to that of Sokrates
(cf. Timon, fr. 5 Diels). He was supposed to be a contemporary of Plato
owing to the common confusion of Sokrates and Plato, and was accord-
ingly made a disciple of Demokritos, who really belonged to a later
gencration.
“THE THROWERS” 113
Such good-humoured raillery as there is refers mainly to
the enthusiastic admirers of the great man. Indeed, we
are made to feel that Sokrates has a genuine respect for
Protagoras himself. It is true that in the Theaesetus he
does caricature his teaching, but he immediately confesses
that it is a caricature, and goes on to give a much more
sympathetic account of it.
§90. There is considerable uncertainty about the
number and titles of the works of Protagoras, which 1s
due, no doubt, to the fact that titles, in the modern sense,
were unknown in the fifth century.1 The work Plato
refers to as The Truth (᾿Αλήθεια) is probably identical with
that elsewhere called The Throwers (Καταβάλλοντες, sc.
Adyor),2 and was no doubt the most important. If we
reject the story that Protagoras was accused of impiety, we
must also, of course, reject that of the destruction of all
copies of his work by public authority. In any case, it 1s
absurd. The book is represented as widely read long
after Protagoras died. In the Theaetetus of Plato (152 4)
the lad from whom the dialogue takes its name says he
has read it often, and in the Helen (10. 2) Isokrates
says: ‘Who does not know that Protagoras and the
Sophists of that time have written elaborate works and left
them to us?” And even if the Athenians had been so
silly as to burn all the copies they could find at Athens,
there must have been many others scattered through the
Greek world from Abdera to Sicily, and these would not
be at the mercy of the Athenian authorities. It is clear,
then, that the book was extant and widely read when
Plato quoted it, and that it would have been impossible for
him to interpret the doctrine of Protagoras in a sense not
really suggested by it.
1 This stateinent refers primarily to prose works. Dramas had titles of
a sort (i.e, they were called after the chorus or the protagonist), and
Plato followed this custom in naming his dialogues.
* Metaphors from wrestling are regular in this connexion, and κατα-
, ,
βάλλειν means “to throw.” The phrase καταβάλλειν τὰς αἰσθήσεις
became technical for attacks upon sensation as a source of knowledge.
H
114 PROTAGORAS
§91. That doctrine is the famous one that “ Man is the
measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and
of things that are not that they are not.” The meaning
of this dictum has been much canvassed, but the curious
use of the word ‘“ measure” has not been sufficiently
remarked. We have become so accustomed to the phrase
that it hardly strikes us as peculiar, and yet it is surely not
the most obvious way of expressing any of the meanings
that have been attributed to Protagoras. Why “measure”?
To understand this, we should probably start from the
arithmetical meaning of the word. It is recorded that
Protagoras attacked mathematics, and in particular the
doctrine that the tangent touches the circle at a point.
There must, he urged, be a stretch for which the straight
line and the circle are in contact.t It is probable, then,
that his use of the word ‘“‘ measure” was due to the contro-
versies about incommensurability which were so rife in
the fifth century. The geometers tell us, he may have
said, that the side and the diagonal of the square have no
common measure, but in cases like that man is the
measure, that is, they are commensurable for all practical
purposes. Theories that set themselves in opposition to
the commonsense of mankind may safely be ignored. We
Shall find that this is just the position Protagoras took up
on other questions. In the great controversy about Law
and Nature he is decidedly on the side of the former.
In this connexion it is interesting to note that tradition
represents Protagoras as having met Zeno at Athens,
which he may well have done, and there was a dialogue in
which the two men were introduced discussing a question
closely bound up with the problem of continuity. A
quotation from it has been preserved, and its authenticity
is guaranteed by a reference to it in Aristotle? “Tell
me, Protagoras,” said Zeno, “ does a single grain of millet
lArist. Met. B, 2. 998 8, 2.
2Simplicius, Phys. 1108, 18 (R.P. 131), Ar. Phys. 250a, 20, That
such dialogues existed is the presupposition of Plato’s Parmenides. It
professes to be one of them,
HOMO MENSURA IIs
make a noise in falling or the ten-thousandth part of a
grain?” And when he said it did not, Zeno asked him,
“Does a bushel of millet make a noise when it falls or
not?” And, when he said it did, Zeno replied, “ What
then? Is there not a ratio of a bushel of millet to one
grain and the ten-thousandth part of a grain?” When
he said there was, Zeno replied, “ Well, then, will not the
ratios of the sounds to one another be the same? As the
sounding objects are to one another, so will the sounds be to
one another ; and, if that is so, if the bushel of millet makes
a noise, the single grain and the ten-thousandth part of a
grain will make a noise.” This quotation proves at least
that it was thought appropriate for Protagoras and Zeno
to discuss questions of the kind, and so confirms the view
that it really was the Eleatic dialectic which made men turn
away from science. Moreover, Porphyry said he had come
across a work of Protagoras containing arguments against
those who introduced the doctrine that Being was one."
§92. But who is the “ Man” who is thus ‘‘ the measure
ofall things” ? Plato more than once explains the meaning
of the doctrine to be that things are to me as they appear
to me, and to you as they appear to you. It 1s possible
that this may not be a verbal quotation, but it is hard to
believe that Plato could have ventured on such an inter-
pretation if there was no ground for it. It also seems to
me that the modern view which makes Protagoras refer,
not to the individual man, but to ‘‘ Man as such,” attri-
butes to him a distinction he would not have understood,
and would not have accepted if he had. The good faith
of Plato is further confirmed by the hint he gives us, when
he does go on in the Theaetetus to develop an elaborate
sensationalist theory from the dictum of Protagoras, that
it was not so developed by Protagoras himself. He says
it was something he kept back from the common herd and
only revealed to his disciples ‘in a mystery.” We could
hardly be told more plainly that the theory in question
was not to be found in the book of Protagoras itself.
1Eus. P.E. x. 3, 25 (Bernays, Ges. 454. 1, 121).
116 PROTAGORAS
Nor does Plato stand alone in his interpretation of this
dictum. Demokritos, who was a younger fellow-citizen
of Protagoras, understood it precisely in the same way.
We learn from Plutarch that the Epicurean Kolotes had
accused Demokritos of throwing human life into confusion
by teaching that ‘“‘nothing was such rather than such”
(οὐδὲν μᾶλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον). Plutarch (or rather his
authority) replies that, so far from holding this view,
Demokritos combated Protagoras who did hold it, and
wrote many convincing arguments against him.) It is
impossible to ignore that, and the testimony of Demo-
kritos is not only of the highest value in itself, but is, of
course, quite independent of Plato’s.
The practical inference to be drawn from all this is that
on every subject it is possible to make two opposite state-
ments (λόγοι), both of which are “‘true,”’ though one may
be “weaker ” and another “stronger.” It is the business
of the disputant to make the weaker statement the stronger
(τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν), and that is an art which
can be taught. It is important to notice that this is not
in itself an immoral doctrine. Plato distinctly tells us that
though, according to Protagoras, all beliefs are equally
true, one belief may nevertheless be better than ancther,
and he seems to have regarded as “better” the beliefs
which were most in accordance with those of the man in
a normal condition of body and mind. People who have
_ jaundice see all things yellow, and just so it is possible for
a man to have his moral beliefs coloured by some abnormal
condition of soul. The things that appear yellow to the
jaundiced eye really are yellow to it, but that does not
alter the fact that it would be better for the sick man if
they appeared different to-him. His belief would not be
truer, but it would be better. In the same way, then, as
it is the business of the doctor to bring his patient’s body
into such a condition that he may see normally, so it is the
business of the Sophist to make the better statement, which
1Plut. adv, Col. 1108 f. sg. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math, vii.
389.
LAW 117
may be the weaker in a given case, not only better but
stronger.
§ 93. This explains further how it is that Plato repre-
sents Protagoras as a convinced champion of Law against
all attempts to return to Nature for guidance. He wasa
strong believer in organised society, and he held that
institutions and conventions were what raised men above
the brutes. That, at any rate, is the meaning of the
myth Plato puts into his mouth in the dialogue called by
his name. So far from being a revolutionary, he was the
champion of traditional morality, not from old-fashioned
prejudice, but from a strong belief in the value of social
conventions, In this sense, he not only professed to teach
“goodness” himself, but he believed it was taught by the
laws of the state and by public opinion, though not
perhaps so well. He had a profound belief in the value
of such teaching, and he considered that it begins in early
childhood. The less he could admit anything to be truer
than anything else, the more sure he felt that we must
cleave to what is normal and generally recognised.
The attitude of Protagoras to religion is generally
looked at in the light of the highly improbable story of
his accusation for impiety. We still have a single sentence
from his work Ox the Gods, and it is as follows: ‘* With
regard to the gods, I cannot feel sure either that they are
or that they are not, nor what they are like in figure ; for
there are many things that hinder sure knowledge, the.
obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.”
There is surely nothing impious in these words from any
point of view, and certainly there is none from the Greek.
Speculative opinions on subjects like these were no part of
Greek religion, which consisted entirely in worship and
not in theological affirmations or negations.!. And, in any
case, the sentence quoted might just as well be the prelude
to a recommendation to worship according to the use of
one’s native city (νόμῳ πόλεως) as to anything else, and
such a recommendation would be in complete harmony
1Cf. § 140.
118 THE SOPHISTS
with the other views of Protagoras, If we cannot attain
sure knowledge about the gods by ourselves, we shall do
well to accept the recognised worship. That is what we
should expect the champion of Law against Nature to say.
Hipptas and Prodikos.
§ 94. The other Sophists mentioned as present in the
house of Kallias are of no great importance for the history
of philosophy, though they are of considerable interest
as typical figures. Hippias of Elis is chiefly memorable
for his efforts in the direction of universality. He was
the enemy of all specialism, and appeared at Olympia
gorgeously attired in a costume entirely of his own making
down to the ring on his finger. He was prepared to
lecture to anyone on anything, from astronomy to ancient
history. Such a man had need of a good memory, and
we know that he invented a system of mnemonics. There
was a more serious side to his character, however. This
was the age when men were still sanguine of squaring the
circle by a geometrical construction. The lunules of Hip-
pokrates of Chios belong to it, and Hippias, the universal
genius, could not be behindhand here. He invented the
curve still known as the quadratrix (τετραγωνίζουσα),
which would solve the problem if it could be mechanically
described. Prodikos of Keos is chiefly known nowadays
for the somewhat jejune apologue of the Choice of
Herakles which Xenophon has preserved. We shall see
presently how important the personality of Herakles was
at the time. The chief work of Prodikos, however, seems
to have been the discrimination of synonyms, a business
which may possibly have been important in the infancy
of grammar. Protagoras too contributed something to
grammar. He called attention to the arbitrary character
of certain grammatical genders, no doubt in illustration of
the reign of Law or convention, and his classification of
sentences into command, wish, etc. prepared the way for
the distinction of the moods.
THE SOPHISTS ig
Gorgias,
§ 95. Gorgias of Leontinoi in Sicily came to Athens as
ambassador from his native city in 427 B.c., when he was
already advanced in years. His influence, therefore, be-
longs to a later generation than that of Protagoras, though
he need not have been younger than Hippias and Prodi-
kos. He had, it seems, been a disciple of Empedokles,
and we learn incidentally from Plato’s Meno (76 c) that
he continued to teach that philosopher’s doctrine of
‘effluences” even in his later days, when he had retired
to Larissa in Thessaly. He is said to have lived to a
great age, but no precise date can be given for his death.
It is evident from Plato’s account of him that he was not
80 much a teacher of politics, like Protagoras, as a teacher
of rhetoric. That is accounted for by the change in the
political situation brought about by the Peloponnesian
War and the death of Perikles. The relations between
the democracy and the well-to-do classes were becoming
more and more strained, and the importance of forensic
rhetoric was accordingly increased. What Gorgias did
was to introduce to Athens the methods of persuasion by
means of artistic prose which had been elaborated during
the struggle of classes in Sicily. His influence on Athenian
literature, and through it on the development of European
prose style in general, was enormous. It does not concern
us here, except incidentally, but it is worth while to note
that the terms “figure” (efdos, σχῆμα) and “trope”
(τρόπος), which he applied to the rhetorical devices he
taught, are apparently derived from Pythagorean musical
theory (§ 32), and mean primarily the arrangement of
words in certain patterns.?
§ 96. Like Protagoras, Gorgias had been driven by the
Eleatic dialectic to give up all belief in science. Prota-
goras, as we have seen, fell back on “common sense,” but
Gorgias proceeded in a much more radical fashion. If
1 Taylor, Varia Socratica, i. p. 206, π. 1. Cf. also the uses of εἶδος and
εἰδύλλιον for poems.
120 GORGIAS
Protagoras taught that everything was true, Gorgias
maintained there was no truth at all. In his work entitled
On Nature or the non-existent (Περὶ φύσεως ἢ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος)
he sought to prove (1) that there is nothing, (2) that,
even if there is anything, we cannot know it, and (3) that,
even if we could know it, we could not communicate our
knowledge to anyone else. We have two apparently
independent accounts of the arguments by which he
established these positions; but, though they agree
generally with one another, they are obviously paraphrases
in the language of a later time. We can still see, however,
that they were borrowed in the main from Zeno and
Melissos, and that is a mark of their being in substance
authentic. Isokrates, who had been a disciple of Gorgias,
mentions his assertion that Nothing is in the Helen (10.3),
and he couples his name with those of Zeno and Melissos,
thus confirming in a general way the later accounts. The
reasoning of Zeno and Melissos was of a kind that is apt
to cut both ways, and that is what Gorgias showed. The
argument given as peculiar to himself was to this effect.
‘What is ποῦ ἡ is not, that is to say, it ἐξ just as much as
“ what is.” . The difficulty here raised is one that was not
cleared up till Plato wrote the Sophist, We shall consider
it when we come to that.
§ 97. In the ethical sphere the counterpart of this
nihilism would be the doctrine that there is no natural
distinction between right and wrong. Plato, however, is
very careful not to represent Gorgias as drawing this con-
clusion himself, and even his ardent disciple Polos shrinks
from the extreme consequences of opposing natural to
legal right. These are drawn by one Kallikles, who is
introduced as an Athenian democratic statesman. We
know nothing of him otherwise, but he impresses us as a
real man of flesh and blood. He is still young in the
dialogue, and he may very well have disappeared during
the revolutionary period. It is not Plato’s way to introduce
1The title cannot be ancient in this form, as is shown by the use of
ἢ to introduce an alternative.
MIGHT IS RIGHT 121
fictitious characters, nor does he introduce living con-
temporaries, except where, as in the Phaedo, that is made
necessary by historical considerations. In any case, we
have abundant evidence that the doctrine upheld by
Kallikles, namely, that Might is Right, was current at
Athens towards the close of the fifth century. In the
Melian dialogue, Thucydides has shown us how it might
be used to justify the attitude of the imperial democracy
to its subject allies, and the Herak/es of Euripides is a
study of the same problem.’ Its theme is that the
“strong man” is not sufficient for himself, and is only
safe so long as he uses his strength in the service of man-
kind. This conception of the “strong man”’ (of which
Herakles was the regular type) was not in itself an ignoble
one. It had its ideal side, and Pindar sings how Herakles
took the oxen of Geryones without paying for them in
virtue of that higher law, which ‘justifies even the most
violent deed with a high hand,’ a passage duly quoted
in Plato’s Gorgias (484b). Such theories are a natural
reaction against that rooted jealousy of everything above
the common which is apt to characterise democracy. In
modern times Carlyle and Nietzsche represent the same
point of view. The worship of the strong man or “ hero,”
who can rise superior to all petty moral conventions—
in fact, of the “‘ superman ”—seems to have been fostered
in the fifth century B.c. by much the same influences as in
the nineteenth century a.p. It is clear, then, that even
the doctrine of Kallikles is not a complete ethical nihilism.
Might really is Right. That is a very different thing
from saying Right is Might.
In the Republic that is the doctrine maintained by
Thrasymachos. According to him there is no Right at
all, and what we call by that name is only “the interest of
the stronger” which he is able to force the weaker to
accept as lawful and binding on themselves in virtue of his
strength. It is important to observe that Thrasymachos
1See my paper “ The Religious and Moral Ideas of Euripides,” in the
Proceedings of the Classical Association of Scotland, 1907-8, pp. 96 599.
122 THRASYMACHOS
belongs to the generation we are now considering ; for
readers of the Repubiic are often led to suppose, by an
ilusion we shall have to note more than once, that
Plato is there dealing with the controversies of his own
day. It is well to remember, then, that Thrasymachos
was mentioned as a celebrated teacher of Rhetoric in
_ the earliest comedy of Aristophanes, which was produced
in 427 B.c., the year Plato was born and Gorgias came to
Athens. It is not to be supposed that he was still living
when the Republic was written ; he belonged to a genera-
tion that was past and gone. We can hardly imagine
anyone maintaining such vigorous doctrine in Plato’s day,
but it was natural enough that it should find advocates in
the second half of the fifth century. It is the real ethical
counterpart to the cosmological nihilism of Gorgias.
Plato’s final judgment on the Sophists (in the sense in
which we have been using the word) is to be found in the
Laws (889 6). It is that, by thus insisting on the oppo-
sition between Law and Nature, they tended to do away
with the distinction between right and wrong. If that
distinction is not rooted in nature, but depends solely
on human laws and institutions, it 1s valid only so long as
we choose to recognise it. On the other hand, if we
appeal from human law to a supposed higher law, the law
of Nature, all restraint is abolished. We are forbidden
by Plato’s own account of them to attribute immoral
intentions of any kind to the great Sophists ; but we can
hardly dispute his estimate of the inevitable consequences
of their teaching in a state of society such as existed at
Athens in the closing decades of the fifth century. It is
an impartial historical judgment ; for, in Plato’s day, there
were no longer any Sophists in the proper sense of the
word.
Eclectics and Reactionaries.
§ 98. Besides these men there were a good many
others, also called ‘“‘Sophists’”’ by their contemporaries,
who attempted to carry on the traditions of the Ionian
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA 123
cosmological schools. They were not, certainly, men of
the same distinction as Protagoras or Gorgias, but they
have their place in history as the vehicles by which
the ideas of Ionian science were conveyed to Sokrates and
his circle. From this point of view the most important of
them is Diogenes of Apollonia, whose date is roughly
fixed for us by the statement of Theophrastos that he
borrowed from Anaxagoras and Leukippos, which shows
that he belonged to the latter part of the fifth century
Be.
We have considerable fragments of Diogenes, written
in an Ionic prose similar to that of some of the Hippo-
kratean writings. We find here the first explicit justifica-
tion of the old Milesian doctrine that the primary substance
must be one, an assumption which the rise of pluralism
had made it necessary to defend. The action and reaction
of things on one another, he says, can only be explained
in this way. We may also trace the influence of Anaxa-
goras in another matter. Diogenes not only said the
primary substance was a “god,” which was nothing new,
but also identified it with Mind (νοῦς). On the other
hand, he follows Anaximenes in holding that this primary
τς δες is air, and in deriving all things from it by
rarefaction and condensation. It is possible to see the
influence of WHerakleitos in the close connexion he
established between wisdom and the dryness of the air we
breathe. ‘ Damp hinders thought”’ was one of his dicta,
and is burlesqued in the Clouds (232) accordingly. In
one respect only does Diogenes appear to have shown
some originality, and that was in his medical work. His
account of the veins was celebrated, and bears witness
to the influence of Empedokles.
Hippon of Samos is of less importance. He revived
the doctrine of Thales that water was the primary sub-
stance, and defended it on physiological grounds. We
now know from Menon’s Jatrika that he was a medical
writer and that he was a native of Kroton. He was,
therefore, one of the men who brought Western medicine
124 ARCHELAOS
to Ionia, and that accounts for the character of the argu-
ments with which he defended his thesis. It is probable
that the reasoning conjecturally attributed to Thales by
Aristotle is really his. We may be sure that Thales
defended his theory on meteorological, not physiological,
grounds. That is just the difference between the two
periods.
Archelaos of Athens was a disciple of Anaxagoras, and
the first Athenian to interest himself in science or philo-
sophy. He deserves mention for this, since, with the
exception of Sokrates and Plato—a considerable exception
certainly—there are hardly any other Athenian philosophers.
There is not the slightest reason to doubt the statement
that he had Sokrates for a disciple. The contemporary
tragic poet, Ion of Chios, said in his Memoirs that
Sokrates came to Samos in the company of Archelaos as
a young man. We know that Ion gave an account of
the visit of Sophokles and Perikles on the occasion of the
blockade of Samos in 441/o0, and this statement will refer
to the same occasion.1 Sokrates would be about twenty-
eight at the time. Aristoxenos, as usual, repeats scandals
about Archelaos and Sokrates. We are not bound to
believe them, but they would have been pointless unless
Sokrates had been generally known to have associated
with Archelaos. Aristoxenos says that he was seventeen
years old when this association began, and that it lasted
many years.2, Though Plato does not mention Archelaos
by name, he refers unmistakably to his doctrines as having
occupied Sokrates in his early youth, and it is natural
to suppose that the man who 15 .mentioned as reading
aloud the book of Anaxagoras was no other than his
1Jon, fr. 73 (Képke). The title of Ion’s work was ’Emidypiac
(“Visits”). ‘There is no inconsistency between his statement and that
of Plato (Crito, §2b) that Sokrates never left Athens except on military
service. This is a case of military service like the others we shall have
to consider directly. It is most unlikely that lon should have meant any
other Sokrates in this connexion, as has been suggested.
2 Aristoxenos, fr. 25 (F.H.G. ii. 280).
ARCHELAOS AND SOKRATES 125
Athenian disciple It is, therefore, quite unjustifiable
to discredit the statement that Sokrates was his follower.
It rests on practically contemporary evidence, and
Theophrastos accepted it.?
1 Phaedo, 96 Ὁ, 97 Ὁ, with my notes. The theory that the warm and
the cold gave rise by “ putrefaction” (σηπεδών) to a milky slime (‘Avs),
by which the first animals were nourished, is that of Archelaos, and is
mentioned first among the doctrines Sokrates considered.
2 Phys. Op. fr. 4 (Diels).
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIFE OF SOKRATES
The Problem
§ 99. It is possible to construct a biography of Sokrates
from the dialogues of Plato, and, on the face of it, they
seem to present us with an intelligible and consistent
account of the man and his ways. Xenophon has left us
three or four works purporting to record actual conversa-
tions of Sokrates, whom he had known as a young man,
but whom he saw for the last time just before he joined
the expedition of Cyrus as a volunteer (401 B.c.). He
tells us himself how he consulted Sokrates on the wisdom
of that step, and was referred by him to the Delphic
oracle. He was careful, however, not to ask the oracle
whether he should join the expedition at all; he only
inquired to which of the gods he should offer prayer and
sacrifice so as to ensure a prosperous issue to the journey
he had in mind. He tells us frankly that Sokrates
rebuked him for this evasion, and that is really all we
know about their intercourse. If there had been much
more to tell, we may be pretty sure Xenophon would
have told it; for he is by no means averse to talking
about himself. At this time he was under thirty, and
Sokrates had passed away before his return from Asia.
Several of the Sokratic conversations he records are on
subjects we know Xenophon was specially interested
in, and the views put forward in them are just those
he elsewhere expresses in his own name or through the
THE MEMORABILIA 127
mouth of Cyrus, the hero of his paedagogic romance.
No one ever thinks, accordingly, of appealing to such
works as The Complete Householder (the Οἰκονομικός) for
evidence regarding “the historical Sokrates.” There are
two other writings, the pology and the Symposium, which
seem to have been suggested by the dialogues of Plato
bearing the same names, and these are generally left out
of account too. Since the eighteenth century, however,
it has been customary to make an exception in favour of
a single work, the Memorabilia, composed by the exiled
Xenophon with the professed intention of showing that
Sokrates was not irreligious, and that, so far from cor-
rupting the young, he did them a great deal of good
by his conversations. It is quite intelligible that the
eighteenth century should have preferred the Sokrates of
the Memorabilia to that of the Platonic dialogues; for
he comes much nearer the idea then current of what a
philosopher ought to be.*. In other respects it is hard to
see what there is to recommend him. It is recognised
that Xenophon is far from being a trustworthy historian,
and the Cyropaedia shows he had a turn for philosophical
romance. It is certainly unsound methodically to isolate
the Memorabilia from Xenophon’s other Sokratic writings,
unless very strong reasons indeed can be given for doing
so. Above all, it is quite impossible to get anything like
a complete picture of Sokrates from the Memorabilia
alone, and so in practice every writer fills in the out-
line with as much of the Platonic Sokrates as happens
to suit his preconceived ideas of the man.? Such a
1The first writer to prefer the Sokrates of the Memorabilia to the
Platonic Sokrates was apparently Brucker (1741). The only reason he
gives is that Xenophon had only one master, from whom he inherited
not only moral philosophy, but integrity of life, while Plato was taken
up with a “syncretism ” of various doctrines, He quotes also an anecdote
about Sokrates hearing the Lysis read, and observing, “Good heavens !
what lies the young man tells about me!” But Sokrates was dead before
the Lysis was written.
2JIn particular the “irony” of Sokrates comes entirely from Plato.
The Sokrates of the Memorabilia has no doubts or difficulties of any kind.
128 SOKRATES
procedure is hopelessly arbitrary, and can only land us in
unverifiable speculations. It would be far better to say at
once that we cannot know anything about Sokrates, and
that for us he must remain a mere x. Even so, however,
the Platonic Sokrates is actual enough, and he is the only
Sokrates we can hope to know well. If he is a fictitious
character, he is nevertheless more important than most
men of flesh and blood. The only sound method, there-
fore, is to describe his life and opinions without, in the
first instance, using any other source. Only when we
have done that can we profitably go on to consider how
far the Sokrates we learn to know in this way will account
for the slighter sketch of Xenophon. We shall also have
to consider in what relation he stands to the caricature
in the Clouds of Aristophanes.
The Platonic Sokrates.
§ 100. Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos, of the deme
Alopeke, was seventy years old, or a little more, when he
was put to death (399 B.c.).1_ He was born, then, about
470 B.C., some ten years after Salamis, and his early man-
hood was spent in the full glory of the Periklean age. His
family traced its descent to Daidalos, which means appar-
ently that it was of some antiquity, and Sophroniskos
must have been able to leave some property; for we shall
find Sokrates serving as a hoplite. His mother was a
midwife, Phainarete by name, and she had another son,
Patrokles, by another husband. It is worthy of note that
the great Aristeides was of the same deme, and his son
Lysimachos speaks of Sophroniskos in the Laches as a
family friend. He says he never had any difference with
1 Apol, 17; Crito, 52e. We know the date of his death from Deme-
trios Phalereus and the Marmor Parium. I have not given detailed
references to the passages of Plato on which this account is based. ‘They
are well known and easily found. I do not think I have said anything
which is not stated in Plato or to be immediately inferred from
what Plato says. If this account of Sokrates is a “construction,” it
is Plato’s, not mine.
THE VOICE 129
him to the day of his death. It is evident, then, that
Sophroniskos was a man of some position in his deme.
Another fellow-demesman was the wealthy Kriton, who
was just the same age as Sokrates, and remained deeply
attached to him till the end.
Late in life Sokrates married Xanthippe, by whom
he had three sons. When his father was put to death,
the eldest of them, Lamprokles, was a lad; but the other
two, Sophroniskos and Menexenos, were children. The
last named, indeed, was only a baby in arms. There
is no hint in Plato that Xanthippe was a shrew. Her
name and those of her eldest and youngest sons suggest
that she was a woman of good family.1. In the Phaedo we
are told that the friends of Sokrates found Xanthippe and
her baby in the prison when the doors were opened.
They must have passed the night there, and she was in an
overwrought condition. Sokrates sent her home, but she
returned later in the day with the other women of the
family and spent some time with Sokrates in an inner
room, where she received his final instructions in presence
of the faithful Kriton.?
Sokrates was very far from handsome. He had a snub
nose and strangely protruding eyes. His gait was peculiar,
and Aristophanes likened it to the strut of some sort of
waterfowl. In other places, his appearance is compared
to that of a torpedo-fish, a Silenos, or a Satyr. He always
went barefoot, save on special occasions, and he never
went outside the town except on military service, and
once to the Isthmian games.
He was odd too in other ways. It was well known
that, even as a boy, he had a “‘voice,’’ which he called
his “divine sign,” and which he regarded as something
ΤῸ is noteworthy that it is the second son who is called after the
father of Sokrates.
2°The scandal-monger Aristoxenos tried to fix a charge of bigamy
on Sokrates. He said he was married at the same time to Xanthippe
and to Myrto, the daughter of Aristeides. Aristeides died in 468 B.c.,
so Myrto must have been about as old as Sokrates or older.
i
130 LIFE OF SOKRATES
peculiar to himself, and probably unique. It came to him
often, and sometimes on the most trivial occasions. The
remarkable thing about it was that it never prompted him
to do anything ; it only opposed his doing something he
was about to do.! Besides this, Sokrates was subject
to ecstatic trances. He would stand still for hours together
buried in thought, and quite forgetful of the outer world.
His friends were accustomed to this and knew better than
to disturb him when it happened. They simply left him
alone till he came to himself. There was a celebrated
occasion in the camp at Poteidaia, when Sokrates was
not quite forty years old, on which he stood motionless
from early morning on one day till sunrise on the next,
buried in thought (φροντίζων rx), as we are told in the
Symposium. His comrades in arms were much astonished,
and some of them brought their camp-beds into the open
to see if he would really remain standing there all night.
When the sun rose next morning, he said a prayer and
went about his business.?
§ ror. A man of this temperament would naturally
be influenced by the religious movement of his time, and
Plato indicates clearly that he was. He was a firm
believer in the immortality of the soul and in the life
to come, doctrines which were strange and unfamiliar
to the Athenians of his day. He even believed, though
not without reservations, in Rebirth and Reminiscence.
When asked his authority for these beliefs, he would
refer, not only to inspired poets like Pindar, but to “ priests
and priestesses who have been at pains to understand
the acts they perform.”*® In particular he professed to
have been instructed by a wise woman of Mantineia
1 Xenophon makes a point of contradicting Plato as to this. He says
the “voice” gave both negative and positive warnings. Obviously, if a
young man asked Sokrates whether to go on a military adventure or not,
and the ‘‘ voice”’ gave no sign, that could be interpreted as positive advice
to go. The pseudo-Platonic Theages throws much light on the subject.
3 Symp.220c-d, The statement would be pointless if it were not true,
8 Meno, 81 as
ENTHUSIASM AND IRONY 131
named Diotima. To the very end of his life, he was
deeply interested in what he called “sayings of yore”
or the “ancient word,’ and expressly attributed to
Orpheus,! according to which the body is a tomb in
which the soul is kept in custody. It cannot attain to
perfect purity till it is released from the body by God,
whose chattel it is, and comes to be alone by itself. Then,
and not till then, can it dwell with God. The man who
follows philosophy, which is the highest music, will there-
fore practise death even in his lifetime by accustoming his
soul to concentrate upon itself, and so to attain such wisdom
as may be possible in this world.
But, with all this, Sokrates was no mere visionary. He
had a strong vein of shrewd common sense that kept him
from committing himself to the often fantastic details of
Orphic and Pythagorean religion, however powerfully
these might appeal to his imagination. He calls the
doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body, a “high
one and not easy to understand,” and though he was
certain that the souls of the righteous would be with God
when they departed from the body, he could not feel equally
sure that they would be with the saints. When he related
eschatological myths in the Orphic style, as he often did,
he used to warn his hearers that they were at best some-
thing like the truth. No man of sense would insist on
their literal accuracy. Besides this, he had a healthy
contempt for the common run of Orphic and other
trafickers in pardons and indulgences, whom he accused
of demoralising the nation by their gross descriptions of
heavenly joys. That, however, was perfectly consistent
with the belief that Orphicism contained, in however dim
a form, a great truth not to be found in the ordinary
religion of the State. The manner of its expression he
compared to fables or riddles, of which not everyone
can guess the true sense.
§102. The truth is that there were two well-marked
sides to his character. He was indeed a visionary or
1 Crat. 400 ¢.
132 LIFE OF SOKRATES
ἐς enthusiast,” in the Greek sense of that word, but he was
also uncommonly shrewd. His critics called him “sly,”
using a word (εἴρων), which is properly applied to foxes.
The Scots word “canny” (not always a term of praise)
comes nearest in meaning to the Greek. He did not like
to commit himself further than he could see clearly, and he
was apt to depreciate both his own powers and other
people’s. That was not a mere pose; it was due to an
instinctive shrinking from everything exaggerated and
insincere. As has been indicated, it is only the opponents
of Sokrates that charge him with “irony” (εἰρωνεία), a
word which undoubtedly suggested the idea of humbug;
but Plato shows us over and over again the real trait in
his character which this uncomplimentary description was
aimed at, with the result that the word ‘“irony’’ has
changed its meaning for us. To a very large extent, we
gather, “the accustomed irony” of Sokrates was nothing
more or less than what we call a sense of humour which
enabled him to see things in their proper proportions.
§ 103. His interest in religion of a mystic type would
naturally lead Sokrates to seek light from the science of his
time. The two things were very closely connected at this
date, as we have seen when dealing with Empedokles. In
the Phaedo (96a sgq.) Plato makes Sokrates give an account
of his intellectual development which must be intended
to be historical, seeing that the questions described as
occupying his mind are just those that were of interest
at Athens when Sokrates was a young man, and at no
other time or place.’ He asked himself whether life had
1For a detailed discussion of these see the notes in my edition of the
Phaedo, ad Joc. ‘The main point is that Sokrates is represented as hesitat-
ing between Ionic doctrine, such as he would learn from Archelaos and
Diogenes (cp. § 93), and Italic doctrines, some of which belong to the
school of Empedokles, whilst others are Pythagorean. Sokrates may
have learnt the latter directly or indirectly from Philolaos. Empedokles,
who took part in the colonisation of Thourioi, probably visited Athens
(for we know that Kritias adopted his theory of sensation) and it is not
difficult to suppose that Philolaos came there too. Athens is the only
place where the Ionic and Italic philosophies could come into sharp
EARLY STUDIES 133
arisen from the putrefaction of the warm and the cold
(a doctrine we know to have been that of Archelaos),
and whether the earth is flat (as the Ionians taught) or
round (as the Pythagoreans held). He was interested in
the relation between sensation, belief, and knowledge (a
problem raised by Alkmaion), and he considered whether
“what we think with” is air (the doctrine of Diogenes) or
blood (that of Empedokles). In fact, he is represented as
having been influenced by practically every theory repre-
sented at Athens in the middle of the fifth century. But
none of these could give him satisfaction ; for they threw
no light on what he chiefly wanted to know, the cause of
things, why things are what they are and become what
they become. They explained everything mechanically,
whereas Sokrates wished to be shown that everything is
as it is because it is best for it to be so. The system of
Anaxagoras, indeed, seemed more promising at first; for
it attributed the origin of the world to Mind. But this
proved disappointing too; for Anaxagoras made no use of
Mind except when he was at a loss for another explanation.
Otherwise he spoke of “ airs” and “aethers” just like the
rest. Sokrates accordingly turned his back on all such
speculations, and resolved to work out a new method for
himself.
δ 104. According to Plato, Sokrates must have reached
this point when he was quite young; for he makes him
discuss his new theory with Parmenides and Zeno when
they visited Athens shortly after the middle of the century
(§ 63). It is also made clear that he came into contact
with the great ‘‘Sophists” of the day at a very early age.
The first visit of Protagoras to Athens must have taken
place before Perikles entrusted him with the important
duty of legislating for Thourioi in 444 B.c., that is to say,
it must have coincided very nearly with the visit of Par-
menides and Zeno, and we have seen that tradition repre-
sents Zeno and Protagoras as engaged in controversy. On
conflict like this, and the middle of the fifth century is the only time at
which it could happen.
134 LIFE OF SOKRATES
his second visit, several years later, Protagoras remembers
the young Sokrates quite well. He is made to say that of
all the people he meets he admires Sokrates most, certainly
far more than anyone else of his age.1_ A very similar
compliment is put into the mouth of Parmenides.? Plato
clearly means us to understand that Sokrates had attracted
the notice of the most distinguished men of the time when
he was not more than about twenty-five. He was also
intimate with Hippias and Prodikos, and he used to say
that he had attended one of the cheaper courses on
synonyms given by the latter. Gorgias, on the other
hand, did not visit Athens till Sokrates was over forty
years old.
It is clear, however, that Zeno, “the Eleatic Palamedes,’’4
had more influence on Sokrates than anyone. As Aristotle
said,5 he was the real inventor of Dialectic, that is to say,
the art of argument by question and answer. If the Peri-
klean age had left any literature we should probably hear
more about his work at Athens than we do, but the
Athenians of the middle of the fifth century did not write
books. We have traces enough, however, of the impression
he left. Weare told in the Parmenides of young Athenians
who had been his associates, and it is recorded that Perikles
himself “heard” him (δ 63). We shall see that the Eleatic
philosophy was sedulously cultivated at Megara, where its
dialectical side was still further developed. Dialectic is
literally the art of conversation or discussion, and its pro-
cedure is governed by strict rules. The ‘ answerer”
(ὁ ἀποκρινόμενος) is required to reply to the questioner (6
1 Prot. 3616. Protagoras adds that he would not be surprised if
Sokrates became distinguished for wisdom. Surely that is the remark of
an old man to a very young one, not that of a man under sixty to a man
over forty. Cp. § 89.
Porm. 140%. Cf. tb. 135 ἃ,
8'This is strikingly confirmed by the statement of Aristoxenos that
Sokrates became a disciple of Archelaos at the age of seventeen (p. 124, %. 2).
4 Phaedr 261d. .
§ In his dialogue entitled the Sophist (ap. Diog. Laert. ix. 25).
THE DELPHIC ORACLE 135
ἐρωτῶν) in the fewest possible words, and to answer the
question exactly as it is put. He is not allowed to ask
other questions or to boggle at the form of those put to
him. Obviously this is a procedure which can be employed
in the most fallacious manner, and in the Euthydemus we
have a delightful sketch of itsabuse. Even that, however,
was of service in directing attention to the nature of the
most common fallacies, and this helped in turn to indicate
the direction in which the real difficulties were to be looked
for. At any rate, it was the method that appealed most to
Sokrates, and there can be little doubt he learnt it from
Zeno. The influence of Zeno is also attested by the
Phaedo (96), where Sokrates is represented as puzzled,
not only by the problem of growth, which was that of
Anaxagoras and Archelaos, but also, and even more, by
that of the unit, which was the special object of Zeno’s
attention.
§ 105. If we bear in mind the extreme youth of
Sokrates when he began to strike out a line for himself,
and also how unusual it was for an Athenian to busy him-
self seriously with such matters, we shall not be surprised
to find that he had enthusiastic admirers among the
younger men. We see from the opening scene of the
Protagoras how some of them looked up to him as a guide
even then, and consulted him about their studies. One
of these, Chairephon, was particularly enthusiastic, and
actually asked the Delphic oracle whether there was
anyone wiser than Sokrates. The Pythia of course replied
that there was no one. That proved a turning-point in
the life of Sokrates, but Plato is careful to let us know that
he did not accept the oracular response at its face value.
His humour (εἰρωνεία) did not fail him when he turned it
on himself, and he at once set out to prove the god in the
wrong. He would find someone wiser than himself, and
use him to refute the oracle. So he went to one of the
politicians, whose name he does not think it necessary to
mention, and talked to him, with the result that he found
him wise, indeed, in his own opinion and that of other
136 LIFE OF SOKRATES
people, but really quite ignorant. And he had the same
experience wth one set of people after another. The
poets could give no intelligible account of their own
works. Apparently it was by some sort of divine inspira-
tion they succeeded ; for they did not know how it was
themselves. The craftsmen, indeed, did as a rule know
something about their own trades, but unfortunately, on
the strength of this bit of knowledge, they fancied they
knew a great many other things of which they were quite
ignorant, such, for instance, as how to govern an empire.
At last he saw what the god meant. Neither Sokrates
nor anyone else knew anything, but Sokrates was wiser
than other men in one respect, namely, that he knew he
was ignorant and other men did not know they were.
From this time forward, he regarded himself as having a
mission to his fellow-citizens. He had been set apart
by God to convince them of their ignorance.
Now according to Plato all this happened before the
beginning of the Peloponnesian War; for Sokrates is
represented as resuming his mission after his return from
Poteidaia.! We cannot, therefore, date the oracle later
than about his thirty-fifth year, and it is obvious that he
was already well known by that time. The inquiry of
Chairephon would be inexplicable on any other supposi-
tion. Plato himself was not born yet, and of course what
he tells us must be based on the statements of Sokrates
himself, and no doubt of Chairephon. It does not require
great literary tact to see that Sokrates only took the oracle
half-seriously, and that what he did was to apply to it the
same methods of interpretation that he usually applied to
Orphic and other mythology. On the other hand, he
clearly believed it quite possible that a higher power
might make use of oracles, dreams, and the like to com-
municate with human beings. He was the least dogmatic
of men on such subjects, and his own “‘ voice”’ and his
visions seemed a case in point. What is quite certain is
that he sincerely believed his mission to be imposed on
1 Charm, 153 ἃ.
BRAVERY IN THE FIELD 137
him by God. He gave up everything for it, and that
was the cause of his poverty in later life. He spoke of his
service (λατρεία) to God, and called himself the fellow-slave
(ὁμόδουλος) of Apollo’s swans, That, according to Plato,
was a genuine faith, and he was intensely in earnest about it.
§ 106. The mission of Sokrates was interrupted by the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he was
called on to do his duty as a citizen-soldier. He fought
at Poteidaia (432 2B.c.), at. Delon (424) Be). anc as
Amphipolis (422 B.c.), and Plato has been careful to leave
a record of his bravery in the field.1 In the Symposium
(220 d sg.) he makes Alkibiades describe his conduct
with enthusiasm. In one of the battles Alkibiades was
wounded, and Sokrates saved his life by watching over
him till the danger was past. The generals awarded the
prize of valour to Alkibiades, but he himself maintained
it ought to go to Sokrates. Again at Delion, when the
Athenians had to retreat, Alkibiades tells how Sokrates
retired along with Laches, and far surpassed him in
presence of mind, so that they both came off unhurt.
Laches is made to refer to the same incident in the
dialogue called by his name (181 b), and he adds that,
if everyone else had done his duty like Sokrates, the
defeat would have been turned into a victory. Sokrates
was then about forty-six?
§ 107. As we shall see, he had by this time gathered
round him a circle of associates (ératpor), but these must
be carefully distinguished from the young men he
influenced in the course of his public mission. It appears,
in the first place, that he exercised a singular fascination
over those who were devoting themselves to what was
1We have seen (§ 98) that he probably served at Samos in 441/0,
but Plato has no occasion to mention that. It was before the time of
most of the speakers in his dialogues. It is interesting to think that
Sokrates fought against a force commanded by Melissos.
2Jt is important to notice the way Plato insists on the military
reputation of Sokrates, It accounts for the interest taken in him by
Meno, Xenophon and others at a later date. See my edition of the
Piaedo (Introduction, p. xiv).
138 LIFE OF SOKRATES
then the new calling of a professional soldier. That was
only natural, and in the Republic Plato represents Sokrates
as strongly impressed by the necessity for a professional
army. Besides these there were, we are told, a number
of young men of good family, who had no profession on
which they could be cross-examined, and who took great
pleasure in hearing the ignorance of others exposed. Some
of them even thought they might get a better preparation
for public life by listening to Sokrates than any professional
Sophist could give them. It is certain that Kritias asso-
ciated with Sokrates in this way, though he did not do so
for long. We hear of others, such as the fellow-demes-
man of Sokrates, Aristeides, son of Lysimachos, who soon
fell away. No doubt they wished to learn the art of suc-
cess, whereas Sokrates insisted on the necessity of serious
study for a politician, just as for any other craftsman.
There were others who were really devoted to him, notably
Alkibiades and Charmides. Charmides was Plato’s uncle,
and it was doubtless through him that Plato came to
associate with Sokrates. Even these, however, are not to
be regarded as his disciples, or even as his associates in the
strict sense like Chairephon. In the Apology he speaks of
them as ‘‘ those they say are my disciples,’’}
§ 108. In speaking of his relations with these young
men Sokrates habitually used the language of love,
tempered, of course, by his usual sly humour. To under-
stand this, we must remember that at Thebes and Elis
and in the Dorian States attachments of this kind were a
recognised institution. They had their origin in the
romantic relation of knight, squire and page in the Greek
Middle Ages, and they were believed to have great value
for military purposes.2 In the Laws (636 Ὁ sg.) the
1 Apol. 33 a. In his Bousiris (11. §) Isokrates represents the matter
exactly as Plato makes Sokrates represent it himself. He criticises Poly-
krates (Cf. § 116, infra) for making Alkibiades a disciple (μαθητής) of
Sokrates, whereas no one ever knew of him being educated (παιδευόμενον)
by Sokrates.
2See Bethe in Rhein. Mus. lxii. (1907), pp. 438 599.
EROS AND MAIEUTIC 139
Athenian Stranger, that is to say Plato, criticises the
institutions of Sparta and Crete on the very ground that
they were favourable to the abuse of such relationships.
In the Ionian States generally, on the other hand, they
were considered disgraceful,? and, though the Dorian
custom had made its way into Athens before the time
of Solon, its abuse was condemned both by law and by
public opinion. Plato makes it abundantly clear, how-
ever, that it was the fashion in aristocratic circles to ape
this feature of Spartan life among others, If we may
trust the extremely vivid account of the matter he puts
into the mouth of Alkibiades—and it is surely incredible
that he invented it—it was Alkibiades himself that first
posed as the ἐρώμενος of Sokrates, though it is also made
quite clear that it was only a pose. The personal chastity
of Sokrates is assumed’ as the foundation of the whole
story, and we have therefore no right to interpret his
language ina gross sense. What really surprises a modern
reader is the matter-of-fact way in which the abuse of such
relationships is spoken of. It will help us to understand
that, if we remember that at Megara, only a few miles
from Athens, no disgrace attached to it. In these circum-
stances, we can hardly look for the same reticence on the
subject as is commonly observed at the present day, though
Plato’s condemnation is unequivocal.
The thing appealed to Sokrates on another side, how-
ever, and here we may note once more his accustomed
humour. He had a way of speaking of the birth of
thoughts in the soul in language derived from his mother’s
calling. He professed, of course, that he himself was
incapable of giving birth to wisdom, but he claimed to
be an excellent man-midwife, well skilled in the art of
1 Addressing a Spartan and a Cretan, he says: καὶ τούτων τὰς
ὑμετέρας πόλεις πρώτας av τις αἰτιῷτο (636 b).
2 ῬΙδῖο, Symp. 182 b.
8 Plato, Phaedr. 231 e: εἰ τοίνυν τὸν νόμον τὸν καθεστηκότα δέδοικας,
μὴ πυθομένων τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄνειδός σοι γένηται κτλ, Aischines
Against Timarchos, passim.
140 LIFE OF SOKRATES
bringing new thoughts to the birth. Besides that, just as
midwives are the best matchmakers, he claimed to have
a peculiar gift for discerning who the best teacher for a
young man would be. That is all playful, to be sure,
but we must never forget that Sokrates was a mystic as
well as a humorist, and the mystics have always found
the language of love more adequate than any other to
express their peculiar experience. The love of a fair body
is only the earthly type of something far higher. It leads
on to the love of a fair soul, to the love of fair studies and
fair ways of life, and at last it brings us into the very
presence of the “‘forms”’ of beauty, righteousness, and
holiness in that supercelestial region where they have their
dwelling-place.1 When thus regarded as the objects of
love, these ““ forms” are seen to be the realities of which
the things in this world are but shadows, and from which
they derive such imperfect being as they have. There can
be no doubt Plato means us to believe that Sokrates
had actually attained to this beatific vision. It is not for
nothing that he is represented as having one of his trances
just before the conversation recorded in the Symposium.
That must be intended to throw light on that other trance
of twenty-four hours in the camp at Poteidaia more than
a dozen years before. The man who saved the life of
Alkibiades by his fearless devotion in the battle was fresh
from the contemplation of a far higher beauty than his.
§ 109. Plato has left us more than one description of
the effect the discourses of Sokrates had on young men.
It will be well to quote the words he puts into the mouth
of Meno, a reluctant admirer, and Alkibiades, an enthu-
siastic one. Meno says (Meno, 79 6):
Before I met you I was told you did nothing but confuse your-
self and make other people confused. And now 1 really think
you are just bewitching me and casting spells and enchant-
1 Phaedr. 247 c sqgg. I cannot believe that this is a description of
Plato’s own experience. It is strictly in keeping with all we know
about the temperament of Sokrates.
ALKIBIADES ON SOKRATES 141
ments over me, so that I am full of confusion. I think, if
I may be allowed the jest, you have a strong resemblance,
not only in figure but in other respects, to the torpedo-fish.
It benumbs anyone who comes near it and touches it, and
that is just what you have done to me. Both my soul and
my lips are literally benumbed, and 1 don’t know what answer
to give you. I have made speeches over and over again about
goodness, and before large companies, with complete success
as I fancied, but now I can’t even tell what it is. I think it
extremely prudent on your part never to take a voyage or
leave your own country. If you were to do these things as a
stranger in a foreign land, you would probably be taken up
for a sorcerer.
And Alkibiades, who, with all his faults, or because of
them, was very dear to Sokrates, says this (Symp. 215 a) :
I shall endeavour to praise Sokrates as well as I can by
means of images. Very likely he will think it is to make
fun of him, but my image is chosen for its truth and not its
absurdity. I say he is just like the figures of Silenos we see
in the statuaries’ shops, those they make with pipes or flutes
in their hands, and when you open them you find they have
images of the gods inside them. And I say too that he is like
the satyr Marsyas. “That you are like these in appearance,
Sokrates, I fancy you won’t deny yourself, and now let me
tell you how you are like them in other ways. You're a
wanton, aren’t you? If you don’t admit it, I shall call wit-
nesses. Ay, and aren’t youa piper? A far more wonderful
one than he was! He only charmed men by his instruments ;
. +. you beat him because you produce the very same effect
by words alone without any instrument. When we hear any-
one else speak, even a very good speaker, none of. us care a
bit; but when anyone hears you or anyone else repeating
your words, even if the speaker is an indifferent one, and
whether it is a woman or a man or a lad that hears him, we
are all confounded and inspired. My friends, unless 1 was
afraid you would think me quite drunk, I would tell you on
my oath the effect his words have had on me and still have.
When I listen to him my heart leaps even more wildly than
those of people in a Korybantic ecstasy, and his words make the
tears gush from my eyes. And I see many others affected in
the same way. When I used to hear Perikles and other good
speakers, 1 thought they spoke very well, but I had none of
142 LIFE OF SOKRATES
these feelings. My soul was not troubled or angry at the
idea that it was in a state like a slave’s. But I have often
been put into such a condition by this Marsyas here, that
I thought life not worth living so long as I remained as I was.
And I am quite sure that if I were to consent to lend him my
ears now, I couldn’t hold out, but should feel just the same.
He forces me to confess that, though I myself fall far short in
many a thing, I neglect myself and busy myself about the
affairs of Athens. So I stop my ears and run away from him
as if from the Sirens, to prevent myself becoming rooted to
the spot and growing old by his side. Why, he is the only
human being that has ever made me feel ashamed in his
presence, a feeling of which I might be supposed incapable.
I know very well I can give no reason for not doing what he
tells me to, but, when I have left him, I find my popularity
too much for me. So I act like a runaway slave and a fugitive,
and whenever I see him, I am ashamed of the admissions I
have made. Many atime I feel that I should be glad to see
him wiped out of existence altogether, and yet, if that were
to happen, I know I should be far more distressed than relieved.
In fact I don’t know what to make of him.
Of course Plato himself was too young to hear Alkibiades
talk like that, but he had opportunities enough of knowing
about his relations to Sokrates. It is at least plain that he
believed Sokrates to have been capable of exerting this
fascination over Alkibiades as late as 416 B.c., when the
banquet described in the Symposium is supposed to take
place. It is natural, too, to regard the passage as evidence
of the effect produced by the discourses of Sokrates on
Plato himself in his youth.
§ 110. In 423 B.c. Aristophanes produced the Clouds, in
which Sokrates, then about forty-seven years old, was the
central figure. It will be necessary to say something later
as to the picture there drawn of him; here we have only
to do with what Plato says about it. It is true that, in the
Apology, he makes Sokrates attribute much of the popular
prejudice against him to the Clouds. He had been repre-
sented as walking on air and talking a lot of nonsense
1It is not easy to imagine such discourses as we find in Xenophon’s
Memorabilia producing such effects as these
THE CLOUDS 143
about the things in the heavens and those beneath the
earth, and that, he says, suggested the notion that he was
irreligious. It may very well have done so at the time of
his trial, when old memories of the Clouds would occur to
the judges in confirmation of the charges Sokrates had
then to face, but we gather also from Plato that no one
took it very seriously at the time, least of all Sokrates and
his circle. In the Symposium, Sokrates and Aristophanes
are represented as the best of friends six or seven years
after the production of the Clouds, and Alkibiades does not
hesitate to quote a burlesque description of the gait of
Sokrates from that very play. Weare to understand, then,
that at the time no offence was taken, and we need not
suppose any was meant. It was only in the light of sub-
sequent events that the Clouds was resented, and even so
the matter is quite lightly treated in the Apology.
§ 111. But more difficult times were at hand. We have
seen that Sokrates did his duty as a soldier, but he never
held any office. The “voice” would not allow him to
take part in politics. In 406 B.c., however, it fell to
his lot to be a member of the Council of Five Hundred,
and it so happened that it was the turn of the fifty
representatives of the tribe Antiochis, to which his deme
belonged, to act as the executive committee of the Council
at the time the generals were tried for failing to recover the
bodies of the dead after the naval battle of the Arginoussai.
The conduct of the trial showed that the democracy was
getting into an ugly temper. It was proposed to judge
all the generals together instead of taking the case of each
separately. That was against the law, and Sokrates, who
presided, refused, in spite of the popular clamour, to put
the question to the meeting. The generals were ultimately
condemned by an illegal procedure, but the action of
Sokrates made a deep impression, and he referred to it
with justifiable pride at his trial. A little later, during
the illegal rule of the Thirty, he had the opportunity of
showing that he could not be intimidated by the other
side either. The Thirty sent for him along with four
144 LIFE OF SOKRATES
others and gave them orders to arrest Leon of Salamis
that he might be put to death. The four others carried
out the order, but Sokrates simply went home. Plato
makes him say that he would probably have suffered for
this if the Thirty had not been overthrown shortly after.
From this we may infer—and we shall see that the point
is of consequence—that Sokrates did not feel called upon
to leave Athens with the democrats, though his devoted
disciple, Chairephon, did 50.
Aristophanes and Xenophon.
§ 112. Let us now consider how far this account of
Sokrates is confirmed or otherwise by Aristophanes and
Xenophon. In the first place, we fnust observe that Plato
represents the life of Sokrates as sharply divided into two
periods by the response of the oracle. In the earlier,
he was chiefly occupied with the religious and scientific
movements of his time, and with his new theory of the
participation of sensible things in the ‘“forms’’; in the
latter, his mission to his fellow-citizens is his chief, and
almost his sole interest, though in the month that elapsed
between his condemnation and his death he naturally
recurred to the themes that had busied his youth. It is
further to be noticed that the testimony of Aristophanes
refers to the first of these periods, and that of Xenophon
to the second. The Clouds was produced in 423 B.c., the
year between the battles of Delion and of Amphipolis,
in both of which Sokrates fought. His mission, though
begun, was interrupted, and Aristophanes would be think-
ing mainly of the earlier Sokrates. Chronology is vital in
dealing with this question, and we must never allow our-
selves to forget that Sokrates was only forty-seven when
Aristophanes produced the Clouds, and that Plato and
Xenophon were babies. We must, therefore, compare the
caricature of Aristophanes only with what Plato tells us
of the youth of Sokrates, and not with what he tells us
of the later period.
THE SOKRATES OF ARISTOPHANES 145
§ 113. That the Clouds is a caricature is obvious, and
it must be interpreted accordingly. There are two canons
for the interpretation of comedy which are often neglected.
In the first place, the very occurrence of a statement in a
comedy affords a presumption that it is not a mere state-
ment of fact. Statements of fact are not funny. On the
other hand, every such statement must have some sort of
foundation in fact ; for absolute fictions about real feel oe
are not funny either. What we have to ask, then,
what Sokrates must have been in the earlier period of his
life to make the caricature of the Clouds possible. In the
first place, he must have been a student of natural science,
and he must have been interested at one time or other in
the things in the heavens (τὰ μετέωρα) and the things
beneath the earth (τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς). Plato makes Sokrates
declare that these were the chief studies of his youth.
Aristophanes represents Sokrates as an adherent of a
system which is recognisable as that of Diogenes of
Apollonia, and that is just why the chorus consists of
clouds. We know that Diogenes had revived the theory
of Anaximenes that everything is condensed or rarefied
“air,” and the clouds are one of the first results of the
condensation of air. Just so Plato makes Sokrates say
that he had studied, among other questions, whether
“what we think with” was air (the doctrine of Diogenes)
or blood (the doctrine of Empedokles), and Aristophanes
represents him as swinging in a basket in order to get pure
dry air for his thought. Aristophanes also knows of the
spiritual midwifery “of Sokrates, for he has a jest about
the miscarriage of a thought. On the other hand, he
represents him as a spiritualistic medium, and he calls
the inmates of the Phrontisterion “souls,” a word which
to the ordinary Athenian would only suggest ghosts.
He also ridicules them for going barefoot and unwashed,
and speaks of them as ‘“‘semi-corpses.”’ All that, and
more of the same kind, has a sufficient foundation in
what Plato tells us of the Sokratic doctrine of the soul
and the “ practice of death.”” The only thing that strikes
K
146 LIFE OF SOKRATES
us at first as inconsistent with everything we can gather
from Plato is that Sokrates teaches his pupils to make the
weaker argument the stronger. That is not true even of
Protagoras in the sense suggested, while the introduction
of the Righteous and the Wicked Logos (possibly a later
addition) seems even wider of the mark. And yet, if we
look closer, we shall find there are sufficient indications
of features in the teachings of the Platonic Sokrates to
account for such a distortion on the part of a not too
scrupulous comic poet. We know from Plato that the
new method of Sokrates consisted precisely in the con-
sideration of things from the point of view of proposi-
tions (λόγοι) rather than from that of facts (ἔργα), and
Aristophanes would not be able, and certainly would not
care, to distinguish that from the ‘“‘art of λόγοι, which
seemed so dangerous to conservative Athenians. As for
the suggestion that it was used for the purpose of
establishing immoral conclusions, we need only suppose
that discussions like that described in the Hippias minor
had got talked about, as they certainly would. It would
seem obvious to the plain man that anyone who
maintained the voluntary wrongdoer to be better than
the involuntary must be engaged in the subversion of
morality. I submit, then, that if the Sokrates of this
date was much what Plato represents him to have been,
the caricature of the Clouds is quite intelligible ; if he was
not, it is surely pointless.
§ 114. But, above all, Aristophanes confirms Plato in
the most explicit way by drawing a clear distinction
between certain “disciples” (μαθηταί), as he calls them,
of Sokrates, of whom Chairephon was the chief, and
who were his permanent associates (ἑταῖροι) in a scientific
school, and the young men who frequented his society or
were sent to him by their parents in order to learn how
to succeed in life. What Plato tells us about Lysimachos
and Aristeides* is enough to justify the burlesque figures
of Strepsiades and Pheidippides. But the machinery of
1 Laches, 178 4 “47. ; Theaet. 151 ἃ,
XENOPHON’S SOKRATES 147
the Phrontisterion implies that there was something much
more serious. It is usually said, indeed, that Aristophanes
is taking Sokrates as a type of the Sophists of the day,
but that view is untenable. In the first place, the Old
Comedy does not deal in types but personalities, and when
Aristophanes does introduce a type, as in the Birds, he
gives him a fictitious name. But apart from that, the
Sophists of the day had no permanent associates. They
were here to-day and gone to-morrow, and they only
gave short courses of lectures to audiences that were per-
petually changing. Besides, they were the last people in
the world to trouble themselves with scientific inquiries
such as Aristophanes is obviously making fun of. The
Phrontisterion, in fact, is a burlesque of an organised
scientific school of a type which was well known in Ionia
and Italy, but had not hitherto existed at Athens, unless,
indeed, Archelaos had established one. If Sokrates did
not, in fact, preside over such a society, are we to suppose
that Aristophanes himself invented the idea of a scientific
school, or that he knew of those in other cities by hearsay
and transferred them in imagination to Athens? It is
surely very hard to see what the point of that could be,
and we must conclude, I think, that he expected his
audience to know what an institution of the kind
was like. If he has voluntarily or involuntarily con-
fused Sokrates with anyone, it is not with Sophists like
Protagoras and Gorgias or their followers, but with
Anaxagoras and Archelaos ; and, if the latter did found a
regular school, Sokrates would naturally succeed him as
its head. That, in fact, seems to.me the most probable
account of the matter. We have seen that Sokrates was
a disciple of Archelaos for a number of years.
§ 115. When we come to Xenophon, we must remember,
in the first place, that he was very young, and Sokrates
already an old man, when he knew him, and that he left
Athens never to return about three years before Sokrates
was put to death. In the second place, we must remember
1See Ρ. 124, #. 2.
148 LIFE OF SOKRATES
that the Memorabilia is an apologia, and must be judged
by the canons of criticism applicable to such writings.
The chief of these is that most weight is to be attached
to statements not directly connected with the main pur-
pose of the work ; above all, when they seem to involve
admissions in any degree inconsistent with that. Now
what Xenophon wished to prove is that Sokrates was
unjustly accused of being irreligious, and that his conver-
sations, so far from corrupting the young, did them a
great deal of good. One of the chief arguments for the
soundness of his religious attitude is that he refused to
busy himself with natural science and dissuaded others
from studying it. What Plato tells us of the disappoint-
ment of Sokrates with Anaxagoras, and his renunciation of
physical speculations at an early age, is enough to explain
what Xenophon says, and yet he feels at once that he has
gone too far. In fact he gives his point away completely
by adding twice over: “Yet he himself was not unversed
in these subjects ’’—subjects of which he gives a list, and
which correspond exactly to the most highly developed
mathematics and astronomy of the time! Further, he
knew that what Aristophanes burlesqued as the Phrontis-
terion was a reality; for he makes Sokrates tell the Sophist
Antiphon, who was trying to rob him of his disciples—a
very significant touch—that he does in fact study the
writings of the older. philosophers with his friends. “I
spend my time with them,” he says, “unrolling the
treasures of the men of old, which they have written
down in books and left behind them.” 2 Admissions like
these are far more important than the philistine words put
into the mouth of Sokrates about scientific study. Noone
who talked like that could have attracted Pythagoreans
like Kebes and Simmias from Thebes to listen to him, as
Xenophon also says he did.$
It would be possible to find a good many more admis-
sions of this sort in Xenophon, but it is not clear to me
how far the Memorabilia can be regarded as independent
1 Mem. iv. 7. 3-5. 2 Mem. i. 6. 14. 8 Mem. ill, 11. 17.
THE PLATONIC SOKRATES 140
testimony at all. In fact, it seems hardly possible
to doubt that Xenophon got the greater part of his
information about Sokrates from the dialogues of Plato.
Otherwise, it would be very significant that he has heard
of the importance of “hypothesis” in the dialectic of
Sokrates.1 I do not feel able to rely on such things
as first-hand evidence, however, and therefore I make no
use of them. Those who treat the Memorabilia as a
historical work are bound, on the other hand, to admit
a good many things that are hard to explain on the
assumption that Sokrates was the sort of man Xenophon
wishes us to think he was. In fact, Xenophon’s defence
of Sokrates is too successful. He would never have been
put to death if he had been like that.
§ 116. The conclusion we are, in my opinion, forced to
is that, while it is quite impossible to regard the Sokrates
of Aristophanes and the Sokrates of Xenophon as the
same person, there is no difficulty in regarding both as
distorted images of the Sokrates we know from Plato.
The first is legitimately distorted for comic effect ; the
latter, not so legitimately, for apologetic reasons. To
avoid misunderstanding, I should say that I do not regard
the dialogues of Plato as records of actual conversations,
though I think it probable that there are such embedded
in them. I also admit fully that the Platonic Sokrates is
Sokrates as Plato saw him, and that his image may to
some extent be transfigured by the memory of his martyr-
dom. The extent to which that has happened we cannot,
of course, determine, but I do not believe it has seriously
falsified the picture. Like Shakespeare, Plato had a
marvellous gift of suppressing his own personality when
engaged in dramatic composition, That is why his
personality is so elusive, and why that of Sokrates has
so often been substituted for it. We shall return to this
when we come to Plato himself, but first I must warn the
reader that there is another view of the evidence, according
to which the Sokrates of Plato and that of Aristophanes
1 Mem. iv. 6. 13.
150 LIFE OF SOKRATES
and that of Xenophon are all alike pure fiction, so that
we really know nothing at all about the man. One of
the most recent writers on the subject! doubts whether
there is even a grain of truth in the story of the campaigns
of Sokrates, and denies that he had any relations of any
kind with Alkibiades. According to him, that was a
malicious invention of the Sophist Polykrates,? who wrote
a pamphlet against Sokrates before 390 B.c. Plato did
not stoop to contradict this commonplace pamphleteer,
and besides, the idea of bringing the two men together
appealed to him as an interesting one, so he simply wrote
a romance round it. Now, however incredible such
theories may appear, they are really far sounder than any-
thing we can get by picking and choosing whatever we
please out of Plato, and using it to embroider Xenophon’s
bald tale. It seems to me that we have to choose between
the Platonic Sokrates and the thoroughgoing nihilism of the
view just indicated. It is really impossible to preserve
Xenophon’s Sokrates, even if he were worth preserving Ὁ
and, if we disbelieve the testimony of Plato on the most
vital points, it is impossible to assign any reason for
accepting iton others. The Platonic Sokrates would remain,
indeed, as one of the greatest characters in fiction, but
some people would find it very hard to read Plato with
patience, if they supposed him capable of a mystification
such as this hypothesis credits him with.
1A. Gercke in Gercke-Norden, Einieitung, vol. ii. p. 366 59.
2'This statement is based on a passage in the Bousiris of Isokrates
(11. 5), which is supposed to mean that there was not the slightest
ground for the assertion that Alkibiades was a disciple of Sokrates. As
I have pointed out (p. 138 #. 1) Plato makes Sokrates himself say exactly
the same thing. It is nowhere suggested in Plato that Alkibiades was a
μαθητής, or that Sokrates “educated” him, It may be added that the
Protagoras is almost certainly earlier than the pamphlet of Polykrates, and
that the relation between Sokrates and Alkibiades is presupposed in it.
CHAPTER IX
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
The Associates of Sokrates
§ 117. We know pretty accurately who composed the
inner Sokratic circle at the end. In the Phaedo (59 Ὁ)
we have a list of fourteen associates (eraipo:) who were
present at the death of Sokrates, and to these we must
add the narrator, Phaidon of Elis, who afterwards founded
a school of his own. Of these men nine were Athenians,
Apollodoros, Kritoboulos and his father Kriton, Hermo-
genes son of Hipponikos, Epigenes, Aischines, Antis-
thenes, Ktesippos of Paiania, and Menexenos. Xenophon
also gives us a list of true Sokratics (Mem. 1. 2, 48).
It includes Chairephon, who is absent from Plato’s list
because, as we know from the /po/ogy, he had died a short
time before. Kriton and Kritoboulos are also mentioned,
but not the other Athenians. Apollodoros and Epigenes,
however, occur in other parts of the Memorabilia, and
it is from Hermogenes that Xenophon professes to have
got his information about the trial of Sokrates.
The most striking thing about the list, however, is that
it includes the names of certain foreigners who are known
to have belonged to Italic schools of philosophy, and who
are represented as coming to Athens for the express
purpose of seeing Sokrates before his death. The three
Thebans, Simmias, Kebes and Phaidondas, were Pytha-
goreans and disciples of the exiled Philolaos. In the Crit
(45 b) we learn that Simmias had brought a considerable
152 THE ASSOCIATES OF SOKRATES
sum of money with him to assist Sokrates in escaping.
Xenophon also mentions these three in his list of true
Sokratics, and in another place (iii. 11, 17) he lets us
know that Sokrates had attracted them from Thebes, and
that they never left his side. In the Phaedo (58d) the
Pythagoreans of Phleious are represented as equally en-
thusiastic. Echekrates says that they are like their guest
Phaidon in loving above all things to speak of Sokrates
and to hear about him. Eukleides and Terpsion are
interesting in a similar way. They were Eleatics and
lived at Megara. The Academic tradition preserved by
Cicero makes Eukleides the successor of Parmenides and
Zeno, and we are told that he “ handled” the doctrines of
Parmenides. ‘The close relation between the Eleatics of
Megara and Sokrates is further illustrated in the Theaetetus,
where we are told (143 a) that Eukleides took notes
of the discourses of Sokrates, and it was with him that
some of the Sokratics, including Plato, took refuge after
their Master’s death. Besides these men, Aristippos of
Kyrene and Kleombrotos were expected, but did not
arrive in time. It is evident that the condemnation of
Sokrates had deeply moved all the philosophical schools
of Hellas.
§ 118. Now Plato unquestionably represents the Pytha-
goreans as sharing a common philosophy with Sokrates,
and even as looking up to him as its most authoritative
exponent. It is Sokrates who instructs them in certain
old doctrines that the contemporary Pythagoreans had
allowed to drop, and who refutes the theory held both at
Thebes and Phleious that the soul is an attunement of the
body. The Eleatic Eukleides is said not only to have
taken notes of his discourses, but to have had the accuracy of
these notes confirmed by Sokrates himself when he visited
Athens. In fact Plato makes all these men _ regard
Sokrates as their Master, and it is impossible to suppose
he could misrepresent their attitude seriously at a time
when most of them were still living and in close inter-
course with himself, The suggestion seems to be that,
SOKRATES AND THE PYTHAGOREANS 153
after the departure of Philolaos for Italy, Sokrates became
to all intents and purposes the head of the Pythagoreans
who remained behind. On one point he is made to
express surprise that Simmias and Kebes had not been
instructed by Philolaos (61 d), and Echekrates of Phleious
is shaken in his belief that the soul is an attunement as
soon as he is told that Sokrates does not share it (88 d).
He also accepts the main doctrine of Sokrates as soon as
he hears it (102 a).
Plato’s account is, I think, confirmed by what we are
told of Aristoxenos. We know that he was acquainted
with the last generation of the Pythagoreans at Phleious,
and that he maintained the doctrine of Philolaos that the
soul was an attunement even after he had become a
follower of Aristotle. We have seen too (§ 70) that he
and his friend Dikaiarchos made a great point of denying
that Pythagoras had ever practised any of the ascetic
abstinences and purificatory rites generally attributed to
him. Now Aristoxenos is the source of a great deal of
scandalous gossip about Sokrates and Plato. He came
from Taras and Dikaiarchos from Messene, and Aris-
toxenos professed to have got his information about
Sokrates from his father Spintharos, who had known him
personally. Why should a Tarentine be anxious to
blacken the character of Sokrates? The answer suggests
itself that the friends of Philolaos were annoyed because
Sokrates had corrupted their doctrine of the nature of the
soul and had revived the mystical side of Pythagoreanism,
which they believed they had got rid of once for all
(§§ 70, 75). It is at any rate a fact that they laid special
stress on the very doctrine of the soul which Plato
represents Sokrates as refuting. From their point of
view, he would be just another Hippasos.
154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
The Forms.
§ 119. In the Phaedo the doctrine Sokrates and the
Pythagoreans are represented as holding in common is
that of “intelligible forms” (νοητὰ εἴδη), which we have
seen reason for believing to be Pythagorean in origin
(§ 32). Further, Sokrates is described as making an
important original contribution to the theory which, in
fact, completely transforms it. Modern writers generally
treat this as fiction, and ascribe the doctrine of forms to
Plato under the name of “the Ideal Theory” or “the
Theory of Ideas.” The chief ground for this ascription is
that it is not to be found in the most distinctively Sokratic
of the dialogues, and it is generally said that it makes its
first appearance in the Phaedo, That, however, is a circular
argument ; for the sole ground on which certain dialogues
have been singled out as specially Sokratic is just that the
theory in question is not supposed to occur in them.
There is surely no reason for thinking that Sokrates would
drag it into all his conversations, and in fact it would have
been inappropriate for him to refer to it except in talking
with people who would be likely to understand. Nothing,
then, can be inferred from his silence on the subject in
most of the dialogues, especially as that silence is not
unbroken. By a curious minor epicycle in the argument
we are warned indeed that, when the doctrine does appear
to be referred to in a Sokratic dialogue proper, we are not
to understand the words in the sense they afterwards
acquired, but this is surely arbitrary in the highest degree.?
11 have purposely avoided the word “idea.” It inevitably suggests
to us that the “forms” (εἴδη, ἰδέαι) are concepts (νοήματα), whether our
own or God’s, and this makes a right interpretation of the doctrine
impossible.
2In the Euthyphro, for instance, Sokrates demands that Piety should
be referred to μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν (5 d), and asks for ἐκεῖνο τὸ εἶδος ᾧ πάντα
τὰ ὅσια ὅσια ἐστίν (6 c). He also speaks of this as a παράδειγμα
(6 e). In the Meno (72 c) he demands to know the form (εἶδος) of
Goodness. In the Craty/us (389 b) we have the highly technical phrase
αὐτὸ ὅ ἐστι Kepxis. I entirely agree with Professor Shorey (Unity of
THE FORMS 155
It is much more to the point to observe that the theory of
forms in the sense in which it is maintained in the Phaedo
and Republic is wholly absent from what we may fairly
regard as the most distinctively Platonic of the dialogues,
those, namely, in which Sokrates is no longer the chief
speaker. In that sense it is never even mentioned in any
dialogue later than the Parmenides (in which it is appar-
ently refuted), with the single exception of the Timaeus
(51 c), where the speaker is a Pythagorean. On the other
hand, nothing can well be more explicit than the way
Plato ascribes the doctrine to Sokrates. In the Phaedo it
is spoken of (100 b) as “nothing new,” but just what
Sokrates is always talking about. In the Parmenides
(130 b) Sokrates is asked by the founder of Eleaticism
whether he had thought of the theory himself, and replies
in the affirmative. That is supposed to happen at least
twenty years before Plato was born. Again in the Phaedo
(76 b), Simmias is made to say that he doubts whether
“this time to-morrow,’ when Sokrates has passed away,
there will be anyone left who is able to give an adequate
account of the forms. If that is fiction, it is at least
deliberate, and I can only ask, as I have asked before,}
whether any philosopher ever propounded a new theory of
his own by representing it as perfectly familiar to a number
of distinguished living contemporaries some years before
he had thought of it himself.
§ 120. The theory which is simply taken for granted in
the first part of the Phaedo, not only by Simmuias and
Kebes, but also by Echekrates at Phleious, to whom the
conversation is reported, is as follows. There is a sharp
distinction between the objects of thought and the objects
of sense. Only the former can be said to de; the latter are
only becoming, It is made clear that the origin of this
Plato’s Thought, Chicago, 1903) in holding that it is futile to look for any
variation or development of thought in Plato’s dialogues down to the
Republic, though at that point I must part company with him, as will be
seen.
1. Gr. Ph.2 p. 355.
156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
theory is to be looked for in the study of mathematics,
and the distinction between being (οὐσία) and becoming
(γένεσις) must be interpreted accordingly. We know what
we mean by equal, but we have never seen equal sticks
or stones. The sensible things we call equal are all
“striving” or “tending” to be such as the equal, but
they fall far short of it. Still, they are tending towards
it, and that 15 why they are said to be becoming. Sensible
equality is, as it were, equality ‘“‘in the making”; but,
however near it may come to true equality, it never
reaches it. The connexion of this with the difficulties
raised by Zeno is obvious. The problem of an indefinite
approximation which never reaches its goal was that of
the age.}
As we have seen, this theory on its mathematical side is
essentially Pythagorean. Where it differs from anything
we can reasonably attribute to the Pythagoreans is in the
systematic inclusion of what we should call moral and
aesthetic forms on an equality with the mathematical.
We have never seen anything that is ‘“ just beautiful ”
(αὐτὸ ὅ ἐστι καλόν) or “ just good” (αὐτὸ 6 ὃ ἐστιν ἀγαθόν)
any more than we have seen anything “just equal”’ (αὐτὸ
τὸ ἴσον). This tends to emphasise that aspect of the
forms in which they are regarded as patterns or exemplars
(παραδείγματα), the “ upper limits”’ to which the manifold
and imperfect things of sense tend to approximate as far
as possible. It may sound a little strange to say that an
isosceles right-angled triangle would be a triangular
number if it could, but such a way of speaking becomes
quite natural when we introduce moral and aesthetic
forms. This is what Aristotle appears to mean when he
makes the preoccupation of Sokrates with ethical matters
play so important a part in the development of the theory.
The Pythagoreans, he tells us, had only determined a few
things numerically, such as opportunity, justice, and
marriage, and they had been influenced by superficial
1We may illustrate the relation of γένεσις to οὐσία by the evaluation
of π᾿ to any number of decimal places.
REMINISCENCE 157
analogies ;! it was Sokrates that suggested a systematic
search for the universal in other fields than mathematics.?
It will be observed further that we do not hear in the
Phaedo of any attempt to connect the forms with numbers,
and this suggests that the persons whom Aristotle refers
to as those ‘‘ who first said there were forms,” and dis-
tinguishes from Plato on that very ground,® are no other
than the persons who call themselves “we” in the Phaedo.
I do not, however, quote that as external evidence ; for I
think we shall see reason to believe that everything Aris-
totle tells us about Sokrates comes from the Platonic
dialogues, and especially from the Phaedo itself.
§ 121. The account given by Sokrates in the Phaedo of
the process by which we come to know the forms is apt to
be insufficiently appreciated because it is expressed in the
mythical language of the doctrine of Reminiscence, which we
are expressly warned in the Meno (86 Ὁ, 6) not to take too
literally. The question really is, how we come to have a
standard which enables us to pronounce the things of sense
to be imperfect. We certainly do not start with such a
standard in our possession ; it is only our experience of
sensible things that gives rise to our apprehension of it.
On the other hand, our apprehension of the standard
when it does arise cannot be produced by the sensible
things, since it is something that goes beyond any or all
of them. Now when we apprehend a thing, and this
i Met. M. 3. 1078 b, 21 3 A. §. 987 4, 22.
2 Met. A. 6. 987 Ὁ, 1. § Mer. ΜΙ. 4. 1078 b, 11.
4It must be remembered that Sokrates had been dead for over thirty
years when Aristotle first came to Athens at the age of eighteen. His
summary and highly ambiguous statements must, therefore, be inter-
preted, if possible, in the light of the other evidence. To use them for
the purpose of rebutting it appears to me methodically indefensible.
That is to employ hearsay and inference to discredit first-hand testimony,
and we must have some rules of evidence in historical as well as in
judicial inquiries. I believe that, if we allow for Aristotle’s personal
way of looking at things, his statements can be interpreted so as not to
do violence to the record ; but, if not, that is a question which concerns
the interpreter of Aristotle, not the interpreter of Sokrates.
158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
apprehension gives rise at the same time to the thought of
another thing which the first thing is either like or unlike,
we call that being “ reminded” or put in mind of the one
thing by the other (73.c). The sticks and stones we call
equal are like the equal, and those we call unequal are
unlike it, but both alike give rise to the thought of what
is “just equal” (αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον). It follows that, as we
are put in mind of it both by things that are like it and
things that are unlike it, our knowledge of the equal must
be independent of sense altogether. And the same is true
of “the beautiful itself” and “ the good itself.”
Aristotle expresses this in his own way by saying there
are two things that may fairly be attributed to Sokrates,
universal definitions and inductive reasoning. In the Prior
Analytics (67a, 21) he definitely associates the doctrine of the
Meno that learning is Reminiscence with what he calls the
‘“ recognition” of the universal in a particular case. ‘In
no case,” he says, “do we find that we have a previous
knowledge of the particulars, but we get the knowledge of
the particulars in the process of induction by recognising
them as it were (ὥσπερ ἀναγνωρίζοντας)." There is no
doubt, then, what Aristotle means by saying that Sokrates
may be credited with the introduction of inductive reason-
ings, and it is exactly the process described in the Phaedo.
It is also correct to say, as he does, that the universal
which we come to recognise in this way is ‘the What is
it?” (ro τί ἐστι); for in the Phaedo (78d) Sokrates
describes the sort of reality possessed by the forms as
“that of the being of which we give an account in our
questions and answers,’’ that is, in the dialectic process. It
will be observed that there is nothing here about abstract-
ing the common attributes of a class and setting it up as a
class-concept. That isa modern gloss on Aristotle’s words,
and his reference to the Meno shows he was quite aware of
the real meaning of the doctrine of Reminiscence. There
is nothing to suggest, then, that what he says on this point
is derived from any other source than Plato’s dialogues.
He has expressed the thing in his own way, no doubt, and
SENSE AND THOUGHT : 159
it may be a question whether it does full justice to the
doctrine of Sokrates, but that is another-matter. If he
was to express it in his own language, he could hardly say
anything else, and, after all, his own theory of induction is
much more like the doctrine of Reminiscence than the
travesty of it given in some text-books. It should be
added that, when Aristotle says certain things may “ fairly”
(δικαίως) be attributed to Sokrates, he is thinking, as he
often does, of earlier philosophers as contributing certain
elements to his own system, and that he is contrasting
Sokrates in this respect with the Pythagoreans. He is not
thinking of any distinction between the “historical” and
the “ Platonic” Sokrates, and there is no evidence that he
ever made such a distinction.
§ 122. Now it is with the soul by means of reasoning
(λογισμός) that we apprehend the forms, while particulars
are apprehended through the body by sensation. Indeed,
the body and its senses are only a hindrance to the acquisi-
tion of true wisdom, and the more we can make ourselves
independent of them, the nearer we shall come to the
knowledge of reality and truth. We have seen that the
things of sense cannot be said to have being (οὐσία) at all,
but only becoming (γένεσις), and that they are merely like-
nesses or images of the eternal and immutable standards
or patterns (παραδείγματα) we are forced to postulate. Of
these alone can there be knowledge ; our apprehension of
the things of sense is only “‘imagination” (ekacia)! or at
best belief (δόξα, πίστις). If we would have true know-
ledge, we must seek to rid ourselves of the body, so far as
that is possible in this life; for it is only when the soul has
departed from the body that it can have knowledge in its
purity. Yet even in this life, by the practice of dying
daily, we may so far mortify the flesh that for a brief space
we may behold the eternal realities in a vision, and so
being “out of the body” obtain a foretaste of immortality.
1 Rep. 5344. There is an untranslatable play on words here; for
εἰκασία is properly “guess work” (from εἰκάζεσθαι), but it also suggests
the apprehension of images (εἰκόνες).
160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
Such is the teaching of the first part of the Phaedo, and
there can be no doubt that it points to an almost com-
plete severance of the world of sense from the world of
thought.
§ 123. But then, by one of those dramatic surprises so
characteristic of Plato’s dialogues, when we have been
raised to this pitch of spiritual elevation, we are brought
to the ground once more, and made to feel that, however
beautiful and edifying the doctrine may be, it does not
really satisfy us. It is Plato’s way to mark the importance
of the different sections of an argument by the length and
elaboration of the digressions that precede them. In the
present case he uses every resource of his art to make us
feel that we are coming to something fundamental. In
the first place, there is a long and ominous silence (84 c),
broken at length by a whispered conversation between
Simmias and Kebes. Sokrates sees they are not convinced,
and he urges them to state their difficulties; for, as he
allows, the doctrine is open to many objections if we discuss
it seriously. Then follows (84) the magnificent passage
in which he compares himself to the dying swan who sings
in praise of their common master Apollo, the lord of
Delphoi and of Delos, who had played so mysterious a
part in the life of Sokrates himself, and was also the chief
god of the Pythagoreans. Simmias replies (85c) that
Sokrates no doubt feels with him that certain knowledge is
impossible on such subjects, but that we must test and try
all theories, and, in default of some divine doctrine (θεῖος
λόγος), make the best of the human one that approves
itself most. The particular difficulty he feels is just the
theory, of which we have seen the great historical impor-
tance, that the soul is an attunement (ἁρμονία) of the body,
and cannot therefore be immortal (85e). Kebes has a
different theory, of which we do not hear elsewhere, but
which seems to be Herakleitean in origin, namely, that the
soul is the organising principle of the body which it
weaves as agarment. The body is always being worn out
and woven afresh, and thus the soul may properly be said
TENEZIZ KAI POOPA 161
to outlast many bodies. That does not prove, however,
that one of these bodies may not be the last, and that the
soul may not perish before it (88 b). We are told (88 c)
that the effect of these words was to produce a feeling of
profound dejection in the company. They felt as if they
could never trust themselves to believe any doctrine again,
since this one had been so easily overthrown. The narra-
tive is even interrupted, and we are taken back to Phleious,
where Echekrates says the same effect has been produced
on him. Then comes the warning of Sokrates against
“ misology,” or hatred of theories. It is just like misan-
thropy, which arises from ignorance of the art of dealin
with men. Just as the man who knows the world knows
that very good men and very bad men are equally rare, so
the man who knows the art of dealing with theories will
not expect too much of philosophical doctrines, but neither
will he lose faith (89 d sg.). The impression intended to
be left on us by all these digressions is certainly that the
doctrine of forms as expounded in the earlier part of the
dialogue is somehow inadequate, and we are prepared to
find that it will be considerably modified in the sequel.
We are also intended to understand that the later Pytha-
gorean view of the soul is a serious obstacle to a sound
theory.
δ 124. This doctrine is disposed of without much diff-
culty, chiefly by the consideration that, if the soul is an attune-
ment and goodness is an attunement, we have to assume an
attunement of an attunement,so that one tuning will be more
tuned than another. ‘The theory of Kebes, however, raises
a far more fundamental question, namely, that of the cause
of coming into being and ceasing to be (γένεσις καὶ φθορα).
To say that becoming is an image or likeness of being
explains nothing at all. It really amounts to saying that
there is a world of sense which is a vain show, standing in
no intelligible relation to reality. Unless we can overcome
this separation between appearance and reality in some way,
we cannot say anything at all, and least of all that the soul
is immortal. What we want is not merely a theory of
L
162 ΤΗΝ PHILOSOPHY ὍΝ SOKRATES
being (οὐσία), but also a theory of becoming (γένεσις).
It is at this point that Sokrates gives the sketch of his
intellectual development already referred to (§ 103); and,
if words mean anything, it must be implied that we are
now coming to his personal contribution to the doctrine.
He speaks of this (97 b, 100 d) with characteristic irony
as a “silly and muddled” theory, and calls it a makeshift
or pis-aller (δεύτερος πλοῦς, 99d), but we must not be
deceived by this way of speaking. It is also the hypo-
thesis from which he will not suffer himself to be
dislodged by anyone, and he believes it to be capable
of showing the cause of coming into being and ceasing
to be in the world of sensible experience, a thing the
earlier form of the doctrine could give no intelligible
account of.
§ 125. Sokrates tells us, then, that when he could find
no satisfaction in the science of his time, and in particular
no answer to the question of the cause of becoming and
ceasing to be (γένεσις καὶ φθοραὶ), he resolved to adopt a
new method of i inquiry. He would no longer consider
the question from the point of view of the things (ἐν τοῖς
ἔργοις) but from that of the judgements we make about
them and the propositions in which these are expressed
(ἐν τοῖς λόγοις). He is represented both in the Meno and in
the Phaedo as much impressed by the efficacy of the mathe-
maticians’ method of “ hypothesis,” which Zeno had made
matter of common knowledge at Athens by this time.
To understand its meaning, we must leave out of account
for the present the special use of the term “ hypothesis”
in Aristotelian Logic, and also the popular etymology
alluded to by Plato in the Republic (511 Ὁ) which regards
the primary meaning of the word as foundation or basis,
a sense in which it is not used. If we do this, we shall
be struck at once by the fact that the corresponding verb
(ὑποτίθεσθαι) has two chief significations, firstly that of
setting before oneself or others a task to be done, and
secondly that of setting before oneself or others a subject
to be treated, in a speech, for instance, or a drama. This
HYPOTHESIS 163
usage is as old as Homer,! and by a natural extension the
verb is freely used in Ionic of suggesting a course of
action. ‘That way of speaking accounts for Euclid’s use
of the word “given,” and also of perfect imperatives like
“let there be given” (δεδόσθω). The original idea is that
of a piece of work given out to be done, and the proposi-
tion accordingly ends up with a statement that it has been
done (O.E.F. ὅπερ ἔδει ποιῆσαι OF 01:10 ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι).
The procedure is as follows. It is assumed that the
proposition stated in the “hypothesis” is true (or that
the required construction has been performed), and then
the consequences (τὰ συμβαίνοντα) of that assumption are
deduced till we come to a proposition we know to be true
(or a construction we are able to perform). If, however,
we come to a proposition which is absurd (or to a con-
struction which is impossible), the hypothesis is ‘‘ de-
βίγογεα ᾿ (ἀναιρεῖται, sollitur). The regular terminology
accordingly is, “if A is B, what must follow?” (τί χρὴ
συμβαίνειν ;), and that explains why the conjunction “if”’
has come to be regarded as the mark of a hypothesis.
Plato’s Parmenides is the locus classicus for all this, but the
method is older. In the Hippokratean treatise on Ancient
Medicine, the fundamental doctrines of Empedokles and
others are called hypotheses, and the key to this way of
speaking is also to be found in Plato’s Parmenides. here
the doctrine of Parmenides is referred to as the hypothesis
If it is one, and that of his opponents as the hypothesis
If there are many.* In the same way the hypothesis of
Empedokles might be stated in the form Jf there are four.
This is a result of the Eleatic dialectic. It is not implied
in the least that Parmenides or Empedokles regarded their
theories as “merely hypothetical.” That is a far later
1See Liddell and Scott, s.v. ὑποτίθημι, 11. 2. The materials for a
correct account of the term ὑπόθεσις are also to be found in Liddell and
Scott, s.., but they require rearrangement. The article should be read
in the order iii., iv., i. 2, 11. 2, ii. 1.
_ * Parm. 128 d, 5. The reading of the best MSS. and Proclus is αὐτῶν
ἡ ὑπόθεσις εἰ πολλά ἐστιν.
164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
use of the word. It is only meant that their method of
exposition was to trace out the consequences of their
fundamental postulates. We can see for ourselves that
this is what Parmenides does in his poem. Zeno syste-
matised the procedure, and it was doubtless from Zeno
Sokrates learnt it.
Like all dialectical methods, this procedure is subject to
strict rules. We first take a statement which appears to
have a high degree of probability, and we set down as true
whatever agrees with that and as false whatever does not.
It is not allowable for the answerer to raise any questions
about the hypothesis itself till this has been done, and until
it is seen whether the consequences of the hypothesis
involve anything absurd. If they do not, and there is
still any doubt about the hypothesis, the answerer may
question it, but not till then. The deduction of conse-
quences must be kept quite separate from the question of
the truth of the hypothesis. If that is not admitted even
then, we may go on to show that it is a consequence of
some higher hypothesis which we assume in the same way,
till at last we come to some hypothesis which is adequate
in the sense that the answerer accepts it (ro1d). It will
be seen that there is no question of demonstrating this
ultimate hypothesis; it only holds good because it 1s
accepted by the other party to the discussion. The whole
fabric depends on the agreement of the two parties to the
debate.
§ 126. In the present case, the hypothesis Sokrates starts
from is the distinction of the sensible from the intelligible,
which is of course allowed to be true by his Pythagorean
interlocutor without any hesitation (100c). Assuming,
then, that there is a form of the beautiful, we have next
to ask what makes us call a particular thing beautiful. It
is no answer to say it has a bright colour or anything else
of the kind ; that throws no light on the meaning of the
statement, ‘“‘ This is beautiful.” On the one hand, this is,
of course, the problem of predication, the question of what
is involved in saying “A is B,” but that is not quite the
PARTICIPATION 165
form it takes in the Phaedo. We are discussing coming
into being and ceasing to be (γένεσις καὶ φθορά), or, in
other words, we are asking how there can be a world of
becoming alongside of the world of being which alone is
the object of knowledge. The question is better formu-
lated, then, if we say “ What makes a thing beautiful ?”’
The “simple-minded answer” Sokrates gives to this is:
If there is anything beautiful besides Beauty itself, Beauty makes
it beautiful, and this is explained to mean that it is the
“ presence” (παρουσία) of the form in it that makes any-
thing beautiful or whatever else we say it is. The pre-
dicate of a proposition is always a form, and a particular
sensible thing is nothing else but the common meeting-
place of a number of predicates, each of which 1s an
intelligible form, and in that sense there 18. no longer a
separation between the world of thought and the world
of sense. On the other hand, none of the forms we
predicate of a thing is present in it completely, and this
relation is expressed by saying that the thing “ partakes
in” the forms that are present in it. Apart from these,
it has no independent reality ; and, if we know all the
forms in which anything participates, there is nothing
more to know about it. The doctrine is most distinctly
stated in the Republic (476 a), where we are told that each of
the forms is one, but by reason of their communion (κοινωνία)
with actions and bodies and with one another, they appear
everywhere, and each seems to be many.) It 1s in that
sense that Sokrates—the Sokrates of the Phaedo and the
Republic—does not separate the forms from the world of
sensible particulars,? and it is just because he denies all
reality to the sensible particulars except what they derive
from the partial presence of the forms in them. The
1The κοινωνία of the forms with one another im the sensible world is
quite different from their κοινωνία with one another in the intelligible
world which Plato taught. ‘That is just where Plato differs from Sokrates,
as we shall see.
2 Ar, Met. M. 4. 1078b, 30. ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν Σωκράτης τὰ καθόλου οὐ
χωριστὰ ἐποίει οὐδὲ τοὺς ὁρισμούς.
166 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
Pythagorean doctrine of imitation left the sensible and
intelligible as two separate worlds; the doctrine of partici-
pation makes the sensible identical with the intelligible,
except that in sensible things the forms appear to us 48 ἃ
manifold instead of in their unity, and that they are only
imperfectly embodied in the particulars. We should not
be entitled to predicate the form of the thing unless the
form were really in it.
§ 127. We may say, then, that the problem of Sokrates
was to show how it was possible for the things of sense
to be real, and he answers it by saying that they are
real in so far as they partake in reality or as reality is
present in them. He is conscious that these are meta-
phorical expressions, and so is the formula he substitutes
in the latter part of the dialogue, namely, that the form
‘occupies’ or “takes possession of” (κατέχει) particular
things. That way of putting the matter is adopted in the
course of the final argument for the immortality of the
soul, which, though not an object of sense, is nevertheless
a particular thing and not a form. ‘The proof is briefly
that, from its very nature, the soul partakes in the form
of life or is “ occupied” by it, and it is shown that a thing
which is necessarily and of its own nature occupied by
a given form will not admit the form opposite to that.
If attacked by it it will either withdraw or perish. The
soul cannot perish, however, so it will necessarily with-
draw. For reasons which will be obvious, Sokrates him-
self is not altogether satisfied with this argument, and
Plato found it necessary to defend the belief in immor-
tality in quite another way. The real result of the Phaedo
is not this, but simply that no particular thing can become
anything except by partaking in, or being occupied by,
the form of what it becomes, nor cease to be anything
except by ceasing to partake in the form.’ Such 15
the doctrine Plato attributed to Sokrates, and it is as
1This is how Aristotle formulates the theory of the Phaedo in Gen.
Corr. B. 6. 335 Ὁ, 10. He does not attribute it to Plato, but to
“Sokrates in the Phaedo.”
PHILOSOPHIC LOVE 167
clearly distinguished from his own as from that of the
Pythagoreans.
§ 128. But though the Pythagorean separation (χωρισμός)
of the things of sense from the things of thought has been
overcome, it still remains true that there is a gulf between
the confused manifold of sense and what is called in
the Phaedrus (247 c) the “colourless, shapeless, intangible
reality” beheld by thought alone. This gulf the soul is
ever seeking to bridge over, and its striving can only be
described in the language of passionate love. That is
involved in the very name of philosophy itself, and is
brought home to us by calling philosophers “lovers of
wisdom” (ἐρασταὶ φρονήσεως), where the verbal variation
is meant to remind us of the original meaning of the
name. No one who is wholly dull and stupid feels this
craving, nor does he who is already wise, as God 1s.
Love is the child of Poverty and Resource. Now the soul
itself and its strivings can only be adequately described in
mythical language; for they belong to the middle region
which is not yet wholly intelligible. The objects of its
yearning are not mythical at all. The inspired lover is
seeking the intelligible just as much and more than the
mathematician, and I can see no ground for holding that
even in the Phaedrus, the forms are regarded as super-
natural “things” of any kind. The “supercelestial region”
is clearly identified with that of pure thought, and the
forms the mind beholds in it—Righteousness itself,
Soberness itself, Knowledge itself—do not lend them-
selves in any way to crude pictorial fancies. It is true
that our relation to this supreme reality can only be
expressed in the language of feeling, but it is not by
feeling we apprehend it when and in so far as we can
do so. It is expressly said to be visible to mind alone
(μόνῳ θεατὴ vp). There is no suggestion of a different
way of knowing to which we may have recourse when
reason and intelligence fail us. To put the matter in
another way, allegory and myth are not employed to
express something above reason, but to adumbrate what is
168 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
below reason, so far as that can be done at all. It has its
place half-way up the scale and not at the top; for it
is only the poverty Love inherits from his mother that
gives rise to these passionate yearnings. When they are
satisfied, there is no more room for striving and longing.
I suspect that all true mysticism is of this nature, and
that to set feeling above reason as a means of know ng
is only a perversion of it. However that may be,
I am firmly convinced that the mystical side of the
doctrine of forms is due to Sokrates and not to Plato.
We know certain facts about him, such as his “ voice”
and his trances, which prove him to have possessed the
mystic temperament, and we know certain facts which
explain the manner in which he conceives the mystic
love. On the other hand, we have seen that there was
another side to his nature which would safeguard him
from the spurious kind of mysticism. I entirely agree
with the demand? for a psychological explanation of the
two sides of the doctrine of forms, but the soul in which
that is most easily to be found appears to me to be the
soul of Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos. It is certainly in
the Symposium that we have the most vivid picture of his
personality, and there the “ enthusiasm” and the “irony”
are in perfect unison.
§ 129. Nevertheless the Sokrates of the Phaedo does not
succeed in reaching the goal he has set before himself.
He had turned away from the science of his time just
because it could not show how everything is as it is
because it is best for it to be so; and, though coming
into being and ceasing to be have been explained in a
sense, we cannot be said to be much nearer the fulfilment
of that demand. That is because we have assumed certain
forms which serve to explain the world of experience ;
but we have not gone on to examine this hypothesis itself
1See Professor Stewart’s Myths of Plato, which is far the best treatment
of this part of the subject. It will be obvious that I am obliged to
differ from it in some important respects, but that does not impair my
appreciation of the work,
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 169
in the light of a higher one, and therefore we cannot
say why there should be a world of experience at all.
Sokrates is represented as quite conscious of this in the
Republic. There he is made to say (505 ἃ .9.} that
we must look at all the other forms in the light of the
Form of the Good, which is no mere hypothesis, but
the true starting-point of knowledge. He confesses, how-
ever, that he can only describe it in a parable, and it 15
never referred to again in Plato’s dialogues. The passage in
the Republic stands quite by itself. We can see dimly what
the Good must be if we liken it to the Sun, which is the
cause both of growth and of vision in the sensible world,
though it is neither growth nor vision itself. In the same
way the Good must be the cause of knowledge and being
in the intelligible world, though it is neither of these, but
far beyond both of them in glory and power.!_ It is very
significant that Sokrates is made to regard this purely
negative characterisation of the Good as marking a failure
to apprehend its true nature; it was left for thinkers of
a later age to find satisfaction in it as a positive doctrine.
That Sokrates really did speak of it in some such way
as this appears to be proved by the fact that Eukleides of
Megara identified the Good with the Eleatic One. That
seems to be how he reconciled his Eleaticism with his
position as an “associate”’ of Sokrates. The Pytha-
goreans would have little or no difficulty in accepting
the doctrine of the Phaedo, but an Eleatic could not be
expected to acquiesce in a plurality of forms. If Sokrates
hinted at the ultimate unity of all the forms in the Good,
we can understand what Eukleides meant ; otherwise it
would be very hard to follow him. Even so, there is
1This language has led some to identify the form of the Good with
God, but that is certainly wrong. God is a soul and not a form, and in
the Timaeus (which, as we shall see, represents a highly developed form
of Pythagoreanism) the Good is above God. The difficulties raised
by this doctrine led in later days to the conception of a highest and
unknowable God and a secondary creative God (the Demiurge), but
there is no trace of this till Hellenistic times. The Demiurge of the
Timaeus is the highest God there is,
170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
a rift here in the doctrine of the Sokratic society, and
we shall see how important that became in the next
generation.
Goodness.
§ 130. The theory of goodness Plato attributes to
Sokrates is only intelligible in the light of the theory
of knowledge and reality we have been considering. It is
made clear, in the first place, that he was led to formulate
it because he was dissatisfied with the teaching of the
“Sophists,” and we must try to understand exactly where
he differed from them. No doctrine is more closely
associated with the name of Sokrates or better attested
than that of the identity of goodness and knowledge, with
its corollary that no one is voluntarily bad. No one who
really knows what is good and what is bad can possibly
choose the bad, and badness is, therefore, in the last
resort, a form of ignorance. That Sokrates held this
doctrine is more universally admitted than any other fact
whatsoever about him.
That being so, it is not a little remarkable that, in a
considerable number of his dialogues, Plato represents
Sokrates as arguing against the doctrine, at least in its
most obvious sense. He is made to say, for instance,
that goodness cannot be knowledge; for, if it were, the
great statesmen of Athens would certainly have taught
their own goodness to their sons, whereas most of these
were complete failures. Nor can it be said that the
‘“Sophists” really teach it; for then these same states-
men would have had their sons taught goodness just as
they had them taught riding and music. In fact, goodness
appears to be something that comes by chance or divine
favour (θείᾳ μοίρᾳ) to some people and not to others.
Those who have it can give no account of it; they cannot
even tell what it is, and are therefore quite unable to
impart it. They are like the poets who compose under
the influence of inspiration of some kind, and cannot even
give an intelligent interpretation of their own works.
GOODNESS AND KNOWLEDGE 171
The connexion of this with what we are told about the
mission of Sokrates in the /po/ogy is obvious.
Nevertheless, the contradiction between these statements
and the doctrine that goodness is knowledge is puzzling
at first sight. It has been said, of course, that in these
dialogues Plato is feeling his way to a more advanced
doctrine than that of ‘“‘ the historical Sokrates,” but this
line of interpretation breaks down as usual. It is perfectly
certain that the arguments about statesmen and _ their
sons was actually used by Sokrates himself, and we gather
from the Meno and from Xenophon that it was one of the
things that annoyed Anytos. As for Plato, he still main-
tains the doctrine that goodness is knowledge, and that no
one is voluntarily bad, in his very latest work, the Laws
(860 d).
§ 131. It will help us to understand this difficulty if we
remember that the identification of goodness and know-
ledge was not really a doctrine peculiar to Sokrates, but
was implied in the general belief of his time that goodness
could be taught. The question between Sokrates and his
contemporaries was not that, but the much more funda-
mental one of what goodness was identical with knowledge
and therefore teachable. The Sophists were not wrong in
holding that goodness could be taught ; they were wrong
in so far as the goodness they professed to teach was just
that which, not being knowledge, could not be taught, and
in so far as they ignored altogether that higher kind of
goodness which alone was knowledge and therefore alone
teachable. If we attribute this distinction to Sokrates we
shall find no real contradictions in the dialogues dealing
with the subject.
Nor are we without external evidence in support of this
view. In the Helen of Isokrates (10.1) we read that there
are certain people who pride themselves on setting up
a paradox and arguing tolerably in favour of it. ‘Some
have grown old in denying that it is possible to say what
is false, or to contradict, or to make two opposite state-
ments about the same thing.” That, no doubt, is meant
172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
for Antisthenes. ‘Others argue in detail that justice and
courage and wisdom are the same thing, and deny that
any of these things come by nature, saying that there
is one knowledge of them all.” That, I take it, refers to
Sokrates. ‘Lastly, there are those who spend their time
in contentions (περὶ τὰς épidas διατρίβουσι). Plato uses
that phrase too, and we shall have to discuss its application
later. A little further on (10. 5) Isokrates makes light
of the distinction between knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and belief
(δόξα), asserting that it is better to have a reasonable belief
about useful things than a precise knowledge of what is
useless. Similarly in his pamphlet Against the Sophists,
he speaks (13. 1) of those who spend their time in disputa-
tions, and who profess to teach the young their duties and
how to attain happiness (13. 3). Here too knowledge
and belief are contrasted, and finally Isokrates denies that
righteousness and morality can be learnt.
It is very difficult to believe that any of these references
can be intended for Plato, as is often supposed. Isokrates
was older than Plato, and both the He/en and the tract
Against the Sophists are dated with probability some time
before 390 B.c., when Isokrates opened his school, and
therefore some time before Plato came forward as a
teacher. It is plain too that [sokrates is concerned with
the educational theories of his immediate predecessors,
and it is not very likely he should go out of his way
to attack a younger contemporary whom he had no reason
at that date to regard as a rival. On the other hand, the
question of Sokrates was very actual indeed at the time ;
for the Sophist Polykrates had just published his pamphlet
against him, with the object of showing he was rightly put
to death for the bad influence of the education he gave.
We know too from the Bousiris that Isokrates had busied
himself with this pamphlet. He must, then, have wished
to make his attitude to Sokrates quite clear, while there
was no reason for him to trouble about Plato yet awhile.
But, if that is so, we may safely attribute the distinction
between belief (δόξα) and knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) to Sokrates
GOODNESS AND BELIEF 173
himself, and also the doctrine that goodness is one and
that the knowledge of it is one, and that means in turn
that there is no difficulty in attributing to Sokrates himself
the whole theory of goodness expounded in Plato’s earlier
dialogues down to and including the Meno, and even,
in substance, that set forth in the Republic.
§ 132. We are left in no doubt as to what “goodness”
(ἀρετή) meant in the language of the time. The Sophists,
we have seen, professed to teach the goodness of the man
and the citizen, and that was explained as the art of manag-
ing states and families rightly. It was, in fact, what we
call efficiency. To the Greeks goodness was always some-
thing positive; it meant a habit of soul that enabled
the possessor of it to do something, and not merely, as it
is apt to mean with us, one that leads him to abstain from
doing any particular harm. No Greek would have called
a man good on purely negative grounds like that; he
must be good for something. So far neither Sokrates nor
Plato nor Aristotle would have the least quarrel with
the current view. We have seen, however (§ 88), that
the political condition of Athens was such in those days
that the word tended to acquire a peculiar colour. That
comes out better than anywhere else in the passage of
Thucydides where he tells us that Antiphon, the chief
contriver of the Revolution of the Four Hundred, was
second to no other Athenian in “ goodness” (ἀρετή). That
was, in practice, the only sort of goodness the Sophists
had the opportunity of teaching ; for it was the only sort
demanded by those who could pay for it. It amounted
to little more than skill in the arts of party intrigue.
The goodness Sokrates identified with knowledge was
naturally of a different order, but he always admitted
the relative value of “true belief” (ἀληθὴς δόξα) for
practical purposes. In the Meno he says (97 Ὁ) that
if you want to go to Larissa a true belief about the way
will take you there as well as knowledge. There is noth-
ing astonishing in such an admission in view of the
zccount we have given of his theory of knowledge. As
174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
we have seen, he was very far from denying the relative
value of ordinary experience. Its objects are the same as
_ those of knowledge, though they are imperfect and con-
fused. He never meant to say that the great states-
men of Athens did no good at all, or to deny all value
to the works of the poets. If the statesmen of the past
had no goodness of their own, there would be nothing
surprising in their failure to impart goodness to their sons.
The weak point of such goodness, however, is that it
is not based on any rational ground (λόγος) and cannot
therefore be counted on. [{15 mainly an affair of tempera-
ment and happy chance. It is only, we are told in the
Meno (98 a), when it has been chained fast by a reasoned
knowledge of its cause (αἰτίας λογισμῷ) that we can be
sure of its not running away like the Statues of Daidalos.
Then, and then only, do we have goodness which is also
knowledge and can therefore be taught.
It will be observed that this theory of goodness and the
good is the exact counterpart of the theory of knowledge
and reality which Plato ascribes to Sokrates, and this is
another indication of the correctness of that ascription.
Just as we cannot explain the cause (αἰτία) of things in the
world of coming into being or ceasing to be unless we
regard them as participating or ceasing to participate in an
intelligible ‘‘form,’ so we cannot have true goodness
unless each act is referred by reasoning (λογισμός) to its
true cause (αἰτία). Everyday goodness is just like the
world of sensible experience in that it is inconstant and
variable ; true goodness must be constant and invariable.
According to the Phaedo (82 a) Sokrates distinguished the
two as “philosophic goodness” (φιλοσοφικὴ ἀρετή) and
“popular goodness” (δημοτικὴ ἀρετή), or the ‘goodness
of the citizen” (πολιτικὴ ἀρετή). The former depends on
intellect (νοῦς), the latter on habit (ἔθος). It is the former
alone that is teachable; for it alone is knowledge, and
nothing can be taught but knowledge. The latter is only
good at all in so far as it participates in the former. Apart
from that, it is a shifting and uncertain thing.
GOODNESS IS NOT AN ART 175
§ 133. But though goodness in the full sense of the
word is knowledge, it is not an art, that 1s to say, an
external accomplishment that may be acquired by anyone,
and which he may exercise or not at his pleasure. Plato
has given us at full length two very similar arguments on
this point, and they bear every mark of being genuinely
Sokratic. In particular their constant reference to the
practice of artificers is highly characteristic. The best
known is the argument with Polemarchos in the Kepudhe,
which is less likely to be misunderstood if read in the light
of the other, which occurs in the Hippias minor. In the
Republic (332 € sqq.) the argument is directed to showing
that, if goodness is an art (a view for which Polemarchos
and not Sokrates is responsible) the honest man will be
the best thief, just as the doctor will be the most successful
murderer. The argument of the Hippias minor is that
wisdom is required as much or more to tell lies as to tell
the truth, and that it is better to do wrong voluntarily
than involuntarily. The point is the same in both cases.
An art or capacity (δύναμι) is always “of opposites.” The
man who can make a good use of it is also the man who
can make a bad one, and therefore something more must
be implied in goodness than this. That too was forced on
Sokrates by the practice of the Sophists. Gorgias disclaims
all responsibility for the use his pupils may make of the
art of Rhetoric which they learn from him. We have no
more right, he says (4.56 d) to blame the teacher of rhetoric
for the misdeeds of his pupils than we should have to
blame the teacher of boxing if his pupil used his art to
injure his neighbours. The question involved in the
argument with Polemarchos is really the same. Is it
possible to regard goodness as a purely neutral accomplish-
ment of this kind, or is it something that belongs to the
very nature of the soul that possesses it, so that it is
really impossible for the good man to do evil or to injure
anyone?
§ 134. Another question that was much discussed at
this time was that of the unity of goodness, and to Sokrates
176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
this question was closely bound up with the other. The
professional teaching of goodness was apt to suggest that you
could learn one branch of it and not another. You might,
for instance, learn courage without learning honesty, or
vice versa. If the different forms of goodness are so many
“Carts” or external accomplishments, they will stand in no
necessary connexion with one another, and we cannot
say that goodness is one. Sokrates approaches this
question from the point of view of the different kinds of
goodness. The Laches, for example, starts from courage,
and the Charmides from soberness. In both cases the
particular virtue under discussion is identified with know-
ledge, but the identification is not made by Sokrates. On
the contrary, his argument is entirely directed to showing
that, if we identify any particular form of goodness with
knowledge, it is impossible to maintain any distinction
between it and any other form of goodness. From that
point of view they all become merged in one.
Both these doctrines, that of the unity of goodness, and
that which refuses to identify goodness with an art, are
supported by another line of argument of which Sokrates
is fond. A good example of this too is to be found in the
argument with Polemarchos in the Repudiic (332). It 15
that, if you identify any form of goodness with an art, it is
impossible to discover any use for it. The whole field is
already covered by the particular arts appropriate to each
department, and there is no room for the “virtue.”’ One
might suppose that honesty or justice was a virtue useful
in partnerships, but we should all prefer a good player to
an honest man as our partner in a game of skill or as an
accompanist to our singing. If goodness is looked at in
this way, it will have no special function to perform ; there
is no room for it alongside of the other arts. It may be
harmful, since it is a capacity of opposites, and it is in any
case superfluous.
§ 135. What, then, is the knowledge with which true
goodness is to be identified? In the first place it is know-
ledge of what is good for the human soul. It is at this
THE HEALTH OF THE SOUL 77
point we see most clearly how the theory of conduct taught
by Sokrates, like his theory of knowledge, was influenced
by Pythagorean doctrine. The Pythagoreans had already
regarded the health of the soul as something analogous to
the health of the body, and for them this was much more
than a metaphor. We have seen (§ 75) how they arrived
at their fundamental notion of an attunement (ἁρμονία) or
blend (κρᾶσις), and it was this that dominated all medical
theory so far as it fell under Pythagorean influence. It
was partly the necessity of explaining goodness in this way
that made Sokrates reject the later Pythagorean view that
the soul itself was an attunement (§ 124), and he preferred
to work out the idea from the point of view of what was
probably an earlier Pythagorean doctrine, that of the parts
of the soul. In the Gorgias (504 599.) Sokrates says that
goodness is due to the presence of arrangement (ταξιο) and
order (κόσμος) in the soul, and that this can only be pro-
duced by knowledge, not by experience or routine. In
the Republic the same theory is worked out in the most
elaborate fashion. It is shown that there are three parts
of the soul, the philosophical or reasoning part (φιλόσοφον,
λογιστικόν), temper (θυμός), and desire (ἐπιθυμία). The
special virtues of each of these are wisdom, courage, and
soberness, while justice or righteousness is the principle
that keeps them all in their proper place. It is shown
how each of these virtues is represented in the different
classes of a well-ordered State, and we learn from a con-
sideration of that how the inner polity of the soul should
be ordered. We see that wisdom should command, while
temper assists in the execution of these commands, and
how the desires should be confined to their proper task of
supplying the necessary material basis for the rest, and how
all this is to be secured by justice, which assigns to each
its proper part and sees that it keeps to it. It is shown
further how inferior types of State arise from the usurped
supremacy of one or other of the subaltern parts of the
soul, and how there are inferior types of character corre-
sponding to each of these and arising from the same cause.
M
178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
No doubt the elaboration of this idea which we find in the
Republic owes much to the artistic genius of Plato, but it
appears to me quite certain that the leading idea is Sokratic,
and indeed Pythagorean. Plato’s own view of the soul
was so different that he would not naturally fall into this
way of expressing himself, though he might quite well use
it for purposes of more or less popular exposition. As we
shall see, it is improbable that he had a definite original
philosophy of his own by the time the Republic was
written.}
§ 136. This account of the Sokratic philosophy is in
brief that to which Plato gave currency within fifteen
years or so of his master’s death. It is, I submit, an
intelligible and consistent whole, and it is quite different
from anything Aristotle ever ascribes to Plato himself. If
Plato had originally taught this sytem, and if the doctrine
Aristotle ascribed to him was only a development of his
later years, we may be sure that we should have heard
something about this remarkable change of opinion. As
it is, there is no hint anywhere in Aristotle that Plato
ever taught anything else than what he regards as the
genuine Platonic doctrine. It is impossible, of course, to
decide the matter finally till we have seen what Plato’s
own philosophy was, but there are two considerations I
should like to urge before leaving the subject. In the
first place, it is surely worth while to try the experiment
of taking Plato’s dialogues in their natural sense. That is
the “ hypothesis ” on which this work proceeds, and it can
only be destroyed if we come to consequences that are
impossible or untrue. In the second place, I would urge
that the burden of proof does not lie with those who
adopt this hypothesis, but with those who deny it. We
cannot be forced to regard the Sokrates of Plato as a
fiction unless some really cogent argument can be produced
for doing so, and I am not aware that this has ever been
11 have not thought it necessary to give the argument of the Republic
in detail, as there are so many excellent accounts of it in existence
already.
CONCLUSION 170
done. It is not maintained, of course, that Plato is ever
a mere reporter. He is clearly a dramatic artist, and
arranges his material artistically. But he knew Sokrates
well, and he wrote for people who knew Sokrates well,
and the dialogues made use of in this sketch were probably
all written before he came forward as a teacher of philo-
sophy himself. If Plato’s Sokrates is not meant for the
real Sokrates, I find it very hard to imagine what he can
be meant for.
CHAPTER X
THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOKRATES
The Condemnation
§ 137. In 399 B.c. Sokrates was brought to trial by
Anytos, the democratic leader, Meletos, a “ youthful and
unknown” tragic poet, “‘ with lanky hair, a scanty beard,
and a hooked nose,”! and Lykon, an even more obscure
rhetorician. The indictment stated that he was guilty of
not worshipping (νομίζων) 5 the gods the State worshipped
but introducing other new divinities, and further that he
was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them
accordingly. In the Apology, Plato gives us what profess
to be the speeches delivered by Sokrates at his trial. It is
not to be supposed that even here he is a mere reporter.
It was usual for speeches to be carefully revised and
adapted for publication, and no doubt Plato meant to do
for Sokrates what other accused persons either did for
themselves or more often had done for them by a profes-
sional speech-writer. On the other hand it seems incredible
that he should have misrepresented the attitude of Sokrates
before the court or the general line of his defence. It is
perfectly true, no doubt, that the po/ogy is not a defence
1 Ruthyphro, 2 Ὁ.
2The least inadequate translation of νομίζειν in its legal sense is
“worship.” ‘The word does not refer primarily to “religious opinions,”
but to the observance of certain current “uses” (νόμοι), though Plato
makes Sokrates take advantage of the secondary sense “think” in order
to confuse Meletos (4fo/. 26 c).
THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES 181
at all, but that makes it all the more characteristic of the
man. Sokrates treats the accusation with contempt, and
even goes out of his way to import things into the case
that were hardly of a nature to conciliate the judges.
That does not prove the Apology to be pure fiction, as it
has been supposed to do.!_ Far from it.
§ 138. The actual conduct of the prosecution was
entrusted to Meletos, who bungled it, according to Plato.
By a skilful cross-examination Sokrates got him to admit
that he believed him to be an out-and-out atheist, which
was of course inconsistent with the indictment. In any
case Sokrates did not stoop to defend himself against
either the one charge or the other, though he showed
himself more sensitive to the accusation of corrupting the
youth, and offered to allow the fathers and elder brothers
of his associates to give evidence on the point. He was
found guilty, however, in spite of the failure of Meletos to
make anything of the principal count in the indictment,
which he does not seem to have understood himself.
The majority was a considerable one, though Sokrates
says he had expected it to be larger. He knew therefore
that there was something else against him besides the
trumpery charge of introducing new divinities, which he
did not for a moment treat seriously.
The penalty proposed by the accusers was death, but
there is no reason to suppose Anytos really wished it to
be carried out. By a very ingenious provision of the
Athenian law, it was ordained that in cases of a certain
class the condemned man should be allowed to propose an
alternative sentence. The idea was that an adequate
punishment would probably be arrived at in this way ;
for the judges were bound to choose between the two
penalties proposed, and could not suggest another them-
selves. It was, therefore, the interest of the condemned
man to propose something the judges would be likely to
accept. There can be no doubt that if Sokrates had
1See the Introduction to Schanz’s edition of the 4pohgy with German
notes.
182 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
proposed exile or imprisonment till he had paid a reasonable
fine, everyone would have been satisfied, but he refused to
do anything of the sort. That, he said, would amount to
an acknowledgment of his guilt. If he had really to pro-
pose what he thought he deserved, he would assess the
penalty at free quarters in the Prytaneion at the public
expense, an honour sometimes voted to Olympic victors
and public benefactors. Ultimately, however, he proposed
a fine of one mina, an inconsiderable sum, which his
friends induced him to raise to thirty, offering to become
surety for the payment. Plato was one of these friends,
and this is the only act of his he has seen fit to put on
public record.
§ 139. The judges were apparently incensed by this
way of treating the court; for they condemned Sokrates
to death by a larger majority than that by which they had
found him guilty. He then delivered a short address to
those judges who had voted for his acquittal. He said
that, even if death were the end of all things, it was no
more an evil than a dreamless sleep, and few waking days
are better than a night of that. He also hinted pretty
plainly that, in his own belief, the soul was immortal, and
that a good man had nothing to fear in the next life. And
so he bade his judges farewell. ‘It is now time to depart, —
for me to die and for you to live. Which of us is going
to meet the better lot, none knows but God.””?
The Alleged Offence.
δ 140. We have now to ask why Sokrates was charged
with irreligion and why he was put to death. We must
at once put aside the idea that it was for not believing the
ΤῸ has actually been inferred from the Apolgy that “the historical
Sokrates” had no fixed belief in immortality, and this has been used to
discredit the Phaedo. I can only ask anyone who holds this view to
read the passage aloud and see what effect it makes upon him. Of course
Sokrates was addressing what was practically a public meeting, and he
knew that few of his hearers held such beliefs, so there is some necessary
reserve, but that is all.
THE CHARGE 183
stories told about the gods. It is not likely that any
educated man believed these, and uneducated people
probably knew very little about them! There was no
church and no priesthood, and therefore the conception
of religious orthodoxy did not exist. So far as mythology
was concerned, you might take any liberty. No one appears
to have found fault with Aischylos for his Prometheus,
though, judged by modern standards, it is flat blasphemy.
He did get into trouble for inadvertently revealing
some Eleusinian formula, and the contrast is instructive.
If it had been required of anyone that he should treat the
stories about the gods respectfully, Aristophanes would
not have survived Sokrates. He does not scruple to
make fun of Zeus himself, and he represents Dionysos as
a vulgar poltroon in a comedy which was actually part of
the service of that very god and was presided over by his
priest. In the Phaedrus (229 e sqq.) Sokrates is described
as totally indifferent to the truth or falsehood of mythology,
though he has the good taste to prefer the stories in their
traditional form to the versions produced by the ‘“‘ homely
wit” of rationalist historians. One thing he does indeed
feel strongly, namely, that it is dangerous to repeat stories
that ascribe untruthfulness and wickedness and strife to
the gods, and in the Euthyphro (6 a) he does suggest that
it is possibly for this that he is regarded as an innovator
in religion. The suggestion is certainly not serious, how-
ever, and even Euthyphro is not shocked, though he himself
believes these stories and others stranger still. The truth
is that belief in narratives of any kind formed no part of
ancient religion; anyone might reject or accept such things
as he pleased. Mythology was looked on as a creation of
the poets, and “poets tell many falsehoods.’’ No one
could be prosecuted for what we call religious opinions.?
§ 141. Nor is it credible that the divine “voice” should
have had anything to do with the prosecution. It is true
that Euthyphro is represented as jumping at once to the
conclusion that it had; for that is the sort of thing he
1 Arist. Poet, 1451 Ὁ, 25. aE. Ds 2058; 3.
184 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
himself is interested in. At the same time, he makes it
quite clear that, in his opinion, Sokrates need have no fear
of a charge like that, though he must expect to be laughed
αἰ. In the Apology Plato makes Sokrates himself say that
the divine voice is presumably what Meletos has carica-
tured and made the ground of the charge in his indictment,
but the way he says it makes it quite clear that Meletos
meant nothing of the sort and had said nothing about the
“voice,”2 The Athenians might and did think Sokrates
eccentric because of his voice and his trances, and, as
Euthyphro says, such things are ‘“‘easily misrepresented ’’§
and are apt to make people jealous. But the belief in
“possession ” (κατοκωχή) was much too firmly established,
and cases of it were much too familiar, to allow of a charge
of irreligion being based on anything of the kind. The
accepted view was that such things were a sort of disease
which could be treated by “ purifications,” but even mad-
ness and epilepsy were supposed to make the sufferer
“holy” (fepds). From the point of view of the ordinary
Athenian, the irreligion would be on the side of anyone who
treated the “ voice” disrespectfully.
§ 142. It must also be remembered that the charge of
introducing new divinities was no novelty; for it had been
definitely formulated by Aristophanes a generation earlier.
In the Clouds Sokrates announces that Zeus has been de-
throned and Vortex reigned in his stead. He offers prayer
to the Clouds and swears by Respiration, Chaos, and Air.
It will be remembered that Diogenes of Apollonia held
Air to be a“‘god.” That being so, it is surely very signi-
ficant that Aristophanes does not make the most distant
1 Ruthyphro, 3. Ὁ 59.
2 Apology, 31d. Professor Taylor’s interpretation of the words ὃ δὴ
kat... ἐν τῇ γραφῇ ... ἐγράψατο (Varia Socratica, i. p. 14) seems to
me the only sound one. Sokrates says he supposes (δὴ) that Meletos
meant the divine voice when he spoke of δαιμόνια in the indictment. It is
clear, then, that Meletos said nothing about it in his speech.
8 The word εὐδιάβολα means no more. .
4 The “voice” would no doubt strike the average δεισιδαίμων as an
ordinary case of ἐγγαστριμυθία.
THE CONDEMNATION — 185
allusion to the “ voice,’ though he must have known all
about it, and it would lend itself admirably to comic treat-
ment. The omission is the more striking, as there is an
allusion to the trances of Sokrates (150). Xenophon is
even more instructive. He says he got his information
about the trial from Hermogenes, and we may be sure the
religious Xenophon would be anxious to discover all he
could about the meaning of this charge. He does not
appear, however, to have got any definite explanation of
it; for he only gives it as his personal opinion that it must
have been the “voice” on which the accusers chiefly relied,
and it seems most probable that he is only repeating this
from Plato’s Apology and Euthyphro. At any rate, in his
own Apology, he makes Sokrates speak about the “ voice”
very much as Plato does, and he makes him say, just like
Euthyphro, that the Athenians are jealous of it as an ex-
ceptional divine favour. In fact, everyone speculates about
the meaning of the charge, and the one fact that stands out
clearly is that no one—not even the prosecutor—seems to
know it. It surely follows that the charge of introducing
new divinities, though stated in the indictment, was neither
explained nor justified at the trial. Such things were pos-
sible in an Athenian dikastery, which was more like a public
meeting than a court of justice. There was no judge to
rule the prosecution irrelevant to the indictment.
The Real Offence.
§ 143. But, if that is the true account of the matter, it
follows further that this accusation was a mere pretext.
That would explain why Meletos falls so easily into the
trap laid for him by Sokrates, and substitutes the charge
of atheism for that of introducing strange divinities. It
will also make the conduct of the judges more intelligible.
We know that a number of them, after voting for the ©
acquittal of Sokrates on the charge brought against him,
turned round and voted for the. death sentence. That is
partly to be explained, no doubt, by the attitude Sokrates
186 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
took up in his second speech, but this will not explain it
altogether. Death is surely an extreme penalty for con-
tempt of court, and those judges must have believed
Sokrates to be guilty of something. Everything becomes
clear if we suppose that the real ground of the accusation
could not for some reason be stated in the indictment, and
that some of the judges thought it unfair to condemn a
man for an offence with which he was not formally charged,
even though they might believe him guilty of it. The
defiant attitude of Sokrates would account for their change
of mind in that case.
Now we know that Sokrates had refused to obey the
illegal orders of the Thirty, but we also know that he did
not leave Athens. He was therefore suspect of incivisme,
but the amnesty made it impossible to charge him with a
strictly political offence. Plato indicates in the clearest
possible manner that Sokrates really owed his death to his
political attitude. There are two passages in which he is
represented as criticising the democratic leaders of the fifth
century, including Perikles, in a very severe manner. One
of these is in the Gorgias, and there Kallikles, who is a demo-
cratic statesman, bluntly tells him (521 c) that, if he refuses
to flatter the democracy instead of trying to make them
see the error of their ways, he is in danger of being dragged
into court by some sorry wretch, and then anything may
happen to him. The other passage is in the Meno, where
Anytos himself is brought on the stage to give a similar
warning. ‘That is surely meant to be significant. Anytos
is not the chief interlocutor, and is apparently introduced
solely for this purpose. After listening impatiently to the
criticisms of Sokrates on the heroes of the democracy, he
says (94 6), “I think, Sokrates, you are rather ready to
abuse people. I should advise you, if there was any chance
of your taking my advice, to be careful. Even in other
cities, I fancy it is easier to do people a mischief than a
good turn, and most decidedly it is so in this one.”” These
are very broad hints, and Plato set them down deliberately
some time after the event. They can only mean that the
HIS REAL OFFENCE 187
real offence of Sokrates was his criticism of the democracy
and its leaders. No one in Plato ever gives him a hint
that he had better be careful not to talk about unauthorised
divinities, as he frequently does, and still less does anyone
suggest that the “voice” is a thing he would be wise in
keeping to himself.
§ 144. From this point of view one of the most im-
portant things in the pol/ogy is the statement of Sokrates
(39 d) that his countrymen will not be able to rid them-
selves of criticism even if they put him to death. There
are many who will take up the task of exposing them, and
they will be more merciless inasmuch as they are younger.
That is, to all intents and purposes, a plea of guilty to
what the hints of Kallikles and Anytos suggest was the
real ground of the accusation, namely, that Sokrates had
fostered in young men that antidemocratic spirit which
had led to the oligarchical revolutions. About half a
century later Aischines put the matter quite bluntly.
He says (1. 173) that the Athenians ‘put the Sophist
Sokrates to death because he was believed to have
educated Kritias,” and less than ten years after his
trial the Sophist Polykrates charged him, as we saw,
with having educated Alkibiades. In fact, it looks as if
Polykrates simply wrote the speech Anytos would have
delivered at the trial, if the amnesty had not stood in the
way. That the point was actually made by Meletos, a
less responsible person, is strongly suggested by the
allusion Sokrates makes in the Apology (33 a) ““ἴο those
they say are my disciples.” Xenophon also in the
Memorabilia (i. 2, 12 55.) makes a point of saying
that Kritias and Alkibiades were not really disciples of
Sokrates.
§ 145. It is only fair to say that, from his own point
of view, Anytos was not altogether wrong. Xenophon,
indeed, attributes merely personal motives to him. He
says in his Apology (29) that he was angry with Sokrates
for telling him he ought to give his son a liberal educa-
tion instead of bringing him up to his own business as a
188 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
tanner. It is impossible to say what truth there may be
in that, but in any case there were other reasons why
Anytos should desire to remove Sokrates from Athens.
He had undoubtedly been an uncompromising opponent
of the Periklean democracy, the radical vice of which,
according to him, was that it denied the need for expert
knowledge in politics. It would take the advice of experts
on questions of shipbuilding or fortification; but when a
vital point of right or wrong in national policy had to
be decided, anyone who chose to get up and speak was
supposed to be as good a judge as anyone else. According
to Plato, he went so far as to deny the title of statesman
to the democratic leaders of his time, including Perikles.
In the Republic we have an account of the democratic
State, which is certainly meant to be a description of
Athens in the fifth century, not of the humdrum Jourgeois
democracy of Plato’s own time, and the description is
by no means flattering. Of course the young men who
followed Sokrates about would be far less impressed by
his positive teaching than by this destructive criticism of
existing institutions. They would be prejudiced against
democracy to start with, and they would relish his attacks
on it keenly. It is a fact that many of them became
vulgar oligarchs and not statesmen. That is the tragedy
ofethe situation. Sokrates was not responsible for it, but
it existed all the same. Now Anytos and his friends were
busily engaged in organising the restored democracy, and
they could not afford to leave their work at the mercy of
reaction. ‘They had every reason to believe that the
teaching of Sokrates was of a kind to imperil the con-
stitution, and it is not surprising that they took steps
accordingly. It must be remembered that they had pro-
bably no desire to see Sokrates put to death, but it was
natural they should wish to drive him into exile. In
those circumstances we can easily understand why some
of the friends of Sokrates thought it prudent to leave
Athens for a time after his death. Even Plato went,
though, as we shall see, he had held aloof from the
ANDOKIDES ON THE MYSTERIES 189
oligarchical revolution in which his kinsmen were implicated,
and though he had intended to enter public life under
the restored democracy, Fortunately he found something
better to do.
The Pretext.
§ 146. Even assuming, however, that the charge of
irreligion was a mere pretext, it must have been a colour-
able one; for the accusers ran the risk of being heavily
fined if they did not secure a fifth of the votes. We must
ask, then, whether there was anything that might be made
to appear a justification of the charge, and on which a
statesman like Anytos might rely to produce the right
kind of prejudice against Sokrates. If we ask that ques-
tion, we come at once upon the fact that in the very same
year as Sokrates was tried Andokides appeared once
more before the judges to explain his connexion with
the mutilation of the images of Hermes and the profana-
tions of the mysteries sixteen years before. We find also
that Anytos spoke in his favour, no doubt because his
revelations had been of service to the democratic party.
We shall never know the truth about this old scandal, but
the speech of Andokides is a precious document for the
state of public feeling about it, not only at the time, but
under the restored democracy. It is certain that, for
the ordinary Athenian, the mutilation of the images was
closely bound up with the profanation of the mysteries,
and that both were supposed to be somehow directed
towards the overthrow of the democracy. No doubt this
was a mistake. The mutilation had probably nothing to
do with the profanations of the mysteries, and the latter
were obviously distorted in the popular imagination. It
does not seem credible that some of the most gifted and
enlightened men in Athens should have found it amusing to
parody Eleusinian ritual, not once only or in a single place,
though even that would be silly enough, but systemati-
cally and in a number of private houses. On the other
hand, the evidence that certain proceedings took place
190 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
which were capable of being represented in that light is far
too strong to be rejected, and conveys to a modern reader
the idea that there may have been something resembling
meetings of masonic lodges, exaggerated by public rumour
into blasphemous mummeries of the most sacred rites.
Now many of the judges must have known quite well
that some of the most intimate associates of Sokrates
were implicated in this business, There is no doubt, for
instance, about Axiochos of Skambonidai, the uncle of
Alkibiades and of Adeimantos son of Leukolophides.
All three were denounced by Agariste, the wife of
Alkmeonides, a high-born dame who had been the wife
of one Damon before she married her kinsman.2 This
may very well be the same Damon whom Sokrates
refers to as an authority on music. If that is correct, it is
interesting to notice that one of the accused was called
Taureas, and that is the name of the master of the
palaistra in which Kritias introduced Charmides to
Sokrates.2 Further, if we remember that the banquet
described in the Symposium is supposed to take place the
very year the scandals occurred, it is suspicious that we
find the names of Akoumenos, Eryximachos, and Phaidros
among the persons inculpated4 Akoumenos was a cele-
brated physician, and he has an unusual name, We do
not know of anyone else who bore it. He was not
present at the banquet, though his son Eryximachos,
who was also a physician, is one of the speakers there.
Phaidros is not an uncommon name, and we cannot be
sure that Phaidros of Myrrhinous is meant. We are,
however, told that he was an “associate” (ἑταῖρος) of
Eryximachos,® and it is at the very least a remarkable
coincidence that all three names should occur. In an
case, we know that public interest in this old business had
1 The record of the public sale of his confiscated goods still exists on
inscriptions, where his name is given in full, ᾿Αξίοχος ᾿Αλκιβιάδου
Σκαμβωνίδης (Dittenberger, Sy/oge”, 39, 41, 42, 45).
2 Andok, 1. 16. 875.1. 473 Plato, Charm. 153 ἃ,
* Andok. 1. 15, 18, 35. 5 Plato, Phaedr. 268 a.
THE LAST SCENE ΙΟῚ
just been revived, and that of itself would be sufficient to
create the atmosphere of prejudice required. Memories
of the Clouds would do the rest.
For reasons I have given, I do not think it likely that
Sokrates was explicitly charged with this or any other
particular offence against religion, but it was in everyone’s
mind, and there were circumstances enough in his life to
connect him with it. It was certainly believed at Athens
that he had taken part in religious rites of a strange kind;
for Aristophanes could count on his audience under-
standing his allusions tothem. Ajschines wrote a dialogue
in which Sokrates is represented as conversing with
the Pythagorean Telauges. Plato represents him as
full of Orphic ideas, though, as I have said, there is
always a certain reservation which does not allow us to
suppose he accepted them implicitly. I do not think it
likely that his Pythagorean friends had much to do with
this ; for, to all appearance, they had ceased to ‘‘practise,”’
and they had dropped the Orphic theory of the soul,
which was just the thing that appealed most to Sokrates.'
In fact, it is Sokrates who is represented as trying to
bring them back to an earlier form of Pythagorean
belief. ΑἹ] this can hardly be fictitious. What motive
could Plato have had for inventing it? By his time
Orphicism had hopelessly degenerated, so far as we can
see, and it is not probable that it ever attracted him.
In the youth of Sokrates things may well have been
different. We know that the doctrine had been able to
inspire a Pindar about the time Sokrates was born.
The Death of Sokrates.
§ 147. Sokrates was not put to death at once. It was
the festival of the Delian Apollo, and the ship the
11 will be seen where I am obliged to differ from my colleague
Professor Taylor’s conclusions in Varia Socratica, and I need not insist
further on that. My agreement with him on other points will also be
obvious,
192 THE DEATH OF SOKRATES
Athenians sent to Delos every year had just been solemnly
garlanded the day before the trial. Now it was the law
that the city should be kept free from the pollution of
_ death at the hands of the public authority till the ship had
gone to Delos and returned, and that sometimes took a
long time. So Sokrates had to spend a month in prison
before his sentence could be carried out, and he passed
that time in discussions with his friends, some of whom
came from other parts of Hellas to bid him farewell. It
would have been quite easy for him to escape at any time
during this month, and his friends were ready to bear any
expense that might be needful. But, as we have seen,
Sokrates was a firm supporter of law, and he would not
stoop to the inconsistency of making an exception in his
own case. However unjust the sentence might be, it had
been legally pronounced, and a good citizen could only
submit. He owed everything to the laws of his country,
and it was not for him to call them in question.
In the Phaedo Plato has given an account of the last
hours of Sokrates on earth. It would be difficult to match
this narrative in the whole range of European literature,
and it cannot be paraphrased. The last words of it are:
‘¢Such, Echekrates, was the end of our associate (eraipos),
a man, as we should say, the best and also the wisest and
most righteous of his time.”
CHAPTER XI
DEMOKRITOS
§ 148. A quite independent attempt at reconstruction
was made by Demokritos. Like his contemporary Sokrates
he faced the difficulties about knowledge raised by his
fellow-citizen Protagoras and others, and like him he paid
great attention to the problem of conduct, which had also
been forced to the front by the Sophists. Unlike Sokrates,
however, he was a voluminous author, and we can still see
from his fragments that he was one of the great writers of
antiquity. For us, however, it is almost as if he had
written nothing, and we really know less of him than we
do of Sokrates. That is because he wrote at Abdera, and
his works were never really well known at Athens, where
they would have had a chance of being preserved, like
those of Anaxagoras and others, in the library of the
Academy. It is not clear that Plato knew anything about
Demokritos ; for the few passages in the Timaeus and else-
where in which he seems to be reproducing him are easily
explained by the Pythagorean influences that affected them
both. Aristotle, on the other hand, knows Demokritos
well ; for he too was an Ionian from the North.
It is certain, nevertheless, that the Demokritean corpus
(which included the works of Leukippos and others as
well as those of Demokritos) continued to exist; for the
school maintained itself at Abdera and Teos down to
Hellenistic times. It was therefore possible for Thrasyllos
in the reign of Tiberius to produce an edition of the works
of Demokritos arranged in tetralogies just like his edition
N
194 DEMOKRITOS
of Plato’s dialogues. Even that did not suffice to preserve
them. The Epicureans, who ought to have studied the
man to whom they owed so much, were averse to study of
any kind, and probably did not care to multiply copies of
a writer whose works would have been a standing testimony
to the lack of originality that marked their own system.
§ 149. We know extremely little about the life of
Demokritos. He belonged like Protagoras to Abdera
in Thrace, a city which hardly deserves its proverbial
reputation for dulness, seeing it could produce two such
men.! As to the date of his birth, we have only con-
jecture to guide us. In one of his chief works he stated
that it was written 730 years after the fall of Troy, but we
do not know when he supposed that to have taken place.
There were several eras in use at the time and later. He
also said somewhere that he had been a young man in the
old age of Anaxagoras, and from this it was inferred that
he was born in 460 B.c, That seems rather too early,
however ; for it is based on the assumption that he was
forty years old when he met Anaxagoras, and the
expression “young man” suggests something less than
that. Further, we have to find room for Leukippos
between him and Zeno. If Demokritos died, as we
are told, at the age of ninety or a hundred, he was in
any case still living when Plato founded the Academy.
Even on purely chronological grounds, then, it is wrong
to class Demokritos with the predecessors of Sokrates,
and it obscures the fact that, like Sokrates, he tried to
answer his distinguished fellow-citizen Protagoras.?
§ 150. Demokritos was a disciple of Leukippos, and we
1Tt has been plausibly suggested that the reputation of the Abderites
may have arisen from some satirical remark of Demokritos himself.
The other side of the same thing may be represented by the view
of Demokritos as τῆς laughing philosopher,” which appears for the
first time in Horace.
2As has been pointed out above (p. 112, #. 2), the stories which
make Protagoras a disciple of Demokritos are based on the illusion
that Protagoras was a contemporary of Plato.
HIS LIFE 195
have contemporary evidence, that of Glaukos ot Rhegion,
that he also had Pythagoreans for his teachers. A later
member of the school, Apollodoros of Kyzikos, says he
learnt from Philolaos, and it seems quite likely. That
accounts for his geometrical knowledge, and also, we shall
see, for other features in his system. We know, too,
that Demokritos spoke of the doctrines of Parmenides
and Zeno in his works. These he would come to know
through Leukippos. He mentioned Anaxagoras, as we
have seen, and he appears to have said that his theory
of the sun and moon was not original. That may refer to
the explanation of eclipses, which was generally attributed
at Athens, and no doubt in Ionia, to Anaxagoras, though
Demokritos would, of course, know it to be P ythagorean.
He is said to have visited Egypt, but there is some
reason for believing that the fragment in which this is
mentioned (fr. 298 b) is a forgery. There is another (fr.
116) in which he says: “1 went to Athens and no one
knew me.” If he said that, he meant no doubt that he
had failed to make such an impression as his more brilliant
fellow-citizen Protagoras had done. On the other hand,
Demetrios of Phaleron said Demokritos never visited
Athens at all, so this fragment may be a forgery too. In
any case, most of his time must have been spent in study,
teaching and writing at Abdera. He was not a wandering
Sophist of the modern type, but the head of a regular
school.
The real greatness of Demokritos does not lie in the
theory of atoms and the void, which he seems to have
expounded much as he had received it from Leukippos.
Still less does it lie in his cosmological system, which is
mainly derived from Anaxagoras. He belongs to another
generation altogether than these men, and he is not
specially concerned in finding an answer to Parmenides.
The question he had to deal with was that of his own
day. The possibility of science had been denied and the
whole problem of knowledge raised by Protagoras, and
that had to be met. Further, the problem of conduct
196 DEMOKRITOS
had become a pressing one. The originality of Demokritos
lay, then, precisely in the same directions as that of
Sokrates,
Theory of Knowledge.
§ 151. Demokritos followed Leukippos in giving a
purely mechanical account of sensation, and it is probable
that he is the author of the detailed atomist doctrine
on this subject. As the soul is composed of atoms like
everything else, sensation must consist in the impact
of atoms from without on the atoms of the soul, and the
organs of sense must be simply “passages” (πόροι)
through which these atoms are introduced. It follows
that the objects of vision are not strictly the things we
suppose ourselves to see, but the “images” (δείκελα,
εἴδωλα) that bodies are constantly shedding. The image in
the pupil of the eye was regarded as the essential thing in
vision. It is not, however, an exact likeness of the body
from which it comes ; for it is subject to distortion by
the intervening air. That is why we see things in a
blurred and indistinct way at a distance, and why, if the
distance is very great, we cannot see them at all. If there
were no air, but only the void, between us and the objects
of vision, this would not be so; “we could see an ant
crawling on the sky.’’ Differences of colour are due
to the smoothness or roughness of the images to the
touch. Hearing is explained in a similar way. Sound is
a stream of atoms which flow from the sounding body and
cause motion in the air between it and the ear. They
therefore reach the ear along with those portions of the air
that resemble them. The differences of taste are due
to differences in the figures (εἴδη, σχήματα) of the atoms
which come in contact with the organs of that sense, and
smell was similarly explained, though not in the same
detail. In the same way, touch, regarded as the sense
by which we feel hot and cold, wet and dry, and the like,
is affected according to the shape and size of the atoms
impinging upon it.
TRUEBORN AND BASTARD KNOWLEDGE 197
Aristotle says Demokritos reduced all the senses to
that of touch, and that is quite true if we understand
by touch the sense that perceives such qualities as shape,
size and weight. This, however, must be carefully dis-
tinguished from the special sense of touch which has just
been described. To understand this point, we must go
on to consider the doctrine of “‘ trueborn” and “ bastard ”’
knowledge.
§ 152. It is here that Demokritos comes sharply into
conflict with Protagoras, who had declared all sensations
to be equally true for the sentient subject. Demokritos,
on the contrary, regards all the sensations of the special
senses as false, inasmuch as they have no real counterpart
outside the sentient subject.’ In this he is of course true
to the Eleatic tradition on which the atomic theory rests.
Parmenides had said expressly that taste, colours, sound,
and the like were only “‘ names” (ὀνόματα), and it is quite
likely Leukippos said something of the same sort, though
there is no reason to believe he had elaborated a theory on
the subject. Coming after Protagoras as he did, Demo-
_kritos was bownd to be explicit on the point. His doctrine
has fortunately been preserved to us in his own words.
“By use (νόμῳ), he said (fr. 125), “there is sweet, by
use there is bitter ; by use there is warm and by use there
is cold ; by use there is colour. But in sooth (éreq) there
are atoms and the void.” In fact, our sensations represent
nothing external, though they are caused by something
outside us, the true nature of which cannot be apprehended
by the special senses. That is why the same thing is
sometimes felt as sweet and sometimes as bitter. ‘“ By the
senses,” Demokritos said (fr. 9), “we in truth know
nothing sure, but only something that changes according
to the disposition of the body and of the things that enter
into it or resist it.” We cannot know reality in this way;
for “ truth is in the depths” (fr. 117). It will be seen that
this doctrine has much in common with the modern dis-
tinction between the primary and secondary qualities of
matter.
198 DEMOKRITOS
§ 153. Demokritos, then, rejects sensation as a source of
knowledge just as the Pythagoreans and Sokrates did; but,
like them, he saves the possibility of science by affirming
that there is a source of knowledge other than the special
senses. ‘ There are,” he says (fr. 11), “two forms of
knowledge (γνώμη), the trueborn (γνησίη) and the bastard
(cxotin). To the bastard belong all these; sight, hearing,
smell, taste, touch. The trueborn is quite apart from
these.” That is the answer of Demokritos to Protagoras.
He had said that honey, for instance, was both bitter and
sweet, sweet to me and bitter to you. In reality it was
“no more such than such” (οὐδὲν μάλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον).
Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch tell us expressly that Demo-
kritos argued against Protagoras, and the fact is therefore
beyond question.
At the same time, it must ποῖ be overlooked that Demo-
kritos gave a purely mechanical explanation of this true-
born knowledge just as he had done of the bastard. He
held, in fact, that the atoms outside us could affect the atoms
of our soul directly without the intervention of the organs of
sense. The atoms of the soul were not confined to any
particular parts of the body, but permeated it in every
direction, and there was nothing to prevent them from
having immediate contact with the external atoms, and so
coming to know them as they really are. The “ true-born
knowledge” is, after all, of the same nature as the
‘bastard,’ and Demokritos refused, like Sokrates, to
make an absolute separation between sense and thought.
‘Poor Mind,” he makes the senses say (fr. 125), “‘ it is
from us thou hast got the proofs to throw us with. Thy
throw is a (11. The “ true-born” knowledge is, after
all, not thought, but a sort of inner sense, and its objects
are like the ‘‘common sensibles”’ of Aristotle.
§154. As might be expected from a follower of the
Pythagoreans and Zeno, Demokritos busied himself with
the problem of continuity. In one remarkable passage
(fr.155) he states it in this form: “If a cone is cut by a
ἔν, β' Υτῖ, ἢ. 2-
TRANQUILLITY 199
plane parallel to its base, what are we to think of the
surfaces of the two sections? Are they equal or unequal?
If they are unequal, they will make the cone uneven ; for
it will have many step-like incisions and roughnesses. If
they are equal, then the sections will be equal, and the
cone will have the properties of a cylinder, which is com-
posed of equal, not unequal, circles. Which is most
absurd.” From a remark of Archimedes? it appears that
Demokritos went on to say that the volume of the cone
was a third of that of the cylinder on the same base and
of the same height, a proposition first demonstrated by
Eudoxos. It is clear, then, that he was engaged on
problems such as those which ultimately gave rise to the
infinitesimal method of Archimedes himself. Once more
we see how important the work of Zeno was as an intel-
lectual ferment.
Theory of Conduct
§ 155. The views of Demokritos on conduct would be
even more interesting than his theory of knowledge if we
could recover them completely. It is very difficult, how-
ever, to be sure which of the moral precepts attributed to
him are genuine. There is no doubt that the treatise on
Cheerfulness (Περὶ εὐθυμίης) was his. It was freely used by
Seneca and Plutarch, and some important fragments of it
have survived. ὁ.
It started (fr.4) from the principle that pleasure and
pain (τέρψις and ἀτερψίη) are what determine happiness.
This means primarily that happiness is not to be sought
for in external goods. ‘‘ Happiness dwelleth not in herds
nor in gold; the soul is the dwelling-place of the daimon”
(fr.171). To understand this, we must remember that the
word δαίμων, which properly meant a man’s guardian spirit,
had come to be used almost as the equivalent of “ fortune.”
It is, as has been said, the individual aspect of τύχη, and
the Greek word we translate by “ happiness” (εὐδαιμονία)
is based on this usage. On one side of it, then, the
1Cf. Diels, Vors.3 ii. p. 90 2.
bac | DEMOKRITOS
doctrine of happiness taught by Demokritos is closely
related to that of Sokrates, though it lays more stress on
pleasure and pain. ‘ The best thing for a man is to pass
his life so as to have as much joy and as little trouble as
may be” (fr. 189).
This is not, however, vulgar hedonism. The pleasures
of sense are just as little true pleasures as sensations are
true knowledge. ‘The good and the true are the same
for all men, but the pleasant is different for different people”
(fr.69). Further, the pleasures of sense are of too short
duration to fill a life, and they easily turn into their
opposite. We can only be sure of having an excess of
pleasure over pain if we do not seek our pleasure in what
is “ mortal” (fr. 189).
What we have to strive after is “well-being”’ (εὐεστώ)
or “cheerfulness” (εὐθυμίη), and that is a state of the soul.
To attain it, we must be capable of weighing, judging, and
distinguishing the value of different pleasures. Just like
Sokrates, Demokritos laid down that ‘ignorance of the
better” (fr. 83) was the cause of failure. Men put the
blame on fortune, but that is only an ‘“‘image”’ they have
invented to excuse their own ignorance (fr.119). The
great principle which should guide us is that of “‘symmetry”
or “harmony.” That is, no doubt, Pythagorean. If we
apply this test to pleasures, we may attain to ‘“ calm,” calm
of body, which is health, and calm of soul, which is cheer-
fulness. That is to be found chiefly in the goods of the
soul. ‘He who chooses the goods of the soul chooses
the more divine; he who chooses the goods of the ‘taber-
nacle’ (i.e. the body)! chooses the human” (fr. 37).
§ 156. For our present purpose it is not necessary to
discuss the cosmology of Demokritos in detail. It is
thoroughly retrograde and proves, if proof were needed,
that his real interests lay in another direction. He had
1T his use of σκῆνος for the body (found also in 5. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1)
is probably Pythagorean, and connected with the representation of human
life as a πανήγυρις or “fair.” Our bodies are our temporary “booths,”
COSMOLOGY 201
inherited the theory of atoms and the void from Leu-
kippos, who was the real man of genius in this field, and
he was content for the rest to adopt the crude Ionic
cosmology as Leukippos had done. Yet he must have
known the more scientific system of Philolaos, The
knowledge of the earth’s spherical shape was widely spread
by the days of Demokritos, and Sokrates is represented
in the Phaedo (108 e) as taking it for granted. For
Demokritos the earth was still a disc. He also followed
Anaxagoras in holding that the earth was supported on
the air “like the lid of a trough,” another view which
Sokrates rejects with emphasis. On the other hand,
Demokritos appears to have made valuable contributions
to natural science, Unfortunately our information is far
too scanty to permit even an approximate reconstruction
of his system. The loss of the complete edition of his
works by Thrasyllos is perhaps the most deplorable of
our many losses of this kind. It is probable that they
were left to perish because Demokritos came to share in
the discredit that attached itself to the Epicureans. What
we have of him has been preserved mainly because he was
a great coiner of telling phrases, and these have found
their way into anthologies. That is not the sort of
material we require for the interpretation of a philosophic
system, and it is very doubtful whether we know some of
his deepest thoughts at all. At the same time, we cannot
help feeling that it is mainly for their literary merit that
we regret the loss of his works. He seems to stand apart
from the main current of Greek philosophy, and it is to
that we must now return. From our point of view, the
only important fact about Demokritos is that he, too, saw
the need of an answer to Protagoras,
Sa ἧς Fs
om
a
CHAPTER XII
PLATO AND THE ACADEMY
Plato's Early Life
§157. If the Epistles are genuine—and some of the
greatest scholars and historians hold they are—we know
more of the life of Plato than of any other ancient philo-
sopher.' Even apart from the Epistles, we know a good
deal. Besides what we may infer from the dialogues, we
have one or two statements resting on the authority of
Hermodoros, who was a member of the Academy in
Plato’s time, and these give us certain fixed points to start
from. The later Lives are almost entirely mythical. It is
conceivable that they may contain one or two stray facts
derived from older sources now lost, but their general
character is such that it is safer to neglect them in the
first instance. The Epistles, on the other hand, are free
from this mythology, which is the more remarkable as
Plato’s own nephew, Speusippos, already credited him with
a miraculous birth. If, then, the Epistles are forgeries,
they are at least the work of a sober and well-informed
1 The genuineness of the Epist/es has been maintained by scholars like
Bentley and Cobet, and by historians like Grote and E. Meyer. In
practice most accounts of Plato really depend on them, though that is
disguised by the custom of referring instead to Plutarch’s Life of Dion.
Plutarch, however, is obviously dependent on the Epist/es for most, if not
all, of what he tells us ; so this is an illegitimate evasion. I should add
that the First Epistle stands by itself. In my judgement, it has got into
its present place by mistake. It is a genuine fourth-century letter, but
I do not think the writer, whoever he was, meant to pass for Plato at all.
I do not think either that he was Dion or meant to pass for Dion.
206 _ LIFE OF PLATO
writer, whose use of the Attic dialect proves him to have
been Plato’s contemporary. It would have been impos-
sible to find anyone fifty years later who could handle the
language as he does! Even the oldest and most successful
of the spurious dialogues betray themselves at every turn.
We may, indeed, go so far as to say that the supposed
forger of the Epistles must have been a man of almost
unparalleled literary skill, or he could not have reproduced
so many of the little peculiarities that marked Plato’s style
at the very time of his life to which the Epistles profess to
belong, though with just those shades of difference we
should expect to find in letters as contrasted with more
elaborate literary work. I believe that all the letters of any
importance are Plato’s, and I shall therefore make use of
them. As, however, there are still eminent scholars who
are not convinced, I shall warn the reader when I have
occasion to do so.
§ 158. Plato was born in 428/7 B.c., more than a year
after Perikles died and just before Gorgias came to Athens
for the first time. We learn from a poem quoted in the
Republic (368 a) and addressed to his brothers, Adeimantos
and Glaukon, that his father, Ariston, was a man of dis-
tinction. He must have died when Plato was a child;
for his wife, Periktione, afterwards married Pyrilampes,
whose son by her, Antiphon, was in his youth an associate
of Pythodoros son of Isolochos, who had been a disciple
of Zeno. Adeimantos and Glaukon must have been older
than Plato. The idea that they were younger is based on
a misunderstanding of the Republic. It is assumed that
Plato could not talk as he does there except to younger
brothers, and it is forgotten, as usual, that Sokrates, not
Plato, is the speaker. In the Apology (34 4) Sokrates says
Adeimantos should have been called to give evidence
whether Plato had got any harm from associating with
him, and this implies that Adeimantos was so much older
as to stand in loco parentis to his brother. Further, we
1 After the rise of Atticism it might have been just possible, but we
know the Epistles existed before that.
PLATO’S FAMILY 207
learn from the poem quoted in the Repudbjic that both
Glaukon and Adeimantos had won distinction in the battle
of Megara. It is natural, in the absence of further qualifi-
cations, to suppose that the battle of 424 B.c. is meant,
though we cannot be quite certain. In any case, if both
the brothers won distinction in the same battle, they cannot
have differed widely in age. It may be added that it would
not have been in accordance with Plato’s usual practice to
introduce his brothers in the Repubiic if they had been still
living when that dialogue was written. Xenophon (Mem.
iii, 6, 1) tells a story of how Glaukon was restrained by
Sokrates from speaking in the Assembly before he had
reached the legal age of twenty. Sokrates did that by
asking him a series of questions about Athenian finance
and the national defences, and it is impossible to read these
questions without feeling that Xenophon conceived the
incident to have taken place some time before the occupa-
tion of Dekeleia in 413 B.c. It is true that he says Sokrates
was interested in Glaukon because of Charmides and Plato,
but that may be a slip. Charmides was at least twenty
years older than Plato, who would, perhaps, be too young
to attract the attention of Sokrates much before 413 B.c.
The slip, however, if it is one, is explicable enough in a
writer so careless of chronology as Xenophon, and cannot
outweigh the other presumptions. As to Charmides, we
know that Sokrates made his acquaintance four or five
years before Plato was born, so the mention of his name is
quite appropriate.
The family of Plato’s mother, Periktione, was also highly
distinguished, and traced its descent to Dropides, the friend
and kinsman of Solon. She herself was the cousin of
Kritias and the sister of Charmides, son of Glaukon, and
the fact that Glaukon bore the name of his maternal grand-
father affords a further presumption that he was the second
son. As we are told in the Charmides (158 a) that Pyri-
lampes was the maternal uncle of Charmides, we must
assume that Periktione was his niece, and that he married
her when she was left a widow by the death of Ariston,
208 LIFE OF PLATO
That would be in accordance with Athenian usage. The
last we hear of Pyrilampes is that he was wounded in the
battle of Delion, but Periktione reached a great age; for
it appears from Epistle xiii. (361 e) that she was still
living in 366/5, though her death was expected.1_ The
importance of all this is that it enables us to identify the
Glaukon and Adeimantos of the Parmenides with those of
the Republic, and also to fix the supposed date of the
latter dialogue before the departure of Polemarchos for
Thourioi instead of after his return. That explains how
Kephalos is still alive, and how Lysias, though present,
does not take any part in the conversation. We shall see
that a good deal depends on this.
Plato was undoubtedly proud of his illustrious kinsmen,
and he introduces them over and over again in his writings.
The opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification of
the whole connexion. It recalls the praises bestowed on
the house of Dropides by Solon and Anakreon, the
youthful beauty and modesty of Charmides, and the fair
stature of Pyrilampes, who was accounted the tallest and
handsomest man in Asia when he went on an embassy
to the King. The elder Kritias plays an important
part in the Timaeus and in the dialogue called by his
name.? Plato’s reticence about himself stands in strik-
ing contrast to the way he celebrates the older members
of his family, especially as their memory was by no
means popular at the time he wrote. I have called
attention elsewhere’ to the dramatic skill with which he
keeps the shadow of the Revolutions from falling on
his picture. His dialogues are not only a memorial to
Sokrates, but also to the happier days of his own family.
Plato must have felt the events of the end of the fifth
1This has been used as an argument against the genuineness of
Epistle xiii., but it involves no impossibility, even if Adeimantos and
Glaukon fought at Megara in 424 B.c. Athenian girls married very
young, and it was a long-lived family. See the genealogical table in the
Appendix.
2 See p. 338, 7.1. See my edition of the Phaedo, Introduction, ὃ IX
PLATO AND SOKRATES 209
century keenly, but he is so careful to avoid anachronisms
in these dialogues that no one could ever guess from them
that they were written after Kritias and Charmides had
met with a dishonoured end.
§ 159. The statement that Plato only made the ac-
quaintance of Sokrates when he was twenty does not rest
on the authority of Hermodoros, and is quite incredible.
The nephew of Charmides must have known Sokrates
ever since he could remember. It does not follow, how-
ever, that he was one of the inner circle of disciples, and it
is not very likely. It seems rather to have been the death
of Sokrates that converted him to philosophy. That, at
any rate, is the impression left by Epzstle vii. There we
are told quite distinctly (324 b) that he had looked
forward to a political career. Kritias and Charmides—for
they are no doubt meant—suggested that he should enter
public life under the Thirty, but he was disgusted by their
excesses, which made the former constitution seem like
gold by comparison (324 4). In particular, he was shocked
by the treatment of Sokrates in the affair of Leon of
Salamis (§111). When the democracy was restored,
Plato thought once more of a political career, but the trial
and death of Sokrates conyinced him that this was im-
possible in the Athens of his time. He could do nothing,
he says (325 d), without joining a party, and neither of
the existing parties could satisfy him. It was just as well.
Athenian politics at this time were of no serious impor-
tance, and, as he says in another letter (v. 222 a), Plato
was born late i in the day for his country.” He did, how-
ever, find an opening in politics later, and on a much
wider stage.
§ 160. It has become a commonplace to say that Plato’s
birth and connexions would incline him from the first to
the oligarchic side, but nothing can be more untrue. The
traditions of the family were rather what we should call
“ Whiggish,” as is shown by the stress laid on its con-
nexion with Solon. Even at the time of the brief domina-
tion of the Four Hundred, Kritias was an opponent of the
ο
210 PLATO
oligarchical extremists. Charmides became an oligarch at
a later date, when he had been ruined by the war, but he
did not at first take any part in politics. According to
Xenophon it was Sokrates that urged him to overcome
his natural shyness and enter public life (Mem. iii. 7).
Moreover, Plato’s stepfather and grand-uncle, Pyrilampes,
was a friend of Perikles and a convinced democrat. It
was not for nothing that he called his son Demos. It
appears also from the Repud/ic that Glaukon and Adei-
mantos were intimate with the family of Kephalos, the
wealthy stranger whom Perikles had persuaded to settle in
Peiraieus. They were friends of his son Polemarchos,
who afterwards met his death at the hands of the Thirty.
In fact, so far as we can see, Plato’s early upbringing
would predispose him in favour of the Periklean régime.
He says in the Seventh Epistle (325 b) that he was at first
impressed by the moderation of the restored democracy,
and such a thought would not be likely to occur to one
brought up in the oligarchic camp. We can understand,
then, why Plato’s own judgment of democracy, as we have
it in the Statesman and the Laws, is not nearly so harsh as
that he puts into the mouth of Sokrates.
§ 161. Plato tells us in the Phaedo (59 b) that he was
ill at the time Sokrates was put to death, and was therefore
unable to be present. He had been in court at the trial,
as we know from the Apology (38 Ὁ), and had offered with
others to become surety for the payment of a fine, if the
court would accept that penalty. After the death of
Sokrates, Hermodoros said that he retired to Megara with
some of the other Sokratics. We have seen (ὃ 145) that
they may well have been in some danger. Eukleides
would of course receive them gladly, but we have no
indication of the length of their stay with him. The later
Lives attribute extensive travels to Plato, most of which
are plainly apocryphal. It is probable, though by no
means certain, that he visited Egypt. In the Laws
(656e) he speaks as if he had seen the monuments,
and he shows some knowledge of Egyptian methods of
FIRST VIStP ΤΟ SICILY 211
education (819 b). In any case, it was not to study
mathematics he went there ; for we know that his opinion
of Egyptian science (747 c) was by no means so favourable
as that he expresses of Egyptian art. If he was in Egypt,
it is likely that he also went to Kyrene to visit the mathe-
matician Theodoros, who was a friend of Sokrates, but he
may equally well have made his acquaintance at Athens,
where he was teaching just before the death of Sokrates.
All this, however, is extremely doubtful, and the earliest
definite fact we know is that he visited Italy and Sicily for
the first time when he was forty years old (Ep. vii. 324 a).
It is likely that he wished to make the acquaintance of the
distinguished Pythagoreans who were becoming powerful
once more in these parts, and it was probably through
them that he made the acquaintance of Dion, who was
then about twenty. That brought him to the court οἵ
Dionysios I, at Syracuse, where he was disgusted by the
luxurious life he had to lead. The story goes that his
freedom of speech offended Dionysios, who handed him
over to the Spartan ambassador Pollis, who sold him as a
slave at Aigina. His life was even in danger, but he was
ransomed by a man of Kyrene named Annikeris, If this
story is true, it is strange that it is not mentioned in the
Seventh Epistle. Perhaps Plato may have thought it
irrelevant in what is really a narrative of his relations with
Dion and the younger Dionysios, A forger would hardly
have omitted it, if the story had been current, but Plato
himself might conceivably do so. In any case, he was
back at Athens before long.
§162. At this time Plato was just over forty, and
Sokrates had been dead twelve years. One good reason
for holding he did not spend these years in continuous
travel, as the later accounts suggest, is that he must have
written a very considerable number of his dialogues already.
Without deciding anything as to the order in which they
were composed, we are able to say with some confidence
that the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Lysis,
Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno at least were all
212 PLATO’S EARLY DIALOGUES
composed before Plato was forty.1 That is about one
dialogue a year, assuming that he wrote none of them
before the death of Sokrates. If we remember that the
great tragedians often brought out four plays in one
year, that will not seem an excessive rate of production,
and I have little doubt that the Symposium and Phaedo
were also written by this date, and the Repudiic at least
well advanced. In any case, it seems clear that all these
works must have been completed before the foundation
of the Academy, and I think we may take it that the
Phaedrus is not very much later. In all these dialogues
the dramatic interest seems to outweigh every other,
except in some portions of the Repudlic. Plato’s dramatic
power, though often acknowledged in words, is seldom
done justice to. He had a marvellous gift of assum-
ing the most diverse personalities, and this gift is seen at
its best in the Symposium, which is certainly not one of
the earliest dialogues, but goes with the Phaedo and the
Republic. 1 cannot imagine that the man who could speak
at will in the character of Protagoras or Gorgias, or Aristo-
phanes or Alkibiades, without revealing anything of his
own personality, should simultaneously, either voluntarily
or involuntarily, have used Sokrates as a mask for himself.
I do not therefore think it possible to learn much of Plato’s
own inmost thoughts from any of these dialogues, and 1
believe we have a perfectly serious statement to that effect
in the Second Epistle. ‘There he says (314): ‘ There is
no writing of Plato, nor will there ever be. What go by
the name really belong to Sokrates turned young and
handsome.” The dialogues, in fact, profess to be pictures
of a generation that had passed away, and that 1 believe
them in the main to be. I do not think it likely that
Plato had as yet anything that could rightly be called a
philosophy of his own. He seems to have been one of
those men whose purely intellectual development was late
1] have ventured to assume the results of the stylistic researches
inaugurated by Lewis Campbell in 1867. It would take too long to
discuss them here.
THE ACADEMY 213 ᾿
and continued into old age. At first the artistic interest
was paramount; the purely philosophical does not gain
the upper hand till his artistic gift declined. It is only in
certain parts of the Repudb/ic and the Phaedrus that I can
detect anything so far that seems to be Platonic rather than
Sokratic, and I attribute that exception to the fact that
Plato was about to open the Academy. The higher edu-
cation of the Guardians seems to be a programme of the
studies that were to be pursued there; and, as we shall
see, Plato is not quite at his ease in making Sokrates speak
of one of them, namely, solid geometry. Sokrates had
proposed to take astronomy immediately after plane geo-
metry, but he corrects himself and interpolates geometry
of three dimensions, to which Glaukon objects that this
has not yet been invented. It had been invented by
Plato’s time, and by a friend of his own. The awkward-
ness he evidently feels in introducing it is to my mind
very instructive. If he had already attributed to Sokrates
all manner of scientific interests that were really foreign to
him, why should he boggle at solid geometry?
Foundation of the Academy.
§ 163. The foundation of the Academy by Plato soon
after his return to Athens was not only the most important
event in his life, but also in the history of European science.
The idea was no doubt suggested to him in the first place
by the school of Eukleides at Megara, and by what he had
seen of the Pythagorean societies in southern Italy. The
name Academy is derived from a gymnasium outside the
walls of Athens, which had been laid out as a public park
by Kimon. Here Plato had a house and garden, and this
remained for long the seat of the school, though it moved
into the town after the siege of Athens by Sulla in 86 B.c,
and continued to exist there till it was disestablished and
disendowed by Justinian in 529 a.p. Like all societies of
the kind, it was organised as a religious guild. It had its
chapel, dedicated to the Muses, and its sacrifices at stated
214 THE ACADEMY
times, The members lived for the most part a common
life.
From the first the Academy attracted a large number of
young men, many of whom became distinguished after-
wards. It is to be observed that they came from almost
every part of the Hellenic world. That is one of the
things that distinguish the fourth century from the fifth.
In the fifth century, the youth of Athens got their higher
education from a number of distinguished foreigners who
paid flying visits from time to time; in the fourth, the
youth of all Hellas came to Athens to sit at the feet of
two Athenian citizens, Isokrates and Plato. Athens had,
in fact, become “ the school of Hellas.” It is of interest
to note further that a goodly number of these youths came
* from the North, and especially from the Greek colonies in
Thrace and on the Black Sea, That may have been due
in some measure to the existence of a mathematical school
at Kyzikos, of which Eudoxos was the head. At any rate,
Eudoxos transferred himself and his school bodily to the
Academy, which is all the more remarkable as he did not
by any means see eye to eye with Plato on mathematical
and astronomical subjects. It can hardly be an accident
that Ionia proper is so poorly represented in the Academy,
so far as we know who composed it. ‘The Ionians had
rejected Pythagorean science, partly no doubt because it
was mixed up with mysticism. The School of Demokritos
continued to exist at Teos down to Hellenistic times. In
Plato, Euthydemos and Dionysodoros come from Chios,
and Euboulides, the adversary of Aristotle, was a Milesian.
That is all we can say of Ionia till the time when Epicurus
of Samos once more brought the old Ionic tradition to
Athens, where it had been unrepresented since the days of
Archelaos.
It is of the utmost importance to remember that Plato’s
real teaching was given in the Academy, and that even his
later dialogues only contain what he thought fit to give to
a wider public in order to define his attitude to other
schools of philosophy. This fact, which is often over-
PHILOSOPHY 215
looked, accounts for a great deal of the difficulty we feel
in passing from Plato to Aristotle. We seem to be ina
different world altogether, and that is natural; for we
have neither Plato’s lectures nor (except in fragments) the
published works of Aristotle, and we are thus comparing
two quite different things. If we only had Plato’s lecture
on The Good and the Protreptikos of Aristotle, we should
get a very different impression. As it is, we may fairly
assume that Plato’s lectures had far more resemblance to
Aristotle’s than to his own dialogues.
§ 164. It will help us considerably to understand the
purpose of the Academy if we first consider what Plato
meant by the word “philosophy.” In Ionia it had been
used of a more or less scientific curiosity which led men
to visit strange lands and note their usages. It may
have been applied also to the researches (ἱστορίη) of the
Milesians, but there is no evidence of that. It was in
all probability Pythagoras that first gave it the deeper
meaning of science ‘“‘touched with emotion,” and it was
certainly in the Pythagorean community that it came
to be regarded as a “way of life.” For Sokrates too,
according to Plato, philosophy had been above all things
a life. At Athens, however, the word was current in
a vaguer and shallower sense, derived probably from the
Ionian usage. It had, in fact, a range of meaning some-
thing like that of our word “culture.” The great teacher
of philosophy in this sense was Isokrates, the only
Athenian of the time whose influence was at all com-
parable to Plato’s. Much that has been written about
the attitude of these two men to one another is extremely
fanciful, but the main facts are clear enough. It will be
well to state them briefly here, for it is really necessary to
understand Isokrates if we are to estimate Plato aright.
Plato and Isokrates.
§ 165. One thing was common to both men, and that
was an intense belief that the only remedy fe the ills
216 PLATO AND I[SOKRATES
of Hellas was enlightenment, though they differed enor-
mously as to the kind of enlightenment required. There
is a striking passage at the end of the Phaedrus, where
Sokrates is made to contrast Isokrates with mere professional
advocates like Lysias. He says:
Isokrates is still young, but I am ready to tell you what I
presage for him.... I think that, so far as natural gifts go,
he is capable of higher things than the speeches of Lysias,
and that his character is more nobly tempered. It would be
no wonder, then, as he grows older, if, even in composing
speeches, which is the task he is now engaged on, he
should make all who have ever taken up speech-writing
seem children compared to him. If, however, that should
not satisfy him, it would be no wonder if a divine impulse
should lead him to higher things still ; for, my dear Phaidros,
there really is philosophy in the man (279 a).
It is important not to overlook the dramatic setting here.
It is Sokrates, not Plato, who pays Isokrates this hand-
some compliment, and, of course, Sokrates cannot speak
otherwise than prophetically of anything but the forensic
speeches of which Isokrates was afterwards ashamed.
On the other hand, Plato would not have been likely to
put into the mouth of Sokrates a prophecy that had
not in some measure been fulfilled. I take it, then, that
this is a perfectly sincere compliment, and that the tradi-
tion which represents Plato and Isokrates as friends is
much more likely to be right than modern speculations
about a feud between them. They differed, indeed, on
fundamentals, but they had a good many opinions in
common, especially about politics. Plato must have
understood and sympathised with the ideals of Isokrates
regarding Greek union against Persia, while Isokrates
would appreciate the Sicilian projects of Plato, which
we shall have to consider later, though he doubtless
thought it very absurd of him to begin the training of
a prince with mathematics. The main point is, however,
that both Isokrates and Plato were convinced that the
future of Hellas depended on the revival of monarchy,
SCIENCE AND HUMANISM 217
a conviction which the course of history showed to be
well founded.
§ 166. Where Plato and Isokrates differed was in their
conception of education. Isokrates was what we call a
humanist, and the rivalry between him and Plato was
really the first chapter in the long struggle between
humanism and science. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that Greek humanism was of necessity a far shallower
thing than what we call by the name. In the first place,
modern humanism has gained immeasurably from having
to deal with the language and literature of other peoples,
and especially with those of classical antiquity. An
exclusive preoccupation with the literature of one’s own
country always tends to shallowness. That is why even
Roman humanism, as we know it in Cicero, for instance,
is a far deeper thing than the contemporary Greek
rhetoric. It has Greek antiquity as well as Roman
behind it, and that gave it strength. The humanism
of the Renaissance, again, was saturated with the results
and spirit of Greek science, and so prepared the way for
the scientific discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, while Greek humanism inherited from the
Sophists of the fifth century a rooted distrust of science
and scientific methods. The humanism of Isokrates had,
therefore, hardly any real content, and tended to become
little more than the art of expressing commonplaces in a
perfect form.
§ 167. At the same time, the form invented by Isokrates
really was perfect in its way, and he has, directly or indi-
rectly, influenced every writer of prose down to the present
day. Even commonplace thinking may have its value,
and it is a very good test of that to express it in an
artistic way. If one has to utter one’s thoughts in ac-
cordance with a prescribed scheme, they will at least gain
in lucidity and coherence, so far as they are reasonable at
all. ‘Thoughts that are wholly unreasonable do not admit
of artistic expression. In this way Isokrates was quite
entitled to claim that his teaching was of service to his
218 PLATO AND ISOKRATES
pupils, and he certainly did a great deal to make Hellenism
a possibility, in spite of the fact that his own political
thinking is unduly coloured by the rhetorical antithesis of
Hellenes and barbarians, a division of mankind which
Plato regarded as unscientific (Polit. 262d). At any rate,
whatever we may think of Isokrates, there can be no
doubt that Plato recognised his merits, and it is curious
to note how, the more he came to diverge from him on
matters of greater importance, the more he fell under the
fascination of his style. It is just in these later dialogues
where the scientific spirit is most dominant that the
influence of Isokrates may be traced most clearly. In
every other respect such a work as the Sophist is wide
as the poles asunder from anything Isokrates was capable
of understanding, and yet it is in that very dialogue that
Plato for the first time troubles to avoid Aiatus, and even
adopts some specially Isokratean devices for doing so. It
seems as if, when he felt his own gift of artistic writing
beginning to fail, he was glad to reinforce it in this way.
§ 168. To Plato philosophy was, of course, something
quite different from what it was to Isokrates. If we look
at the dialogues he was writing about the time he founded
the Academy, and especially the Symposium, the Repudbhe,
and the Phaedrus, we shall see, I think, that he regarded
it chiefly in two lights. In the first place, it is the con-
version of a soul, and in the second place it is the service
of mankind. We shall take the latter point first, because
it is impossible to understand Plato’s object in founding the
Academy till it has been made clear. No one has insisted
more than he has on the necessity of disinterested scientific
study, freed from all merely utilitarian preoccupations, but
at the same time no one has maintained more firmly that
such study is only justified in the last resort by the service
it can render to human life. The Sokratic demand that
the man who knows shall rule had, he tells us (Ep. vii.
326), taken the more precise form that the only hope
for mankind is that kings should turn philosophers or that
philosophers should become kings. That ideal never left
ee ee
ANALYSIS AND DIVISION 219
him, and, though he ceased to hope for its realisation, he
was always ready to welcome any approach to it. In
default of the philosopher king much might be effected
by the co-operation of a philosopher and a tyrant, especially
if the latter was young and impressionable. He reaffirms
this conviction in the Laws (709 e), though he had already
been disappointed in one attempt to work upon that plan.
The Academy was first and foremost, then, an institution
for training rulers and legislators, and it was extremely
successful in its task. It was, in fact, made a charge
against it that it produced tyrants, which is true enough,
and much to its credit, if the facts are rightly estimated.
It also produced its fair share of tyrannicides.
Isokrates boasts that his training was more practical than
that of his rivals, but most of his pupils turned out rheto-
rical historians or rhetorical tragedians, while Plato trained
statesmen and men of science. We shall see later that
the Academy was often applied to for legislators by new
communities. There is not the slightest improbability in
the story that Epameinondas, who had been an associate
of the Pythagorean Lysis, asked Plato himself to frame a
code of laws for Megalopolis, though we are told that Plato
declined.
The Methods ο the Academy.
§ 169. Two methods are specially associated with Plato’s
name, that of Analysis and that of Division. The former,
indeed, is said to have been invented by Plato, who
“delivered it” to Leodamas, and it is significant that in
Book XIII. of Euclid, which is in a pre-eminent sense the
work of the Academy, analytical proofs are given for the
first time in addition to those in the usual form. It can
hardly be supposed, however, that analysis is no older than
Plato. The proof called apagogic (reductio ad absurdum)
is an application of the analytic method, and it was certainly
used by the Pythagoreans. Moreover, Plato himself repre-
sents Parmenides as teaching it to Sokrates, while in the
Meno and Phaedo, as we have seen (§ 121), Sokrates himself
220 PLATO’S TEACHING
explains it. It follows that what Plato did was at most to
formulate the method more clearly, and very probably to
show the necessity of supplementing analysis by synthesis,
in order to secure that all the intermediate steps discovered
by the analysis are reciprocal.1_ The chain of consequences
must be reversible if the proof is to be complete. Each
analysis given in Euclid is immediately followed by the
corresponding synthesis. This was revived by Galileo in
the seventeenth century as a substitute for the prevailing
Aristotelian methods.?
δ 170. The other Platonic method is that of Division
(διαίρεσις), which even the comic poets knew to be charac-
teristic of the Academy. As analysis aims at explanation
or proof, so division is the instrument of classification or
definition. The method is this. The thing to be defined
or classified is first referred to its genus, and then, by a
series of dichotomies, the genus is divided into species and
sub-species. At each division we ask to which of the species
it gives us the thing to be defined belongs, and that 15
divided once more, the “left-hand” species being left
undivided as irrelevant to our purpose. The definition
is found by adding together all the species “on the right-
hand side.” The examples of this method which Plato
gives in the Sophist and Statesman are only to be understood
as more or less popular and playful applications of it, but
just for that reason they serve to show what is meant better
than a serious example, where it would have been necessary
to justify each step elaborately. We shall return to this
subject when we come to the Philebus.
§ 171. As to the plan of teaching and study adopted
in the Academy we have, as is natural, but little direct
evidence, but what we have is at once trustworthy and
instructive. In the first place, there can be no doubt that
Plato gave regular lectures (συνουσίαι, axpodoes), and that
1 This was the view of ‘Tannery.
2'The metodo risolutivo is just the ἀναλυτικὴ μέθοδος. Galileo was a
convinced Platonist.
THE UNWRITTEN DOCTRINES 221
his hearers took notes. Aristoxenos said that Aristotle
“was always telling” how most of those who heard the
lecture on the Good were affected. They came expecting
to hear about some of the recognised good things, and
when they heard of nothing but Arithmetic and Astronomy
and the Limit and the One, they thought it all very strange.
We know from Simplicius that Aristotle, Speusippos, and
Xenokrates had all published their notes of this very dis-
course. We may infer that Plato did not write his lectures,
and that is confirmed by Aristotle’s reference to his ‘¢ un-
written dogmas” (ἄγραφα δόγματα). As we know, Plato
did not believe in books for serious purposes. In the
Seventh Epistle he complains that, even in his lifetime,
some of his hearers had published accounts of his doctrine
of the Good, which, however, he repudiates. The passage
is worth quoting. He says:
There is no writing of mine on this subject, nor ever shall
be. It is not capable of expression like other branches of
study ; but, as the result of long intercourse and a common life
spent upon the thing, a light is suddenly kindled as from a
leaping spark, and when it has reached the soul, it thence-
forward finds nutriment for itself. I know this, at any rate,
that if these things were to be written down or stated at all,
they would be better stated by myself than by others, and I
know too that I should be the person to suffer most from
their being badly set down in writing. If I thought they
could be adequately written down and stated to the world,
what finer occupation could I have had in life than to write
what would be of great service to mankind, and to reveal
Nature in the light of day to all men? But I do not even
think the effort to attain this a good thing for men, except for
the very few who can be enabled to discover these things
themselves by means of a brief indication. The rest it would
either fill with contempt in a manner by no means pleasing
or with a lofty and vain presumption as though they had
learnt something grand (341 c-e).
This is not mystery-mongering, as has been said ; it is
simply a statement of the true theory of all higher educa-
tion. To be of any use, philosophy must be a man’s very
222 PROBLEMS
own ; it ceases to be philosophy if it is merely an echo of
another’s thought. The passage 15 also a salutary warning
to the interpreter of Plato. He may, in a measure, re-
cover the dry bones of his deepest thought ; the spirit of
it is less easy to reproduce.
§ 172. We are to think, then, of Plato lecturing in the
Academy without notes, and of his more attentive hearers
taking down what they could. But the set discourse,
though necessary, was by no means the most important
part of the work. It was better than a book, no doubt,
but it was only preparatory to the real thing. Its function
is to rouse the soul, to turn it to the light, but the soul
must see the light for itself. The Academy was no mere
lecture-hall; it was an institute for scientific research.
Simplicius, who had the library of the school at his dis-
posal, tells us that Plato, who held that the movements
of the heavenly bodies must be regular, “ propounded
it as a problem” to the mathematicians of the Academy
to find on what hypothesis (τίνων ὑποτεθέντων) their
apparent irregularity could be explained so as to “save
the appearances.”? The word “problem” calls for special
attention in this connexion. Both it and “ protasis,”
the verb corresponding to which (προτείνειν) has been
rendered “ propound’’ (proponere) in the passage just
referred to, originate in the Greek custom of asking
riddles at banquets, and the convivial associations of the
words bear witness to the idea of scientific research as a
common life (τὸ συζῆν). That accounts in turn for in-
vestigation taking the form of a quest for solutions (λύσεις)
of certain problems (προβλήματα) or difficulties (ἀπορίαι).
We have a collection of such in the Aristotelian corpus,
which is obviously derived from the work of his school,
and the passage of Simplicius just quoted shows that the
method originated in the Academy. It is, of course, the
beginning of the system of education through original
research.
It is to be observed further that Plato by no means
1Simpl. de Caelo, pp. 488. 213; 492. 31 (Heiberg).
THE STUDIES OF THE REPUBLIC 223
confined the researches of his students to subjects of
special interest to himself, such as mathematics and
astronomy. No doubt they had all to go through a pre-
liminary course of mathematical training, but there is
abundant evidence that biological studies were also pursued
with enthusiasm. The satire of the comic poets was
largely directed to this side of the Academy’s activity.
Epikrates (fr. §) laughs at Plato, Speusippos and Mene-
demos for investigating by the method of division to what
genus the pumpkin belongs. Speusippos, Plato’s nephew
and successor, wrote many books on the classification
of animals and vegetables, and the few fragments that
remain deal, for instance, with shell-fish and fungi. In
the Critias (110 ἃ sgq.) Plato himself surprises us by an
account of the geological history of Attika and _ its
economic consequences which is almost on a level with the
most modern discussions of the kind. The biological
work of Aristotle belongs to the early period of his life,
and it is natural to bring that into connexion with these
facts. It remains to be said that we must of course
represent the Academy to ourselves as well provided with
scientific apparatus and collections. Aristophanes takes
it for granted in the Clouds that a scientific school would
possess maps and astronomical models as a matter of
course, and, if that was so in the fifth century, it may
certainly be assumed in the fourth.
The Programme of Studies.
§ 173. We may fairly take the higher education of the
Guardians outlined in the Republic as a guide to the course
of study followed in the Academy. Weare expressly told
that the mathematical part of the course is to occupy the
ten years from twenty to thirty, and it has all the appear-
ance of a regular programme. It would, however, be a
mistake to suppose that what is said about the sciences in
the Republic represents the mature thought of Plato on the
subject. It was written either before the foundation of
224 THE ACADEMY
the Academy or very shortly after, and the theories most
characteristic of Plato’s teaching are not yet elaborated.
He is quite conscious of that. What he proposed was a
thorough criticism of the hypotheses of all the sciences,
and that had not yet been carried out. That is what he
means by the “longer way,” which has yet to be travelled
(435d, 504b). We must be prepared to find, then, that
in some important respects the philosophy of the exact
sciences given in the Republic is completely transformed at
a later date.
The programme is based on the principle that the
function of education is the conversion {(περιστροφή) of
the soul from the contemplation of Becoming (γένεσις) to
that of Being (οὐσία). As we have seen, that distinction is
Pythagorean, and it is therefore aaueal that the course
should consist of the four Pythagorean sciences which sur-
vived in the medieval guadrivium, though with this dis-
tinction, that plane and solid geometry are distinguished,
so as to give five studies (μαθήματα) instead of four. If
we take these in order, we shall see the point of view from
which Plato started.
1. Arithmetic. At this stage, Arithmetic is to be
studied, not for utilitarian or commercial purposes, but
with a view to understanding the nature of numbers by
thought alone. It arises from the ambiguity and relativity
of sense perception. What appears one to the senses also
appears as many from another point of view. Two appear
as one and one as two, so it is the function of thought to
distinguish and separate these from the confusion in which
they are presented by sense. It is the business of Arith-
metic to consider numbers by themselves, not visible or
corporeal numbers. A visible or tangible unit admits of
division, and so is many as well as one, but unity itself is
indivisible. Visible and tangible units are not necessarily
equal to one another, but the units of the arithmetician
are allabsolutely equal. Such units cannot be apprehended
by sense, but only by thought, and that is what gives the
study of arithmetic its educational value (524 b—526c).
PROGRAMME OF STUDIES 225
2. Plane Geometry. Geometry too is to be studied for
other than utilitarian ends, for which, indeed, a very slight
knowledge of it is required. Though geometers talk of
performing certain operations, such as “squaring” and
“applying” and “ producing,” that is only a manner of
speaking, and Geometry too has to do with Being, not
with Becoming. Its objects are certain spatial relations
which simply are, whatever we may do, and do not come
into being in virtue of our constructions, This study too,
then, is of value as purifying an instrument of the soul
(527 a-e).
3. Solid Geometry, Sokrates is about to pass from
Geometry to Astronomy, but recollects himself and points
out that there is a science intermediate between them, that
which deals with the “ third increase” (τρίτη αὔξη), that is,
with the cube, and generally what has three dimensions,
depth as well as length and breadth. “But,” says Glaukon,
“that does not appear to have been invented yet.”
Sokrates answers that this is because in the first place no
state holds such studies in honour, and in the second,
because a director (ἐπιστάτης) is required to guide them.
If the state were to second the efforts of such a director,
they would soon be perfected. Even as it is, their extreme
elegance (χάρις, τὸ ἐπίχαρι) causes them to make some
progress (528 d).
As has already been indicated, this remarkable passage
appears to refer to the fact that, though the Pythagoreans
had made a beginning, the theory of the five regular solids
was completed for the first time by Theaitetos, while the
problem of the duplication of the cube was not solved till
a still later date. The term Stereometry is not used here;
it appears for the first time in the Epinomis (990 d).
_ §174. The remaining studies deal with motion, and it
is hinted that there may be more than the two mentioned.
4. Astronomy. Astronomy is not to be studied merely
for its use in agriculture, navigation, or strategy, or even
because it turns our eyes upwards toa higher world. The
visible motions of the heavenly bodies with all their
Pp
226 THE ACADEMY
labyrinthine intricacy are related to true astronomy only
as the diagrams analysed by the geometer are related to
his science, that is to say, these apparent motions must be
regarded merely as illustrations (παραδείγματα). We must
treat them as “problems” (προβλήμασιν χρώμενοι), not as
solutions. What we have to study is “the true motions
with which the real velocity and the real slowness move in
relation to one another, in the true numbers and the true
forms, and carry their contents with them” (529 d).
This sentence is easily misunderstood and requires
elucidation. In the first place, the visible motions of the
heavenly bodies are what we call their apparent motions,
which are of great complexity and at first sight seem quite
irregular. The planets move at one time from east to
west among the stars, at another from west to east, and
sometimes they are stationary altogether. That is the
“problem” we have to solve. The “real velocity” (τὸ ὃν
τάχος) is spoken of simply as opposed to the apparent
velocity. We should not think it necessary to add “ the
real slowness,” but that is only an instance of the Greek
tendency to ‘‘polar expression,’ and has no serious im-
portance. We may speak of a lesser velocity as a ‘“‘ slow-
ness” if we please. Then this velocity is spoken of as
carrying its “contents” (τὰ ἐνόντα) with it. That is
secause the Greeks were in the habit of attributing the
orbital revolution to the orbit itself, and not to the celestial
body, which was regarded as occupying a fixed place in its
orbit. That again is due to their regarding all orbital
revolution as similar to that of the moon, the only case
which can be adequately studied without a telescope.
The moon always presents the same face to the earth (or
nearly so), and, in the absence of any indication to the
contrary, it was not unreasonable to suppose the other
planets did the same. We say the rotation of the moon
upon its axis takes the same time as its revolution round
the earth; the Greeks expressed the same fact by saying
the moon does not revolve at all relatively to its orbit.
That is why Aristotle can urge the fact of the moon’s
PROGRAMME OF STUDIES 227
always presenting the same face to us in support of the
view that none of the heavenly bodies rotate. To us that
is just what proves the moon does revolve on its axis, but
Aristotle is thinking of the orbit (or rather, in his case, the
sphere) to which the moon is attached. All this explains
why it was natural to speak of the heavenly bodies as the
things “Sin the velocity” (ἐνόντα, Sc. τῇ ταχύτητι).} The
“true numbers” are the number of days and years the
revolutions take, and the “true forms’’ are the circles,
spirals, or whatever they may prove to be, which they
trace. What is meant, then, is simply that we must have
a science which will exhibit the true motions of the heavenly
bodies and not the motions they appear to have. The
apparent motions of the heavenly bodies no more express
the laws of solid bodies in motion than the diagrams of the
geometer embody the truths of geometry.
It is amusing to observe that such a utilitarian thing as
‘‘Greenwich time’’ has to take account of this. Our
watches are set, not by the visible sun, but by an “ intelli-
gible” sun called the ‘“ mean sun,” which only coincides
with the visible sun four times a year, and then only for an
instant. That this illustration is not too far-fetched is
shown by the fact that the apparent anomaly of the sun’s
annual course was just one of the problems we know to
have been investigated in the Academy? It may be added
that this is fatal to the interpretation which makes Plato’s
astronomy refer to some imaginary “ideal” heavens, If
it had, why should he have troubled himself about the
sun’s anomaly? It would have been so easy to say that
the intelligible sun had a uniform velocity, and to disregard
the shortcomings of the visible sun.
5. Harmonics. The next study is Harmonics, which
the Pythagoreans regard as the counterpart of Astronomy.
As the one deals with motions apprehended by the eye, so
does the other deal with motions apprehended by the ear.
1 Adam’s interpretation of this passage is sufficiently refuted by the
fantastic account he has to give of τὰ ἐνόντα,
2 Simplicius in Phys. p. 292. 22 (Diels).
228 THE ACADEMY
The same principles will apply here. Not to speak of
those who attempt to determine the harmonic intervals by
ear, even the Pythagoreans themselves, who express them
by numerical ratios, do not sufficiently emancipate them-
selves from the sound as heard. It is not enough to say
that such and such an interval is expressed by such and
such a ratio; we ought to consider which numbers are
consonant with one another and which are not, and to ask
the reason of this in both cases.
Here, as in the case of Astronomy, we have an anticipa-
tion of the science of a later age. The sounds we hear are
produced by a succession of “beats” (πληγαί) of the air
(we should say, of waves), and the business of the musical
theorist is to express the differences of the musical intervals
in terms of these, and not merely in terms of the length of
strings. So far as the Pythagorean system goes, it would
seem that the consonances might be expressed by any other
ratios just as well as those which have been experimentally
discovered. In fact, the Pythagorean intervals are a
problem and not a solution. The fact that some intervals
are consonant, while others are not, must be due to some-
thing in the nature of number itself.
§175. All these studies, however, are but the prelude
to the strain we have really to learn, and that is Dialectic.
We know already what Dialectic means in the Sokratic
sense. It is the art of question and answer, the art of
giving a rational account of things and of receiving such an
account from others (διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι λόγον). Even
Xenophon knew that Sokrates made those who associated
with him “dialectical,” though he attributes to him an
erroneous etymology of the word.? But here something
more is meant than the art of reasoning, or at any rate some-
1 Aristoxenos represents the first class for us and Archytas the second.
2Mem. iv. 5. 12. He makes him derive the verb διαλέγεσθαι from
διαλέγειν κατὰ γένη τὰ πράγματα. ‘That is just like the derivation of
σοφιστής from ὁ τῶν σοφῶν ἴστης (= ἐπιστήμων) in Prot. 312 or that
of ὑπόθεσις from ὑποτίθημι, “lay a foundation,” implied in Rep. 511 b.
The Craty/us is full of such things, so Sokrates may really have said it.
DIALECTIC 229
thing more special. In the Euthydemus (290 c) we are told
that arithmeticians, geometers, and astronomers must hand
over their discoveries to the dialectician for examination.
Here we learn (533 b) that the weakness of the method of
hypothesis, as described for instance by Sokrates in the
Phaedo, is just this, that the hypothesis itself is only esta-
blished by the consistency of its consequences; it has not
itself been examined in the light of any higher principle.
We are told, accordingly, that, though geometers and the
rest do in part attain reality, they only see it “in a dream.”
So long as they use hypotheses and refuse to let them be
moved, because they can give no account of them, they
cannot be said to behold true Being with a waking vision.
If we take for our starting-point what we do not know,
and our end and all the intermediate steps are only a con-
catenation (συμπλοκή) of what we do not know, that is a
mere agreement (ὁμολογία) not to raise ultimate questions,
and cannot become science in the true sense of the word.
The defect of the special sciences is, then, that they
depend on hypotheses of which they can give no account,
and are therefore obliged to use sensible diagrams. We
are told quite distinctly that Dialectic proceeds by
‘“‘destroying the hypotheses” (avapotca τὰς ὑποθέσεις).
This has given much trouble to some interpreters, who
find it hard to believe that Plato desired, for instance, to
“destroy” the hypothesis of three kinds of angles, which
he expressly mentions in this connexion (510 c) as funda-
mental in geometry. It is impossible, however, to take
the word I have rendered “ destroy”’ (ἀναιρεῖν, tolleré) other-
wise; for we have seen (δ 125) that it is a technical term in
this context. Further, the view of science taken in the
Republic really does demand the destruction of the hypo-
theses of the special sciences. The hypothesis of three
kinds of angles has a spatial character, and that is just why
the geometer is forced to use sensible diagrams, The
ideal is that Arithmetic, Geometry, and the rest should all
be reduced to one science, and this cannot be done so long
as their special hypotheses remain. It is only when these
230 THE ACADEMY
have been removed that we can ascend to a first principle
which is no longer a postulate (to an ἀνυπόθετος ἀρχή),
namely, the Form of the Good. Then, and not till then,
can we descend once more without making use of sensible
diagrams of any kind. The whole of science would thus
be reduced to a sort of teleological algebra.
Eukleides and Plato.
§ 176. We shall understand this point of view better if
we consider how natural it was that, when Plato set him-
self to draw up a scheme of scientific study for the
Academy, he should be influenced by the teaching of
Eukleides of Megara. He had taken refuge with him
after the death of Sokrates, and the prominence given
to Phaidon as the narrator of the last discussion of
Sokrates on earth points in the same direction, for the
school of Elis founded by him was closely related to that
of Megara. Plato was also influenced, of course, by the
Pythagorean associates of Sokrates, but it looks as if he
did not become personally intimate with the leading
Pythagoreans of his day till later. He would have little
time for that during his first visit to Italy and Sicily.
This makes it necessary for us to learn all we can about
Eukleides. It is not much, unfortunately, but the few
statements we have rest on the best authority, and are
of fundamental importance.
In the first place, as we have seen already (§ 117),
Eukleides was an Eleatic, and the doctrines of the Megaric
school in a later generation, as we know them from
Aristokles,! still bear traces of their Eleatic origin.
Accordingly, though we are not entitled to ascribe all
these doctrines to Eukleides himself without more ado,
we cannot go far wrong in crediting him with those that
are definitely Eleatic in character. To begin with, we are
told that the Megarics considered it their business to
1 Aristokles was the teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias. ‘The state-
ments referred to are preserved in Enseb. Pr, Ev. xiv. 17.
EUKLEIDES 231
“throw” (καταβάλλειν) sensations and appearances and
to trust to reasoning alone. That goes without saying
in an Eleatic. We are also told that they held that
Being was one and the Other is not, and that there
was no such thing as coming into being or ceasing
to be or motion. That is also sound Eleatic doctrine,
and may be confidently attributed to Eukleides. It
is impossible, then, to suppose that he could have
accepted, and still less that he could have originated,
the doctrine Plato attributes to Sokrates in the Phaedo,
for there we have a plurality of forms which enter
into the world of becoming. Eukleides accordingly,
though present, takes no part in the discussion. On the
other hand, he appears to have been deeply interested in
the teaching of Sokrates on the subject of the Good.
We still have a curious document written in the Doric
dialect, in which certain Sokratic doctrines about good-
ness are clearly referred to.2 It is generally recognised
that it belongs to the end of the fifth century, and its
‘“eristic” character, taken in conjunction with its Doric
dialect, strongly suggest Megara as its place of origin.
At any rate, we know that Eukleides identified the Good
with the One, which is also called by other names, such as
God or Wisdom. It is only possible to guess his exact
meaning, but the fact of the identification is certain, and
its connexion with the teaching of Sokrates seems plain.
As there is nothing else than the One, he inferred that
there is no such thing as evil. The method by which it
is shown that the senses and the things that appear to
them are unreal, is to show that there are “two state-
ments” (δισσοὶ λόγοι) which may be made with equal
truth and cogency about all of them. That is what the
Megarics called Dialectic and their opponents called Eristic.
If we may trust Aristotle’s account of the matter, the
1 See ps. 112, # 2.
2The δισσοὶ λόγοι (formerly known as Dialexeis). It is printed in
Diels, Vors.’ ii. pp. 3345977. See Taylor, Varia Socratica, i. pp. 91 599.
232 THE ACADEMY
method had degenerated by his time into a mere quibbling
about words. It does not follow that it was anythin
but a serious doctrine in the hands of Eukleides; for Plato
had not yet cleared up the meaning of ‘“‘is”’ and ‘‘is not,”
and we shall see good grounds for believing it was just
his interest in the teaching of Eukleides that led him to
do so. It is highly probable, then, that the account of
Dialectic in the Republic was written under this influence,
and in that case we can most easily understand it as an
effort to do justice to the position of Eukleides without
following him in reducing all the forms to the intelligible
One, which is also somehow the Good. I have said (δ 129)
that I regard the doctrine of the Good as Sokratic, but
there are some things said about it in the Repudfic which
seem to be Plato’s own, for they are directed against
the identification of the form of Good with Being on
the one hand and Wisdom on the other, and these are the
doctrines of Eukleides. According to the Republic, the
Good is neither Being nor Knowledge, but the cause of
both. It altogether transcends and is ‘‘on the other side”’
of Being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας), as it transcends Knowledge.
In some such way as this, it may have seemed to Plato at
the time, the monism of Eukleides might be avoided,
while all that was valuable in his system might be
preserved.
The theory which would naturally follow from this way
of regarding the Good would be one of “emanation,”
and that is in fact the view which was associated with it
when the doctrine was revived in later days. Toa con-
siderable extent Neoplatonism may be fairly described as
a development of the thought that was in Plato’s mind
when he wrote this part of the Republic. We have no
means of knowing how far Plato himself had gone in this
direction. He could not in any case have made Sokrates
the mouthpiece of such a theory ; and, as has been indi-
cated, he has probably strained historical verisimilitude to
some extent in saying as much as he does. We shali
never know more on the subject, for he never speake
THE GOOD 233
in this way of the form of Good again, and Aristotle
never even alludes to this passage. As we shall see, the
solution that finally commended itself to Plato was reached
on other lines, and we have now to consider the steps by
which he finally emancipated himself from the Megaric
doctrine.
CHAPTER XIli
CRITICISM
δ 177 Plato’s emancipation from the influence of
Eukleides seems to have been gradual. For about
twenty years he carried on his work in the Academy
without interruption, and it does not appear that he
published any more dialogues till towards the end of
that period. His hands were probably too full. A time
came, however, when he felt it necessary to define his
attitude to other philosophers, and that could only be
done by writings addressed to a wider circle than the
school. We cannot estimate the interval of time which
separates the Theaetetus from the Republic and the Phaedrus,
but it was probably one of a good many years. When
Plato began to write dialogues again they had a different
character from those of his early life. This is marked
first of all by a significant change in form. Some of the
very earliest dialogues had been simple dramatic sketches
in direct speech, but this form soon proved inadequate for
Plato’s purpose, so long as that was mainly to give a
picture of Sokrates as he lived and moved. Unless
interpreted by action it makes too great a demand on the
reader, who has to supply the mise en scene and the stage
directions himself. Narrated dialogue, on the other hand,
allows of descriptions and comments which make the
picture live, and all the most artistic of Plato’s dialogues
are therefore narrated. When, however, the scientific
interest begins to prevail over the artistic, this form
becomes very cumbrous, We see it at its worst in the
BO Sa an το ἀρλνκουρος
THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES 235
Parmenides, the formula of which is “ Antiphon said that
Pythodoros said that Parmenides said.” In the Theaesetus
there is an express reference to this question of form.
Like the Phaedo and the Parmenides, that dialogue opens
with a short dramatic introduction ; but this leads up, not
to a narrated dialogue as in their case, but to one
which is also dramatic in form. That, we are told
(143 c), is to avoid the troublesome repetition of such
phrases as ‘“‘And I said,” “ He assented,” ‘‘ He agreed.”
It is true that the Parmenides is probably a little later than
the Theaetetus, but they both belong to the same period,
and Plato may well have been engaged on the one when
he produced the other. If so, we can easily understand
his conceiving a distaste for the narrative form. At any
rate, he never made use of it again, and his latest dialogues
are simply dramatic, just as his earliest had been.
§ 178. Philosophically, the distinguishing feature of
these dialogues is Plato’s preoccupation with the Megarics.
The Theaetetus is dedicated to Eukleides, or rather to his
memory; for it is not likely that he was still living.
Plato does not introduce living characters if he can
help it. He was about to criticise the doctrine of
Eukleides, and the Theaefetus is meant to lead up to that
criticism, but he still cherished, we may suppose, a feeling
of regard for the man. Nor is there anything in the
dialogue that directly impugns his doctrine. It does not,
we shall see, go far beyond the possibilities of discussion
within the Sokratic society itself. The rift, as has been
pointed out (δ 129)» was probably in existence before the
death of Sokrates, but was regarded as a difference within
the school. For the same reason, there is no difficulty
in making Sokrates the chief speaker. And yet the point
of view is no longer strictly Sokratic. Plato is now as much
impressed by the dangers of a one-sided intellectualism as
by those of a one-sided sensationalism. He avoids the
doctrine of forms altogether in this dialogue, though there
are points in the argument where we should expect it to be
discussed. It was taking another shape in his mind by
236 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
this time, and he could not make Sokrates the mouthpiece
of that.
§ 179. This brings us face to face with the very im-
portant question of the place assigned to Sokrates in the
dialogues of Plato’s maturity. The discussion narrated in
the Theaetetus is supposed to have been taken down by
Eukleides and revised and corrected by Sokrates himself
(1434). Further, it is supposed to be read aloud at
Megara years after the death of Sokrates. The informal
discussion of the earlier dialogues has become a deliberate
statement of doctrine intended to be read and criticised.
As, however, it only states a problem which had really
been raised by Sokrates, and does not give the solution,
there is no difficulty in his being the chief speaker, though
by a curious device, certain doctrines are said to have been
known to him only “in a dream.” The Parmenides is also
represented as a deliberate statement; for it is supposed
to have been learnt by heart and repeated long afterwards,
a fiction which would seem more credible then than in this
age of books. This dialogue contains a direct criticism of
the doctrine of forms as that is stated in the Phaedo and
the Republic, and the introduction of Parmenides as the
chief speaker suggests that it was the Eleatic criticism that
in fact forced Plato to seek for a more satisfactory formula-
tion of it. He was bound to make his position clear ; for,
whether he himself had ever held the doctrine criticised or
not, he had certainly done a great deal to propagate it by
his Sokratic writings. Clearly Sokrates cannot be the chief
speaker here, but it would have been unseemly to introduce
Eukleides, for instance, as criticising him. So Plato takes
advantage of the visit of Parmenides and Zeno to Athens
almost a century before to put the criticism into the mouth
of the founder of the school to which Eukleides belonged.
It would have been too much, however, to represent Par-
menides as asserting the reality of “‘ not being,” which is
the theme of the Sophist, so the leading part in that dia-
logue and its sequel, the Statesman, is taken by an Eleatic
stranger, who is a very unorthodox disciple of the great
THE THEAETETUS 237
Parmenides. Plato seems to mean by introducing this
enigmatic figure, who certainly expresses his own views,
that he himself, rather than the disciples of Eukleides, was
the true successor of Parmenides. In the Philebus we seem
to come nearer Plato’s own philosophy than we do any-
where else, and yet Sokrates is once more the chief speaker.
That is a problem we shall have to face later. Inthe Timaeus
and Critias Sokrates is only a listener, and in the Laws he
does not appear at all. We are told in the Phaedo that
Sokrates had rejected all attempts at a mechanical explana-
tion of the world, and the Timaeus contains such an attempt.
As to the works which deal with human history and insti-
tutions, like the Critias and the Laws, we learn from the
Timaeus (19 a-d) why Sokrates can take no part. He could
paint the picture of an ideal state, but he could not make
the figures move. He is made to confess that he could
not, for instance, represent his state as engaged in the
struggle for existence with other states ; to do that men
are required who by nature and training have a gift for
practical politics as well as for philosophy. This is a very
valuable passage as evidence that Plato was conscious that
some themes were appropriate for Sokrates and others
were not. The implied criticism of his master’s political
teaching should also be noted. Plato knew very well
that, on its constructive side, it was too uncompromising
and on its critical side too negative. That is partly
why so many followers of Sokrates turned out reactionaries
rather than statesmen,
The Theaetetus.
§ 180. The purpose of the Theaete/us is to clear the
ground by showing that knowledge cannot be identified
either with sensation or with thought. Theaitetos, after
whom the dialogue is named, was one of the original mem-
bers of the Academy and one of the most distinguished,
and we gather that he died of wounds and dysentery after
a battle at Corinth, which was probably that of 369 8.6,
238 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
It was certainly before this dialogue was written; for the
beautiful description of his character in the introduction
can only be read as a tribute to a gifted disciple too soon
lost. His eminence as a mathematician is skilfully sug-
gested by the story of how, when a mere lad, he discovered
a general formula for numbers of which the square root is
irrational, It seems probable that his death was still recent
when the dialogue was composed, and for that and other
reasons it 1s most probably dated in 368 B.c. or a little
later, when Plato was about sixty years old. The other |
speakers are the “‘ younger Sokrates,” the friend of Theai-
tetos, and like him an original member of the Academy,
and the mathematician Theodoros of Kyrene. He had
been a follower of Protagoras and a friend of Sokrates.
He therefore belongs to an earlier generation than the two
lads whose teacher he is, and had‘ certainly passed away
long before this dialogue was written. The dialogue is
supposed to take place just before the trial of Sokrates
(210 d), that is to say, more than thirty years before it was
composed.
§ 181. The first serious answer given by Theaitetos to
the question, “ What is knowledge ?”’ is that it is sensation
(αἴσθησις). That definition agrees with what Protagoras
said in another form about knowledge, namely, that man
is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of
what is not that it is not. This means that as a thing
appears to me, so it is to me, and as it appears to you, so
it is to you. Instead of saying ‘‘as a thing appears to me,”
we may equally well say ‘“‘as I am sensible of it,” for
instance, ‘‘A wind appears to me cold”’ is the same thing
as “I am sensible that a wind is cold.”’ In a word,
appearance (φαντασία) and sense (αἴσθησις) are the same
thing in the case of hot and cold and the like. Sensation,
then, is always sensation of what is, and cannot err ; for
what is is that of which I am sensible (1 52 a-c).
That, however, was only a dark saying of Protagoras
addressed to the vulgar crowd ; to the initiated he told
the truth, and the truth is this. It is not true to say
THE THEAETETUS 239
that what appears zs. In reality nothing is, everything 1s
becoming, as Herakleitos and others have taught. Motion
is the cause of growth, while rest is the cause of decay and
ceasing to be. Motion is good, and rest is evil. You
cannot rightly use the terms “something,” ‘“‘such a thing,”
“one,” “is”; for, if you say ‘Something is great,” it will
appear small from another point of view, and so with the
rest (152 d).
In the light of this principle let us consider the case of sight.
When we use the words “‘ white colour,” we must not suppose
that what we mean by these words is either something outside
the eyes or something in the eyes. We must not suppose it
to be in any place at all. We must say rather that it results
from the impact (προσβολή) of the eye on the appropriate
movement (πρὸς τὴν προσήκουσαν φοράν) outside it, being
neither what impinges nor what is impinged upon, but a some-
thing between the two having a proper character of its own
for each individual (154 a). “Thus no one knows whether
what appears to him is the same as what appears to another,
and everyone knows that what appears to himself in one way
at one time appears to him differently at another. And so
with other objects; for instance that which after measurement
and comparison we call great, that which after touching we
call hot, become respectively small and cold by the presence
of greater or hotter objects. Six dice compared with four are
“more” and “half as many again”; compared with twelve,
they are “‘less” and “half,” yet they are not changed in them-
selves. ‘They become more and less, and yet nothing has been
added to them or subtracted from them (153 d—154 d)
On the other hand, if we look into our own thought, we
shall agree in the three following propositions : (1) Nothing can
become greater or less either in size or number so long as it
is equal to itself; (2) Nothing can increase or decrease to
which nothing is added or from which nothing is taken
away ; (3) Nothing can be what it was not before without
becoming and having become. But all these propositions are
in direct contradiction to the instance of the dice which we
considered above, or again to such a case as this—“ I, Sokrates,
am now taller than you, Theaitetos; in a year, I shall be
smaller (for Theaitetos is still a growing lad), though nothing
will have been taken from me, nor shall I have become, though
I shall be, what I was not before” (154 d—155 c).
240 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
Let us go deeper into the mysteries of those wise men
of whom we spoke, taking care that none of the unini-
tiated hear us, the “hammer-and-tongs persons”’ (ἀντίτυποι
ἄνθρωποι), who think that nothing is but what they can
clutch in their hands, and refuse the right of being to
actions and processes and everything invisible. The hidden
truthis this, Nothing is but motion, but there are twoforms
(εἴδη) of motion, either of infinite extent, the one having
the power of acting, the other of being acted upon. The
mutual intercourse of these motions begets an infinity of
offspring (ἔκγονα), each of which is a twin, being partly
sensation and partly the sensible, the one always simul-
taneously accompanying the other. Of the infinity of
sensations many have received names, warming and cool-
ing, sight, hearing and smell, pleasure and pain, desire and
fear, and so forth. The corresponding sensible things are
colours, sounds, and so forth. ‘These motions are quick
and slow ; those that are slow take place in one spot and
in relation to what is in contact with them, and are thus
the producers; those that are produced are swifter, for
their motion is from place to place (155 d—156 d).
Thus what we call seeing may be analysed as follows. On
the one side there must be the eye, on the other something
commensurable (σύμμετρον) with the eye. These are the
“slower motions” which take place in one spot. If they
come into one another’s presence, from the former to the
latter there is a motion, sight ; from the latter to the former
there is a motion, whiteness, “These are the ‘“swifter
motions ” which pass from place to place. ‘This whiteness
cannot be said to be anything; it is continually becoming as a
result of motion. Nor can we even say that what acts or
what is acted upon zs anything that can be fixed and
individualised in thought ; for the one is not until it meets
the other, and the one in one combination appears as the
other in another combination (156 d—157 a).
Strictly speaking, then, we must not admit any terms such
as “this,” “that,” “something,” but must think of every-
thing as a process of becoming, being destroyed, being
changed, and this both in the case of particular sensible
THE THEAETETUS «241
qualities and of aggregates (ἁθροίσματα) of particular
sensible qualities, such as what we call ““ man,” “stone,”
and every individual object (157 c).
It only remains to consider the question of the sensa-
tions of dreaming, insane and diseased persons. We can-
not prove that what we call dreaming is not waking, and
vice versa ; for in both states the soul upholds the truth of
what appears to it at the moment, and so in the case of
insanity and disease, except that these states last longer
than sleep. The answer is simple. Sokrates awake or in
health is, taken as a whole, other than Sokrates in sickness
or asleep. Accordingly, any natural agent will act upon
him otherwise in these different states, and the resultant
of the agent and what it acts on will be different. Now
the resultant is what it is, not in itself, nor relatively to
the agent only, nor relatively to Sokrates only, but rela-
tively to both, When someone becomes sensible, he
becomes sensible of something, and, when something be-
comes sensible, it becomes sensible 20 someone, and what
the person is or becomes, he is or becomes relatively to that
thing, and so with the thing. The being or reality (οὐσία),
then, of the moment (i.e. the coexistent, correlative sensa-
tion and sensible) is bound to both the agents of which it
is the resultant ; and, from the side of the person, sensa-
tion, the momentary state, is true ; for it is a sensation of
what the person at the moment ἐς (157 e—160 d).
§ 182. This is obviously a well-thought-out and co-
herent theory of sensation. We are not told whose it was,
though it is made quite plain that it was not to be found
in the book of Protagoras (§ 92). There are certain
points in it which remind us of what we are told about the
Herakleitean Kratylos, who criticised his master for saying
that we cannot step twice into the same river. We cannot
do so even once. And yet, if the theory just expounded
were his, we should surely hear a great deal more about
him than we do, On the other hand, it can hardly be an
improvised fiction ; it is too strongly characterised and too
personal for that. It is, of course, quite on the lines of
Q
242 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
the view of sensation everywhere attributed to Sokrates,
so there is no difficulty in putting it into his mouth ; but
it must clearly have been worked out by someone who
believed in it as an adequate account of knowledge. On
the whole, it seems best to regard it as in this form Plato’s
own. Aristotle tells us that in his youth Plato had been
familiar with the doctrine of Kratylos, and had adopted
it,! and there is an earlier dialogue called by the name of
that thinker, in which Herakleitean doctrine is discussed.
Aristotle further tells us that Plato continued to hold this
doctrine to the end, and there is certainly nothing in it, as
an account of sensation, that he need ever have wished to
retract. In fact, a thorough-going sensationalism is the
necessary foundation of Platonism. I assume, then, that
the doctrine is that of Kratylos, while the elaboration of it
is Plato’s. That will account for the obvious zest with
which he expounds it, and his equally obvious annoyance
at the cheap objections which may so easily be made to it.
These objections are certainly captious enough, and
Sokrates himself protests that it is treating Protagoras
unfairly to urge them. He even undertakes to reply to
them in the name of Protagoras, since he himself is dead.
They have a certain historical interest ; for some of them
reappear in the eristic of the later Megaric school, and that
of itself suggests they may have originated in the circle of
Eukleides. To discuss them here would merely divert
the reader’s attention from the main argument. As
Sokrates says (165 d), there is no end to the attacks which
might be made on the senses by one of these “ mercenary
sharpshooters,” who take you captive by the spell of their
wisdom, and will not let you go again without a ransom.”
He proceeds, accordingly, to restate the theory of Prota-
goras in a form which secures it against cheap criticism of
this kind.
1 Jt is probable, indeed, that this is only Aristotle’s inference from the
Cratylus and the Theaetetus, but it is a fair inference.
2'The reference to the Megarics is unmistakable here. The rift within
the Sokratic school is evidently widening.
THE THEAETETUS 243
§ 183. As restated by Sokrates, the doctrine of Prota-
goras is as follows. However true it may be that the
sensations of each individual are his and his only (ἴδιαι
ἑκάστῳ), and that what zs (if the word is to be used at all)
is what appears to the individual and to him alone, Prota-
goras never intended to deny the distinction between wise
and unwise. He would say that the wise man is one who
is able to change bad beliefs to good. Belief, or what
appears to one man, differs from belief, or what appears to
another, not as true from false (for what appears to the
individual is, and is therefore true and the only truth),
but as good from bad, healthy from diseased, and the wise
man is he who by his words can make what is good appear,
and therefore be, good for the state and the individual
alike.
Let us examine this. We shall see the bearing of it
best if we consider questions of expediency or the advan-
tageous (τὸ ὠφέλιμον). In such questions it will be ad-
mitted that one man is a better adviser than another, even
by those who maintain that such distinctions as right and
wrong are only conventional, that is, that they have no
independent reality by nature, but depend for their
existence and duration on the opinion of the community.
No one, in fact, would maintain, except as a mere form of
words, that what a state thinks advantageous for it is
therefore advantageous for it. This will be still more
obvious if we consider the whole “ form ” (εἶδος) to which
the advantageous must be referred. The general charac-
teristic of it is that it has to do with the future. Now we
may say that the present sensation of the individual is the
only test (κριτήριον) by which we can judge what is, but it
will not be maintained that it is also the test of what ts to
be. With regard to that, the belief of the professional or
the specialist always carries more weight than that of the
layman. Where the future is concerned, it is not every-
one, but the man who is wiser than others, who will be
the “measure,” and Protagoras himself admits this; for
he holds the wise man to be the man who can replace
244 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
worse by better beliefs with regard to these very things.
We see, then, that when we state the doctrine of Prota-
goras sympathetically, it at once takes us beyond sensation-
alism, It is no longer true, even according to him, that
what appears to me 7s to me, and what appears to you ἔξ
to you. This is specially noted (179 b) as the argument
which is most fatal to the doctrine of Protagoras, though
there is another which also disproves it. Protagoras must
admit that the beliefs of other people are valid for them,
and most other people do not believe the theory of Prota-
goras to be true. Therefore it is not true for them.!
§ 184. This piece of reasoning is interrupted by a
magnificent digression on the philosophic life, conceived as
it was in the Gorgias and the Phaedo. It is impossible to
summarise a passage like this ; it must be read as it stands.
Still, we are bound to ask ourselves why it is inserted here.
It comes in the middle of a discussion intended to show
that the wise man is the best judge of what is advantageous
for the community, and yet it describes in glowing colours
the aloofness of the philosopher from practical concerns
of every kind. The world is of necessity evil, and the
philosopher will strive to escape with all speed from it to
a better. The only way to do this is to become likened
unto God, so far as that may be, and this likeness is to be
attained by the cultivation of holiness and wisdom, and
especially of geometry and astronomy. That is just the
doctrine Plato consistently attributes to Sokrates, but it
can hardly be an adequate representation of his own atti-
tude to life at the time he wrote the Theaetetus. He was
shortly to become involved in politics of a decidedly prac-
tical nature, as we shall see, and the Academy was as much
a school for statesmen and legislators as anything else. In
the Timaeus Sokrates admits, as we have seen, that practical
politics is something foreign to his interests, and we might
therefore say that the present passage is inserted to keep
1This is the argument which came to be known as the περιτροπή or
“turning the tables.” It was also used against Protagoras by Demo-
kritos (Sext, Emp. vil 389).
THE THEAETETUS 245
the picture of him true to life, at a time when Plato was
entering on a course his master would have shrunk from
instinctively. I believe that to be true, but it 1s not the
whole truth. I believe that Plato, though he had learnt the
duty of philosophers to descend in turn into the Cave, still
felt that the life here described was in truth the highest.
It is not uncommon for a man of action to feel intensely
the superiority of the contemplative life; and it is not
unnatural for such a man, if he is also a great artist, to
sing the praises of what has become for him an impossible
ideal, though he may recognise it in his inmost heart as
saving truth. In the “digression”? of the Theaetetus I
think we may see Plato’s reluctant farewell to the theoretic
life. At any rate, he tells us himself that it is a digression
unconnected with the main theme of the dialogue, and he
must have had some motive for inserting it.
§ 185. We must now examine the claims of the theory
of universal motion to give an account of knowledge. We
must not forget that Melissos and Parmenides have asserted
an exactly opposite theory, namely, that all is one and at
rest in itself, having no space to move in. We stand,
then, in a cross-fire between two hostile camps. Let us
attack “the streamers” (of ῥέοντες) first. We shall see
that, on their theory, knowledge is impossible (179 d—
181 b).
When we say “everything moves,” what do we mean by
“moves”? ‘There are two forms (εἴδη) of motion : (1) motion
from place to place (dopa) ; (2) motion from state to state
(ἀλλοίωσις). In other words, motion is either locomotion or
alteration ; and, if motion is universal, it must include both.
Since, then, everything not only moves its place, but also
alters its state, we cannot ascribe any quality to what moves ;
for what we call qualities (ποιότητες) are nothing but per-
petual processes going on between what acts and what is acted
upon, and accordingly, in the very moment of being named,
the quality is gone. Similarly, as we may not speak of sen-
sible qualities, so we may not speak of sensations; for each
sensation is in process, and cannot be called sight, hearing, or
1 Rep. 520c: καταβατέον ἐν μέρει.
246 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
the like, any more than not-sight, not-hearing, and the like.
And, if we cannot speak of sensation, we cannot speak of
knowledge, which we identified with sensation, and the
answer of ‘Theaitetos was no answer, and the attempt to
prove it by the theory of universal motion has only resulted
in proving that all answers are equally right. In fact, we are
not entitled to distinguish one answer from another; for such
words as “thus” and “not thus” imply fixity, not motion
(181 b—183 b).
Sokrates declines to examine the “partisans of the
Whole” (οἱ τοῦ ὅλου στασιῶται),1} Melissos and Parmen-
ides, for the present ; we must come back to the original
answer of Theaitetos.
§ 186. In ordinary language we speak of “seeing with
the eyes,” ‘hearing with the ears,” and so on, but strictly
we ought to say, not that the eyes are that with which we
see (ᾧ ὁρῶμεν), but that they are the instruments (ὄργανα)
through which (δύ ὧν), or by means of which, we see. For
we cannot suppose ourselves to be like so many Wooden
Horses, each with a number of sensations sitting inside ;
we must suppose that there is some one constituent
element (εἶδος) in us—call it soul or what not—in which
all these sensations converge, and to which they serve as
instruments when we are sensible of objects. This dis-
tinction between the one identical element and the instru-
ments employed by it may be made clear as follows. The
instruments through which we are sensible of hot, hard,
light, sweet things are various parts of the body. Each
of these instruments has a specific power (δύναμις), and
that which one can do another cannot; we cannot be
sensible of sound by means of sight, nor of colour by
means of hearing. If, then, we have a thought of any-
thing which is common both to sound and colour, this
must be due to some other instrument than seeing or
hearing, and it is certain that we do have thoughts of
things which are common to the objects of different senses.
Let us see what these are (184 b—185 a).
PCE -E. Gro Php. 140, δ τ
THE THEAETETUS 247
To begin with, we have such thoughts as “colour and
sound are,” “each is other than the other and the same as
itself,’\ both are two,” ‘“‘each 1s one, “they are like or
unlike one another,” and so on. What, then, is the power
and what is the instrument through which it acts, by which
we are enabled to find this common element to which we
give such names as being and not-being (οὐσία καὶ τὸ μὴ
εἶναι), likeness and unlikeness (ὁμοιότης καὶ ἀνομοιότης),
sameness and otherness (τὸ ταὐτόν τε καὶ τὸ θάτερον), unity
and number (τὸ ἕν καὶ τὸν ἄλλον ἀριθμόν), odd and even
(περιττὸν καὶ ἄρτιον), fair and foul (καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρόν), good
and bad (ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακόν ῇβ Not one of these common
properties (κοινά) has any specific instrument by which it is
apprehended, as was the case with such properties as sweet-
ness, hardness, and so forth ; it seems rather that in those
cases the soul is its own instrument (αὐτὴ dv αὑτῆς ἐπισκοπεῖ),
and acts by itself (καθ᾽ αὑτήν).
The simple sensation, then, of the sensible qualities of
things takes place through the affections of the body (τὰ
τοῦ σώματος παθήματα) ; such sensation begins with birth
and is common to man and beasts. On the other hand,
the apprehension of the common qualities of things implies
comparison and reflexion (τὸ ἀναλογίζεσθαι, συλλογισμός,
συμβάλλειν), whether of the most common property, that
of being, or of those of sameness and difference and the
rest, or of those of fair and foul, good and bad, the investi-
gation of which last implies comparison in a pre-eminent
degree in the bringing of past and present into relation
with future, which requires time and effort and education
(185 a—186 c).
It is at this point that we should expect Sokrates—the
Sokrates we have learnt to know from the Phaedo and the
Republic—to introduce the doctrine of incorporeal and
intelligible forms; but nothing whatever is said about
them either here or in any other part of the dialogue.
Instead, we have the beginnings of a theory of what were
Ἰδενινενὶς called Categories, and these are regarded as
certain common predicates which the soul apprehends
248 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
without the instrumentality of sense, and by means of
which it organises the manifold of sense. It ts also to be
observed that these common predicates apprehended by
the soul alone include not only categories of reality
(οὐσία), but categories of value (ὠφελία). The practical
is becoming more prominent than it was in the earlier
dialogues.
§ 187. Now, if there are predicates of this kind which
are common to the sensations of all the organs of sense,
and are apprehended by a purely mental activity, it follows
that we cannot identify knowledge with sensation. The
apprehension of being is essential to knowledge. Being
and truth cannot be apprehended in the affections of the
body, but only in the soul’s reflexion about them. We
must, therefore, look for knowledge under the name
which describes the proper activity of the soul when
it is concerned with what is. That name is judgemen:
(τὸ δοξάζειν). Is that to be identified with knowledge?
(186 c—187 a).
The definition of judgement is not given till later, but
it will be convenient to state it here. Thought {τὸ
διανοεῖσθαι) is the discourse (διάλογος) that the soul holds
alone with itself. When it has come to a determination,
whether slowly or by a swift dart at a conclusion, and is at
last at one and no longer at variance with itself, we call
this its judgement (δόξα). Here we have a very remarkable
change in terminology. In the Republic the word (δόξα),
which is now used to signify the completed result of
thought (διάνοια), means something lower than thought,
and covers “imagination” (εἰκασία) and belief (πίστις).
Plato is preparing to attack the problem of predication
in his own way, and he wants a word for “judgement,”
and this seems the most natural to take. We must
understand the term here in the sense in which it is
defined, and not in that which it bears in earlier dialogues.
It is the characteristically Platonic as distinct from the
Sokratic use of the word. It recurs in the later dialogues,
and in certain Academic passages of Aristotle. We have
THE THEAETETUS 249
to ask, then, whether knowledge is to be found within this
activity of the soul. Does simple judgement contain in
itself the guarantee of truth?
§ 188. The second section of the Theaetetus is accord-
ingly devoted to showing that no representation of the
independent (αὐτὴ καθ᾽ αὑτήν) action of the soul can be
made to explain the undoubted fact of the distinction
between true and false judgement. It is shown that
thought alone is as incapable of yielding knowledge as
sensation alone, nor is it clear how any combination of
sensation and thought can yield knowledge.
In the first place, we can only say that 27,6 judgement
(ἀληθὴς δόξα) is knowledge. True judgement or thought
is to judge something to be what it is ; false judgement or
thought is to judge something to be other than itis. But
this at once raises a difficulty. How can thought as such
be other than true? How can there be a false judgement
at all? So long as we confine ourselves to the independent
activity of soul, it would seem that false judgement is as
impossible as we have seen false sensation to be. Three
possible accounts of it are examined, and are all found to
be equally unsatisfactory. They either imply that it is
possible to know and not to know the same thing at the
same time, or that we can judge without judging anything,
or that it is possible to judge one thought to be another.
To identify knowledge with the work of the mind is,
therefore, open to the same objections as its identification
with sensation. All judgements will be equally true, and
the distinction between knowledge and ignorance, wisdom
and unwisdom, will disappear. Thought, in fact, can be
attacked with precisely the same weapons as sensation
(187 b—190 e).
δ 189. It might seem more hopeful to regard true
judgement as the reference of an impression of sense to
the right or corresponding mental counterpart. We might
suppose that memory is like a waxen tablet in the soul on
which images are impressed. It is impossible that two
impressions on this tablet should be confused, or that a
250 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
sensation which makes an impression on it should be cone
fused with another simultaneous sensation. It is, how-
ever, possible that there should be error in the reference
of a sensation to the memory-image left by a former
sensation, if that image was not sharply impressed or if it
has been worn out, That would be false judgement.
This, however, is still unsatisfactory ; for it would restrict
true judgement, and therefore knowledge, to judgements
about actually present sensations. It would not explain,
for instance, how some people can judge that 5+7=12,
and others that 5+7=11, where there is no present
sensation of such a number of objects. To explain this,
we should have to make a distinction between having and
possessing knowledge (ἕξις ἐπιστήμης and κτῆσις ἐπιστήμης),
of which the latter may exist without the former, just as
we may possess a coat without actually having it on. Let
us compare the mind to a dovecot in which we have shut
up a number of birds that we have caught. We possess
these birds, indeed, but we cannot be said to have them
till we have caught them again. Now we may catch the
wrong bird, and in the same way we may catch the wrong
piece of knowledge, and that will be false judgement.
Even that, however, is unsatisfactory, unless we suppose
there are ignorances flying about in our mental dovecot
also. But that will not do either; for, when we have
caught our bird, it is a bird in the hand and we know
what it is. We are not any nearer an explanation of false
judgement than we were before (191 b—200 d).
Finally, it is certain that there may be true judgement
without knowledge. The pleaders in the law courts
operate by means of persuasion and not by means of
instruction, and yet the jury may be led by them to form
atruejudgement. Thissuggests to Theaitetos a definition
which he has heard of knowledge, namely, that it is true
judgement accompanied by a rational account of itself
(ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ λόγου). Sokrates identifies this definition
of knowledge with an elaborate theory he has heard “in a
dream.”” There are some persons who maintain that the
THE THEAETETUS 251
real is unknowable. Our sensations are produced by
simple elements (στοιχεῖα) which are unknowable just
because they are simple. They can only be named and
cannot be defined, nor can we predicate anything of them,
not even “being” or “this.” Such properties as these
are common to all sorts of things and cannot be regarded
as properties of the simple reals. These can, however, be
apprehended by sense, and we can give them names
(ὀνόματα). ‘They can also combine with one another just
as letters (στοιχεῖα) can form a syllable (συλλαβη). If we
combine their names, we get a statement or proposition
(λόγος), and that makes their combinations knowable
(201 a—203 ὃ).
§ 190. The “dream” of Socrates reminds us of the
“mystery” of Protagoras, and we feel that they are both
devices for going beyond historical verisimilitude. There
is also the same difficulty about the authorship of this
theory, as there is about that of the sensationalist theory
described in the early part of the dialogue. In the first
place, it must be observed that it is a thoroughly idealist
theory in the modern sense of that word. The simple
reals are themselves unknowable, and all our knowledge is
the work of the mind. In this respect it is the exact
counterpart of the earlier sensationalist theory. Thought
is everything here as sensation was everything there.
Now there can be no doubt that the definition of know-
ledge as true judgement accompanied by a rational account
of itself or ground (μετὰ λόγου) belongs to the Sokratic
school. It is the definition adopted by Diotima in the
Symposium (202 a), and it is also taught in the Meno
(97 ¢59.). Itis more difficult to say where the elaboration
of it we find here comes from. Aristotle appears to
allude to it in a passage of the Metaphysics, in the course
of which he makes a remark about the view of Antisthenes
“and such uncultivated people” that it is impossible to
define the “‘ What is it δ᾿, because a definition would be a
“long enumeration” (μακρὸς λόγος), and on the strength
of this the whole theory has been attributed to Antisthenes,
252 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
But all Aristotle says is that the theory in question appears
to give plausibility to the view of Antisthenes, and, what-
ever we may think of it, it is not a theory likely to have
been set up by ‘‘uncultivated persons.”! Antisthenes
denied the possibility of predication, whereas, according to
this theory, knowledge consists of nothing else. Nor is
there any reason why Sokrates should “dream” of
Antisthenes. The suggestion made long ago by Lewis
Campbell that the theory is that of “some Pythagorean ”
is much more plausible? The terminology of letters
(στοιχεῖα) and syllables (cvAAaBat) is characteristic of the
Pythagoreans, and we can see quite well how these
Pythagoreans who refused to adopt the Sokratic doctrine
of the participation of sensible things in the forms might
find themselves driven to some such theory as this. In
any case, the importance of the discussion is missed
altogether if it is not clearly understood that the doctrine
discussed is the exact opposite of the sensationalism
Protagoras is said to have revealed “in a mystery,” and
that it is rejected as equally unsatisfactory.
§ 191. For, when we come to examine it, we find that
this theory leads to very great difficulties. How are we
to conceive the relation between the prime elements and
the complexes which are the objects of knowledge?
Either the syllable is only the sum of the letters, in
which case it is impossible to see how it should be more
knowable than they are, or it is an indivisible unity, in
which case it cannot be known either, since that would
imply the separate apprehension of its parts.
Further, we must ask precisely what we mean by an
“account” (λόγος) in this connexion. Obviously we do not
1 Mer. B, 3. 1043 b, 5 sgg. Antisthenes is not mentioned till b, 24, and
the passing manner in which he is alluded to seems to me to exclude
the idea that Aristotle was thinking of him at all when he began the
chapter.
2Introduction to the Theaeretus, p. xxxix. The theory would
harmonise well enough with what we are told of the doctrine of
Ekphantos of Syracuse.
THE PARMENIDES 253
mean merely the expression of a judgement in articulate
language. Nor can we mean a simple enumeration of the
elements which make up a thing. Rather, we must mean
a statement of the thing’s differentia (Sinchoodrns), that
which marks it off from all other things. If, however,
we mean by this that we have merely a judgement (δόξα)
as to the differentia, that brings us no further forward ;
while, if we mean that we have knowledge of the differentia,
our definition will be circular. “True judgement with a
knowledge of the differentia” is not a definition of know-
ledge.
The conclusion of the Theaetetus, then, is that knowledge
can neither be sensation nor the work of the mind. Sensa-
tion is merely a resultant of motion, and gives us no
reality outside itself. Thought alone merely yields com-
binations of names. Nor have we been able to show,
except by clumsy images, how knowledge can be due to
any combination of sensation and thought. On the other
hand, we have incidentally made several discoveries as to
the nature of knowledge. We have found, in the first
place, that it implies certain “common” or generic predi-
cates, and, secondly, that to know a thing we must know
its differentia. A mere apprehension of its common pro-
perties would not be an apprehension of it at all. The
next dialogue we have to consider really deals with the
same difficulties, though from another point of view.
The Parmenides.
§ 192. The Parmenides is a criticism of the doctrine of
forms as stated in the Phaedo and Republic, and the selec-
tion of Parmenides as the chief speaker points to the con-
clusion that the objections to the theory of participation
contained in the first part of the dialogue are of Eleatic
origin. We know from the Theaetetus that Plato was
busy with Eukleides about this time. Besides that, we
have a remarkable piece of external evidence to the same
effect. The most telling argument against participation
254 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
is that known as ‘the third man,” which we shall come to
presently. We have unimpeachable evidence that this
argument was introduced in some work or other by the
“‘Sophist’ Polyxenos.| He had been a pupil of the
‘‘ Sophist ” Bryson, who had been an associate of Sokrates
along with Eukleides, and with him had founded the
‘““Eristic” of Megara. He also stood in close relations
of some kind with the Academy.? Now the detractors of
Plato asserted that he plagiarised the lectures (διατριβαί) ὃ
of Bryson, and that is most easily explained if we assume
that Bryson was the original author of this argument.
But, if these arguments are Eleatic in origin, it follows
that they are not directed against the reality of the intel-
ligible, but against that of the sensible. It would have
been absurd to make Parmenides the mouthpiece of an
attack upon the One, and all we know of the Megaric
doctrine goes to show that it denied all reality to the
world of sense. The arguments of the Parmenides are
not directed, then, against the doctrine of forms as such,
but against the Sokratic theory that sensible things come
into being and cease to be by partaking or ceasing to par-
take in the forms. An argument like the “third man ”’ is
clearly double-edged. It may be used to show the impos-
sibility of an Benen o. but it will serve equally to
demonstrate the unreality of particular men. Plato was,
of course, far too interested in the world of experience to
accept the acosmism of Eukleides, but he was clearly
impressed by the force of the arguments against “ partict-
pation ᾿ as an account of the relation between the sensible
1 Alexander on Ar. Mez. 990 Ὁ, 17. He quotes Polyxenos from |
Phanias of Eresos, a disciple of Aristotle and friend of Theophrastos.
See Batimker in Rhein. Mus, xxxiv. pp. 64 sg7. ‘The word εἰσάγειν used
by Phanias does not necessarily imply that Polyxenos invented the
argument. Cp, εἰσάγειν, “to bring on the stage.’
2 This appears from the comic poet Ephippos, fr. 14 Kock. It is not
clear whether Bryson was a member of the Academy, but he may have
been. It makes no difference. What is important is that he was an
associate of Sokrates.
3 Theopompos, 42. Athen. 509 c.
THE PARMENIDES 255
and the intelligible. His own account of that is not,
however, given in the Parmenides.
§ 193. The subject of the dialogue is introduced as
follows. One of Zeno’s arguments against the opponents
of Eleaticism was that “if things are a many, they must
be both like and unlike.” The precise meaning of this
does not concern us here; what we have to deal with is
the solution of the difficulty proposed by Sokrates, who is
not an old man, as in the Theaetetus, but ‘extremely
young” (127c). He asks Zeno whether he does not
believe in “forms” which are “apart from” the things
of sense, but in which these things “ participate.’ If that
is the truth, there is no reason why sensible things should
not participate at once in the form of likeness and in the
form of unlikeness. A man, for instance, is both many
and one; he has many parts, but he is one man among
others. Why should not a sensible thing be at once like
one thing and unlike another, thus partaking in both
forms? ‘To show that stones, sticks, and the like are
both many and one is not to show that One is many
or Many is one. What would be surprising would be
if a man should set up separate forms such as Likeness
and Unlikeness, One and Many, Motion and Rest (1.6. the
common predicates (kowa) of the Theaetetus), and should
then show that these can mingle with and be separated
again from each other. It would be still more surprising
if he could show that the same contradictions which have
been shown to exist in the things of sense were also to be
found in forms apprehended by thought (129 a—130 4).
The theory here stated by Sokrates is precisely that of
the Phaedo, where we are told that Simmias may be greater
than Sokrates and smaller than Phaidon, though Greatness
and Smallness exclude one another (102b). It is to be
noted, however, that, even in the Phaedo, a doubt Is
expressed as to the adequacy of the term “ participation,”
for the relation between a subject and its predicates (100 d).
If the Phaedo is in substance historical, it will follow that
the Sokrates of the Parmenides is just Sokrates himself
2560 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
before he had begun to feel these doubts. That Plate
should have meant his own earlier self will only be
credible to those who can believe that in the Phaedo he
made use of Sokrates as a mask for his own personality,
while the view that by Sokrates here he meant some
callow Academic who held his own theory in a crude
form should be credible to no one. We might be reluc-
tantly convinced that Plato used Sokrates as a disguise
for himself; but it would surely have been impious to
represent his own immature disciples under the revered
name of his master. The fact that it has to make
assumptions of that kind ought to be fatal to this line.
of interpretation.
§ 194. Parmenides, who has evidently heard of ‘‘ forms”
before (120 8), and who is delighted by the philosophic apti-
tude of Sokrates, as shown by his theory of “ participation,”
begins by asking him whether, in addition to the mathe-
matical forms, which have been mentioned so far, he also
believes in forms of the Just, the Beautiful and the Good,
and, as might have been expected from the Phaedo, Sokrates
at once assents. The next question is whether he believes
in forms of Man, Fire, and Water. Sokrates confesses
that he is in a difficulty about these. We have seen what
this means (ὃ 73). As to things like mud, hair, and dirt,
though he has sometimes been troubled by the thought
that they must have forms too, he had finally renounced
the idea. That, says Parmenides, is because Sokrates is
still young, and philosophy has not yet laid hold of him
completely as it will do some day. Then he will despise
none of these things; at present he is too much influenced
by popular opinion (130 e).
In the mouth of Parmenides this remark must be ironical.
He must mean that, if such things as hair, mud, and dirt,
are in any sense real, they are quite as much entitled to
have “forms” as the objects of mathematics. From Plato’s
point of view, on the other hand, the passage has probably
another bearing. The doctrine of forms, as hitherto stated,
is only plausible because it is confined within certain limits.
THE PARMENIDES 257
It is adequate in mathematics, where it originated, because
in that region even the particulars are objects of thought
and not of sense. In morals and aesthetics it is almost as
satisfactory ; for actions in their moral aspect are not really
objects of sense, and beauty is a direct revelation of the
form. On the other hand, it is a serious weakness in the
doctrine that it can only be applied with difficulty in
physics and biology, and that it breaks down altogether
when we come to things common and unclean. If, now,
we remember the way in which Plato insists in the
Theaetetus on the distinction between the ‘“ common”
predicates («owa) which the soul apprehends by itself,
and the objects of the several senses, we shall be inclined
to think that he is preparing the way for a restriction of
the doctrine to the former, while suggesting at the same
time that this very restriction may so modify the doctrine
that it will enable us to understand the whole world of
experience, even in its humblest manifestations. There is
no inconsistency in the restriction of the doctrine to purely
intellectual categories, and the extension of the operation
of these categories to the whole of the sensible world.
Nor is any weight to be attached to the fact that in the
Timaeus we have forms of Fire and the other elements;
for there the speaker is a Pythagorean, and we have seen
reason to believe that it was just in the construction of
the elements that the later Pythagoreans made most use of
the forms.
§ 195. Leaving this question for the present, Parmenides
goes on to discuss the difficulties involved in the specially
Sokratic conception that the many sensibles “ partake in”
the one form, or that the one form is “present to’’ or
“in” the many sensibles.
In the first place, these sensibles must either all contain
the whole of the form or each of them only a part of it.
In the first case, the whole form will be present in each
particular thing, which means that it will be in more places
than one, and so will be separate from itself and divided.
Sokrates suggests that it may be like the day, which 1s
R
258 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
present in many places and yet one, but Parmenides «ill
not accept this comparison. If a number of people are
covered by the same sailcloth, each one of them is covered
only by a part of it. We come, then, to the other alter-
native, that the forms are divisible, and that what partakes
in a form contains only a part of it; or, in other words,
that only a part of the form is present in each of the many
sensibles, In that case, however, the forms will not serve
to explain anything. A part of the form of magnitude,
if there could be such a thing, would be less than the
whole, and a thing could not become great by participating
in it, and many other absurd consequences would follow.!
Further, the very grounds on which Sokrates bases the
doctrine of the one form in which innumerable sensible
things partake would really compel him to assume also the
existence of equally innumerable forms. If we require a
form to explain the participation of particular things 1 Ina
common predicate, we also require a form to explain the
participation of the form itself and the particular things in
a common predicate, and so on ad infinitum (1324).
Sokrates hereupon suggests that perhaps the forms are
really thoughts (νοήματα), and that they may only exist in
souls, to which Parmenides replies that a thought must be
a thought of something real, and further that, if the forms
are thoughts, the things that partake in them must be
thoughts too. It would also follow either that all things
think or that there are unthought thoughts.?
The next suggestion made by Sokrates is that the forms
may be “patterns” (παραδείγματα), and that the true
account of the participation of sensible things in them may
be that they are “likenesses” (ὁμοιώματα) of them.? But,
1For the details of these I must refer to Professor Taylor’s article in
Mind (N.S.), vol. xii. No. 45.
2'The last point is somewhat obscure, but it does not affect the main
argument. Observe how clearly Conceptualism is formulated, and how
deliberately it is rejected.
8 According to Aristotle this was the Pythagorean view (Mez. A. 6).
We can, therefore, draw no inference from its prominence in the Timaeus,
THE PARMENIDES 259
says Parmenides, if the things are like the forms, the forms
will be like the things, and we shall require another pattern
which both resemble to explain their likeness. We are
confronted once more by an infinite regress.
But there are far more serious difficulties than these. It
would be very hard to refute anyone who said that these
forms, if they are such as we describe them, are unknow-
able. We have said that they are “alone by themselves”’
and not in our world (ἐν ἡμῖν), and therefore, as they are
relative by nature, they can only be relative to one another.
On the other hand, their “likenesses” in our world can only
be relative to one another and not to the forms. A man
is not the master or slave of ‘“ mastership itself” or of
“slavery itself,” but of another man; while, on the other
hand, ‘‘ mastership itself” is relative to “slavery itself,”
and not to a particular slave. In the same way “‘ know-
ledge itself” is relative to “‘truth itself,” but our knowledge
is relative to the truth in our world. But, if that is so,
the forms must be entirely unknown. If we try to avoid
this by saying that God has “ knowledge itself,” and there-
fore knows the forms, the result is still worse. It will
follow that God cannot know us or anything that we
know; for the knowledge he has is not relative to the
truth of our world. Nor can he be our Master; for
‘‘mastership itself’’ is not relative to us (134 d-e).
§196. This section is based on the argument of the
“third man,” which has already (δ 195) been used to throw
doubt upon the theory of participation. It will be well
to give it here in the form in which Phanias of Eresos
quoted it from Polyxenos.! “Ifa man is a man in virtue
of participation or partaking in? the form or the avro-
where the speaker is a Pythagorean, least of all the inference that Plato
himself adopted this view in later life.
1See above, p. 254, 5. I.
2JIt is important to notice that Polyxenos uses for ‘‘ participation ”
two terms (μετοχή, μετουσία), which are never used by Plato. That
goes to show that the argument was not specially directed against Plato’s
statement of the theory.
260 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
ἄνθρωπος, there must be a man who will have his being
relatively to the form. Now this is not the αὐτοάνθρωπος,
who is the form, nor the particular man who is so in virtue
of participation in the form. It remains, then, that there
must be a third man as well who has his being relative to
the form.”! I understand this to mean that, as it is im-
possible for the particular sensible man to stand in any
relation to the form, and, as the form cannot be related
simply to itself, the theory of participation explains nothing.
The only “‘man” who could participate in the form of
Man would be a third man in the intelligible and not in
the sensible world, and it is quite superfluous to assume
anything of the sort. It will be observed that, as has been
suggested above, this argument is directed against the
reality of the sensible and not of the intelligible. It is first
and foremost an argument against the theory of participa-
tion, and it is only an argument against the doctrine of
forms in so far as that implies many particular forms of
man, etc., instead of a single absolute One. That explains
further how it is that, while Aristotle uses the argument
against the doctrine of forms, he also thinks it necessary
to refute it.2 It was intended to support a position with
which he had still less sympathy.
§ 197. It almost seems as if we should be driven to the
conclusion that the forms are unknowable, and that would
be the end of all philosophic discussion. It would destroy
dialectic (τὴν τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι δύναμιν). It is hinted, indeed,
that a solution may be found (135 a), but this is not
followed up for the present. Instead of that, Parmenides,
who could hardly be expected to undertake the task of
justifying the world of experience, proposes to dismiss
that from consideration altogether, and to consider the
difficulties that arise in the world of forms itself. The
argument is still on Megaric ground ; for we know that
11 have adopted the transposition of Batimker (λείπ, Mus. xxxiv.
P- 75):
2 Soph. El. 178 Ὁ, 36599.
THE PARMENIDES 201
Eukleides rejected the multitude of forms and reduced
them all to the One.
At the beginning of the dialogue (129 e sg.) Sokrates
had declared himself unable to understand how the forms
themselves could enter into combinations with one another,
and still more how a form can be both one and many, like
and unlike, at rest and in motion. It is easy enough, he
repeats here (135 e), to see how sensible things can have
different predicates; the real difficulty arises when we
apply this to the forms. ‘The way to deal with a problem
of this kind, says Parmenides, is the method of hypothesis,
and that both in its positive and negative application. We
must trace out all the consequences (συμβαίνοντα) of the
hypothesis that 1} és and also of the hypothesis that it is not.
For instance, if we take the hypothesis Zeno examined,
“Tf things are a many..., we should go on next to
the consequences of the hypothesis “Jf things are not a
many ...,and in both cases we should ask what are the
consequences, not only to the subject of the hypothesis
itself, but also to the rest, and in each case we should
consider the consequences to the subject of the hypothesis
and to the rest both in themselves and in relation to one
another. The same method must be followed in the case
of all the forms, such as likeness and unlikeness, rest and
motion, coming into being and ceasing to be, being and
not being, and so forth (or, in other words, the “common”
predicates of the Theaetetus).
§ 198. Parmenides naturally takes his own doctrine of the
One as the hypothesis to be examined. Plato has his own
reasons for this, as we shall see, but there is no ground for
thinking that either Parmenides or Sokrates is supposed
to be conscious of them. Parmenides is not represented as
accepting the consequences of his argument—he could not
do that without destroying his own system—and he ex-
pressly declares that the result of his examination of the
first hypothesis is impossible (142 a). Sokrates is reduced
to silence, but we cannot suppose him to be convinced.
The whole thing is treated as a mental gymnastic (γυμνασία),
262 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
a “laborious game,” valuable chiefly for the training it gives
in method. Plato means more than that, however, and he
gives us the hint in the dialogue itself. We must remem-
ber that the discussion is about forms alone, and we are
expressly warned against the idea that ‘‘the rest” of which
he speaks are the things of sense (135 e). They are just
the other forms. Now Sokrates had said (129 ἃ 59.) that
he would be very much astonished if anyone could show
that the forms were capable of combination with one
another. That form of separation (χωρισμός) had been
clearly taught in the Phaedo, for instance. Sensible things
could participate in the forms, but the forms excluded one
another. He would be still more astonished, he adds, if
anyone could show that there was the same sort of con-
fusion and uncertainty in the forms as there is in the
sensible things which participate in them, and that is exactly
what Parmenides does show. If you take such forms as One
and Being abstractly (χωρίς), they at once partake of and
begin to pass into one another and all the other forms,
including even their opposites. They are just as bad as
water, which is cold to one hand and hot to the other, or
any other of the sensible things which we have seen to be
in continual flux. In fact, Parmenides proves that, if we
take the intelligible world by itself, it is quite as unsatis-
factory as the sensible, and by taking the One as his
example, he really refutes the Megaric doctrine, and that
with the weapon of the Megarics themselves. It adds to
the humour of the situation that this refutation is ruthlessly
carried out by the revered Parmenides, and it is even possible
that we are to regard the description of his own work given
by Zeno in the introduction as a hint of the light in which
Plato wishes us to look at the second part of our dialogue.
Zeno says:
My work makes no sort of pretence to have been written
with the object you mention (1.4, to prove the doctrine of
Parmenides in another way).... It argues against those
who maintain a multitude, and gives them back as good or
better than they gave, by trying to show that their hypothesis
THE PARMENIDES 263
will have even more absurd consequences than his, if it is
thoroughly discussed (128 c-d).
Just so we may say that Plato has no idea of proving the
hypothesis of his master, Sokrates, but he does propose to
show that the hypothesis of the Megarics has even more
absurd consequences than his if it is adequately followed
out.
§ 199. It is from this point of view we must judge what
strikes a modern reader as the arid and repellent form of
the discussion with its occasional suggestion of sophistry.
It isa display of the dialectical method introduced by Zeno
and assiduously cultivated by his successors at Megara.
Now Plato’s dramatic power is by no means extinguished
yet, and whatever impression it makes upon us, we may
be sure that his contemporaries would keenly appreciate
the virtuosity with which he plays on this alien instrument.
It should be added that, so far as the arguments are
sophistical—and one or two of them must certainly have
been known by Plato to be so—that is probably quite
deliberate. We shall see that he was coming to regard the
disciples of Eukleides more and more as “‘eristics,’’ just
because, as we saw in the Theaetetus, arguments confined
to the objects of thought alone consist of judgements which
are only combinations of names. There is, in fact, no
dialogue where it is more important to remember the
dramatic character of Plato’s writing than this, and where
it is more important to realise the contemporary situation.
It seems to me quite possible that to Plato’s circle the
second part of the Parmenides seemed highly entertaining.
Men who had laughed at the Euthydemus would find a
subtler enjoyment here. I suspect, however, that Bryson
and his friends were not pleased. In introducing Helikon
some years later to Dionysios II. as a disciple of Eudoxos,
Isokrates, and Bryson, he says,! ‘‘ And what is rare on the
top of all this, he is not unpleasant to deal with, and he
does not strike me as malicious, but rather as easy-going
1 Fp, xiil. 360 6,
264 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
and simple. I say this with fear and trembling, seeing
that I am expressing a judgement about a man, and man
is not a bad animal, indeed, but a changeable one.”’ We
shall have occasion to note other traces of the growing
estrangement of Plato from the Megarics. Let us now
consider the hypotheses.} |
§200. There are properly speaking eight hypotheses to
be examined, but there is a sort of corollary to the first
and second, so that there appear to be nine.
Hypothesis IL—If it is One, what will be the consequences
Wor tself (τη70).
If it is One, it cannot be Many, and therefore it cannot
have parts, and cannot be a whole (for that implies parts).
Not having parts, it cannot have beginning, middle or end ;
it has therefore no limits and is infinite. Further, it will
have no figure; for figure implies parts. Further, it will be
nowhere ; for what is anywhere must either be contained in
something else or in itself. It cannot be contained in anything
else ; for it would then be in contact at different points with
what contained it, and that implies parts. Nor can it be con-
tained in itself; for then it would be both container and
contained, and so two, not one.
It cannot be in Motion οἵ αἱ Rest. If it suffered alteration
(ἀλλοίωσις), which is one form of motion, it would no longer
be one. It cannot have spatial motion (dopa), which is the
other form of motion, either motion of rotation (zepipopa),
for that implies a centre or axis of rotation, and so figure and
parts, or motion of translation, since it has no place. Further,
it would have to be at once in the same place and not in the
same place, which implies parts. Nor can it be at rest, since
it is nowhere in space, neither in itself nor in anything else,
and cannot therefore be where it is (ἐν ταὐτῷ).
Nor can it be the Same as or Other than itself or anything
else. It cannot be other than itself, for then it would not be
one ; it cannot be the same as anything else, for then it would
be the same as what is other than one; it cannot be other
than anything else, for it is only the other that can be other ;
ΕἼ have thought it right to analyse these somewhat fully as a guide to
students of the Parmenides. From what has been said, it will be clear
that the reader may omit them if he likes,
THE PARMENIDES 205
it cannot be the same as itself, for if same were one, how
could anything be the same as many?
It cannot be Like or Unlike itself or anything else, for the
like is what has an identical property, and the only property
of what is one is to be one.
Nor can it be Equal or Unequal to itself or anything else.
If it were equal, it would have the same measures, but it does
not participate in the same. If it were unequal (greater or
less), it would have as many parts as measures, and so would
not be one.
It cannot be older or younger than itself or anything else,
or the same age, since all these imply inequality or equality.
It cannot, therefore, be in time at all; for what is in time is
always becoming older than it is at a given moment, and
therefore at the same time younger than it is, and also, since
this becoming lasts no longer or shorter time than what
becomes, it is always the same age as itself.
Further, since it does not participate in time, it does not
participate in Being; for it has not become and has not been,
it will not become and will not be, it is not becoming and it
is not.
And, if it cannot Je, it cannot be one, and cannot be named,
spoken of, judged of, known, or perceived by the senses.
As this result seems impossible, let us put the hypothesis
in another form. Let us consider One, not merely as
one (τὸ ἕν ἕν ), but as being (τὸ ὃν ἕν).
Hypothesis I1.—If One is, what are the consequences for
ttself ? (142 Ὁ, I—155 6, 3).
If One is, it partakes in Being (for is and one do not signify
the same). ‘Therefore One as being (ἐν gv) must be a whole
of which one and being are parts. But, since each of these
parts partakes in turn both of one and being, each can be
further subdivided into two parts, and what always becomes
two is not one but an infinite multitude.
Again, if we take One by itself, it is other than being.
But One is not Other, and Being is not Other, therefore
Other is other than either. Any pair of these three must be
called two or both, and each of two is necessarily one. If we
add One to any of these pairs, we get three, and three is odd
while two is even ; and two gives twice and three gives thrice,
so that we have twice two and thrice three and twice three
and thrice two. And so we may get any combination of odd
266
THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
and even numbers, and thus an infinite multitude, every part
of which partakes in Being, so that Being is infinitely divided
into parts. But each of these parts is one, so One is divided
into as many parts as Being, and therefore not only One as
being but One as one is an infinite multitude.
One as being is a whole, and parts are only parts as parts
of a whole, and the parts are contained in the whole. Now
that which contains is a limit. But, if it is limited, it will
have extremes, and, if it is a whole, it will have beginning,
middle and end. But, as the middle is equally distant from
the extremes, it will have figure, either rectilinear, or circular
or mixed, and will be finite.
Further, since all the parts which make up the whole are
contained in the whole, it must be in itself; and, since the
whole is not contained in the parts, it must, regarded as a
whole, be in something else. ‘Therefore it will be both at
Rest and in Motion.
Further, it will be the Same as itself and everything else,
and Other than itself and everything else. It is other than
itself because it is both in itself and in something else, and
other than everything else, since these are not one. But it is
also the same ; for otherness cannot be a property of anything.
Therefore One and what is other than One, cannot be other
because of otherness, nor can they be so in themselves. Nor
can they stand in the relation of whole and parts; for what
is not One does not partake in number. ‘Therefore they are
the same.
Consequently, it must be Like and Unlike itself and every-
thing else, for One is other than everything else in the same
way as everything else than One, and therefore they are alike
in so far as they are other. On the other hand, they must be
unlike in so far as they are the same; for opposite antecedents
must have opposite cotisequences.
Further, it will be in contact with itself and with what is
other than itself, since it is contained in something other.
But, as contact always implies at least two, since the number
of points of contact is always one less than that of the things
in contact, it cannot be in contact either with itself or
anything else.
Further, it will be Equal and Unequal to itself and every-
thing else. If it were smaller, Small would be in it, either as
a whole or in a part of it. If it were in it as a whole, it
would either pervade it completely, in which case it would be
equal to it, or exceed it, in which case it would be greater.
THE PARMENIDES 267
And the same contradiction arises if it is in a part of it. The
same applies mutatis mutandis to the Great. Besides, Great
and Small are relative to one another and not to One.
Therefore One is equal to itself and to what is other than
itself. But One is in itself, and therefore contains and is
contained by itself, and is therefore greater and smaller than
itself. And, since there is nothing besides One and what is
other than One, and, since everything that is is in a place,
what is other than One is in One, and One is therefore
greater than what is other than One. But, for the same
reason, One is in what is other than One, and therefore
smaller than it. “The same reasoning will apply to the parts
as to the whole.
Further, it will participate in time; for it is, and to be is
just participation in being along with present time. But as
time (of which the present is a part) is always advancing, One,
as sharing in this advance, is always becoming older, and
therefore at the same time younger, than itself. But it cannot
advance from past to future without passing through the
present ; and so, when it comes to the present, advance is
arrested, so that the growing older and younger are already
complete in the present. But the present lasts for the One
as long as it is; for it is always now whenever it is. ‘There-
fore the present lasts as long as time for the One, and its
being older and younger coincides with its becoming older
and younger. Further, since it is not and does not become
for a longer time than it is and becomes, it is always the same
age as itself.
In the same way it is older than what is other than itself.
What is other than One must be more than One, and being
a multitude must partake in number, and One comes into
existence before all other numbers. But it is also younger
than what is other than One; for it has beginning, middle,
and end, and the beginning comes first into existence and the
end last, and One only is when the end has come into
existence, ‘Therefore One only comes into existence after
its parts. On the other hand, each part is itself one, and so
One came into being simultaneously with the beginning and
with every subsequent part, and must therefore be the same
age as what is other than One.
So much for its having become and being older and younger
than what is other than One; we have still to consider its
becoming older and younger. On the one hand, it does not
become either older or younger than what is other than One;
268
THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
for, if the difference of two ages is given, the addition of equal
to unequal times does not alter the (arithmetical) ratio between
them. On the other hand, it does become older and younger ;
for, if the difference of two ages is given, the addition of equal
to unequal times does alter the (geometrical) ratio between
them.
Therefore One partakes of past, present, and future; it
was, it is, it will be; it has become, is becoming, and will
become. It can be the object of knowledge, judgement, and
sensation ς it can be named and spoken of.
Corollary.
We have seen that One is (1) one and many and neither
one or many, and (2) that it partakes in time. We must
now consider how the second conclusion affects the first
(155 ε, 4 544.).
If One is both one and many, and also partakes in time, it
follows that it partakes in being at one time, viz. when it is
one, and that it does not partake in being at another time,
viz. when it is not one. ‘To begin to partake in being is to
come into being, to cease to partake in it is to perish ; there-
fore One must come into being and cease to be (γένεσις καὶ
φθορα). ‘Therefore it must be compounded and decomposed
again ; it must be assimilated and dissimilated again ; it must
increase and decrease again and be equalised.
Further, it must pass from motion to rest, and again from
rest to motion. But how is that possible? How can it stop
when it is moving, or start moving when it is at rest? “The
transition from rest to motion or from motion to rest cannot
be either rest or motion, and there is no time at which a thing
is neither at rest nor in motion, ‘Therefore the transition
must be out of time altogether; it must be in that strange
thing (τὸ ἄτοπον τοῦτο), the instantaneous (τὸ ἐξαίφνης)»
which has position but not duration in time. It is the instan-
taneous which makes all changes from one opposite to another
possible, and it is in the instant of change that what changes
has neither the one nor the other of its opposite qualities
(155 e—157 b).
Hypothesis II.—If One ts, what are the consequences for
the others ? (157 Ὁ, 6—159 Ὁ, 1).
The others are other than the One, but they will partake
in it both as a whole and as parts. For, since they are others,
THE PARMENIDES 269
they are a multitude, and this multitude must have parts or it
would be one. Again, it must be a whole and a whole must
be one. For, if a whole were not one but many, each part
would be part of a many of which it itself was one. “Then
each would be a part of itself and of each of the others, which
is absurd. ‘Therefore they are a whole, that is a complete
one made up of them all. Further, each part is also one since
it is distinct from the others. ‘Therefore both as a whole and
as parts the others partake in One.
Therefore they will be both finite and infinite. For, since
they are more than one, they must be an infinite number ;
for, if we cut off in thought the smallest imaginable portion
of what is distinct from One, it will be more than One, and
therefore an infinite multitude. On the other hand, at the
moment when any part partakes in One, it has a limit both
with the other parts and with the whole, and the whole has
in the same way a limit with the parts. Therefore it is
finite.
So too they will be both like and unlike each other and
themselves. As being all finite and all infinite they are like ;
while, as being both at once, they are unlike. And in the
same way it would be easy to show that they are the same
and other, at rest and in motion, etc., etc.
FLypothesis IV.—If it is One, what are the consequences
for the others? (159 b, 2—160 b, 4).
The others will participate in the One neither as a whole
nor as parts. For, since there is nothing which is at once
other than one and other than the others (for One and the
others are everything), One and the others cannot be con-
tained in the same thing. ‘Therefore they are quite apart.
Further, since One as such has no parts, no part of it can be
in the others.
Further, since the others do not participate in One either
as a whole or as parts, they are not a whole. Nor can they
have multitude or number; for number consists of ones.
Therefore they cannot have two properties, such as likeness
and unlikeness, to One, nor even one property in themselves,
such as Same, Other, Rest, Motion, etc.; for that would imply
participation in One,
§ 201. The result of our positive hypotheses, then, is
this, One is everything and nothing both in itself and in
270 THE GRITICAL DIALOGUES
relation to the others, and the same is true of the others.
We now turn to the negative hypotheses.
Hypothesis V.If One 1s not, what are the consequences
for itself? (160 b, 5—163 b, 6).
If we can say that One is not, One must have a meaning,
and therefore it must be knowable and there must be know-
ledge of it. And, as it is other than everything else, it must
have altereity (ἑτεροιότης) And it must partake in “this,”
“that,” “anything,” etc.; for otherwise it could not be spoken
of, nor could what is other than One be spoken of. ‘There
is nothing to hinder it partaking in many things, even if it is
not. On the contrary, it must do so, if it is that One and
can be named at all.
Further, in so far as it is other, it must be unlike the others
and like itself.
Further, it must be unequal to the others; for, if it were
equal, it would be, and would be in so far like them.
On the other hand, since Great and Small belong to the
Unequal, and what possesses inequality must possess them ;
and further, since the possession of Great and Small implies that
of Equal as a necessary intermediate, it will possess all three.
Further, it will participate in Being. For, if it is true that
the One is not, then the One zs a not-being. “The very bond
of its not being is that not-being is, just as the bond of what
is is the not being of not-being.
But, if it has both being and not-being, there must be a
transition, that is,a movement from the one to the other, and
this movement must imply alteration (ἀλλοίωσις).
On the other hand, One, so far as it is not, and therefore
is in no place, cannot move from place to place, nor move in
the same place round a centre. Nor can it alter without
ceasing to be the One which is distinct from the others,
Therefore it is immovable and unalterable.
Further, it follows that, in so far as it is moved and altered,
it comes into being and ceases to be ; in so far as it is unmoved
and unaltered, that it neither comes into being nor ceases
to be.
Hypothesis VI.—If there is no One, what are the con-
sequences for itself ? (163 Ὁ, 7—164 ὃ, 4).
If there is complete absence of being from One, it can
neither partake nor cease to partake in Being. ‘Therefore it
THE PARMENIDES 271
can neither come into being nor cease to be; it can neither
be in motion nor at rest; it cannot stand in any relation to
what is, for that would be to partake in Being. ‘Therefore it
has neither greatness or smallness or likeness or unlikeness to
itself or anything else. Neither is it in a place or in a time.
Neither can there be knowledge, judgement or sensation of it ;
it cannot be spoken of or named.
Hypothesis VII.—If One 1s not, what are the consequences
for the others ? (164 Ὁ, 5—165 6, 1).
Since they are others, they must have something that they
are other than. ‘They cannot be other than One; for One
isnot. ‘Cherefore they must be other than themselves.
Further, they must be so, not as ones, but as multitudes or
masses, of which each can be broken into an innumerable
number of similar parts, so that we can never reach a smallest
and least part, and that what seemed small appears great com-
pared with each one of the multitude of which it is the
sum.
Further, we never come to a beginning, middle, or end, but
always to something before the beginning or after the end or
in the middle of the middle.
The conclusion is that, if One is not, other things will
appear both finite and infinite, one and many.
Hypothesis VIII—If there is no One, what will be the
consequences for the others? (165 e, 2—166¢, 1).
They will be neither one nor many ; for many implies ones.
Nor have they even an appearance of one or many ; for they
can have no communion with what is not, nor can anything
which is not be present to anything else ; for what is not has
no parts.
Therefore we must deny of them not only the reality, but
even the appearances of all the predicates which were formerly
applied to them really or apparently, likeness and unlikeness,
sameness and otherness, contact and separation, etc.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, then, that,
whether we assume that One is or that One is not, it itself
and what is other than it, regarded both in themselves and
in relation to one another, all are and are not, all appear
and do not appear.
272 THE PARMENIDES
§ 202. And so it ends. No one has a word to say
about this portentous result. If, however, we attend to
the hints given in the course of the dialogue itself, we
shall hardly be far wrong in drawing the following con-
clusions from it. In the first place, the Megaric doctrine
is refuted. If we postulate a One which is only one (as
the Megarics did), we can say nothing whatever about it.
Or if (as the Megarics also did) we identify One with
Being, we shall have to predicate of it all sorts of incom-
patible predicates. ‘Two statements” (δισσοὶ λόγοι) can
be made about the One as well as everything else.
On the other hand, the Sokratic theory has also been
refuted in the early part of the dialogue, and that by argu-
ments taken from the Megarics. It was based on the
view that, though sensible things may partake in opposite
forms, these forms themselves exclude one another. As
that is untenable, we must try to find some other way in
which things participate (ἄλλο δεῖ ζητεῖν ᾧ perarauBaver).
The second part of the dialogue has shown once for all
the impossibility of maintaining the isolation of the forms
from one another. ‘The others” are just as hard to
grasp as “the One.’ If we regard them abstractly, we
can say nothing whatever about them; while, if we regard
them as being, we are compelled to ascribe contradictory
predicates to them. In fact, the intelligible and incorporeal
forms vanish under our hands just as the things of sense
had done. It is clearly shown that we must now endeavour
to understand in what sense the forms can participate in
one another ; for all the difficulties of the Parmenides arise
from the assumption that they cannot.
CHAPTER XIV
LOGIC
The Sophist
§ 203. The Sophist is linked externally to the Theaetetus,
which is all the more remarkable that the evidence of style
shows there was a distinct interval of time between the
Sophist on the one hand and the Theaetetus and Parmenides
on the other. The influence of Isokrates is strongly
marked for the first time, especially in the avoidance of
hiatus. In view of this interval of time, we shall be
justified in looking for some real connexion between the
dialogue and that of which it professes to be the sequel.
Sokrates, Theodoros, and Theaitetos, with the younger
Sokrates, his friend and later a member of the Academy,
are supposed to meet again on the following day to con-
tinue the discussion reported in the Theaetetus, but the
fiction of the dialogue being read aloud at Megara is
quietly dropped. The very title of the work is evidence
of the growing coolness between Plato and the Megarics.
Isokrates had already given the title of ‘‘Sophists”’ to the
Sokratics generally, but more particularly to the “‘eristics,”
by whom he means mainly the Megarics. Plato adopts
this way of speaking from Isokrates, and he also draws a
hard-and-fast line between the Philosopher and the Sophist.
That is made clear at the outset. A stranger from Elea is
introduced, who is represented as a personal disciple of
Parmenides and Zeno, and Sokrates at once professes
alarm that he may prove to have a superhuman gift for
5
274 LOGIC
cross-examination. Theodoros reassures him, and says he
is far too good a man for an eristic; he is, indeed, a
philosopher. Sokrates answers that it is hard to tell Philo-
sophers from Sophists and Statesmen, and asks whether
the Eleatics distinguished them. The Stranger replies that
they did.
Now Plato seems to speak to us more directly than ever
before by the mouth of this Stranger, who, for that very
reason, is anonymous; and it seems, too, as if we were
meant to understand once more that he claims to be the
true successor of Parmenides, even though he is obliged
to dissent from his central doctrine that ‘“‘ not being is
not.” What is this ‘“ not-being” which nevertheless is?
We shall find that it is identified with “the Other,” and
one of the few facts we know about the Megarics is that
they said ‘‘ What is is One and the Other zs ot.”1 The
name of Sophist is thus by implication applied to the
Megarics, and it stuck to them. In fact, it more often
means Megaric than not in the fourth century. We have
heard of the “Sophist’’ Bryson and the “Sophist” Poly-
xenos already (§192). In Aristotle it is just the arguments
of the Megarics that are technically called ‘sophisms,”
and it is with these he mainly deals in his course on
fallacies.2 If this is correct, I do not think it fanciful to
suggest further that the reluctance of the Stranger to differ
from his master Parmenides with regard to his central
doctrine (241 d) is a hint of Plato’s own attitude towards
Sokrates at this time.
Like several other dialogues, the Sophist appears to be
made up of two wholly disparate sections bound together
in an accidental way. It consists, as has been said, of a
kernel and a shell. The shell is the attempt to find a
definition of the Sophist by the method of division; the
kernel is a criticism of categories, especially that of “ not
being” (τὸ μὴ ὄν). The ostensible link between the two
1 Aristokles (ap. Eus. P.E. xiv. 17,13 R.P. § 289).
$ The Περὶ σοφιστικῶν ἐλέγχων.
δ Νὰ... ᾿- aie
THE SOPHIST 275
discussions is that the definition of the Sophist is found to
imply the existence of “not being,” but that is by no
means all. We find also that the reason why those who
insist on the mere abstract unity of “what is” (τὸ ὄν)
cannot advance beyond contradictory argument (ἀντιλογία)
like that of the Parmenides, is just that by so doing they
have put it out of their power to divide any subject under
discussion ‘“‘according to its forms” or “ kinds” (κατὰ γένη,
253c-d). That is what the method of division aims at
doing ; but it requires to be justified against those who
deny that forms are a many, and that defence can only take
the shape of a proof that “ not being” (τὸ py dv) is. Here,
as in other cases, the real unity of the dialogue is left for
us to discover if we can.
§ 204. It would be tedious to examine in detail the
divisions by which the successive definitions of the Sophist
are reached. They are not, of course, to be taken too
seriously ; but neither, on the other hand, are they wholly
without purpose. They are marked, in fact, by a certain
not ill-humoured satire, the objects of which it will not be
hard to guess after what has just been said. The Angler
is first selected for definition, merely as an illustration of
the method to be followed. That seems innocent enough;
but it soon appears that the Sophist too is a fisher, a fisher
of men, and this leads up to the definition of him as “a
paid huntsman of rich and distinguished youths.” That
suggests another definition from the point of view of the
art of exchange. He now appears as “a wholesale exporter
of spiritual goods manufactured by others,” though it is
slyly added that he does sometimes dispose of his goods
in the home market, and occasionally even manufactures
them himself. Again, he may be looked on as a fighting
man, whose weapons are short questions and answers ; or,
again, he may fall under the art of sifting and purging.
He purges the soul from beliefs that are a hindrance to
knowledge, and especially from the ignorance which con-
sists in thinking one knows what one does not know.
Perhaps, however, we are doing the Sophist too high an
276 LOGIC
honour here, and this is a higher art than his. We may
have been deceived by a resemblance.
Obviously these last definitions do not apply to the
great Sophists of the fifth century. Protagoras and Gorgias
are always represented as averse to discussion by short
questions and answers, and it is Sokrates who forces this
method upon them. Again, the purging of the ignorance
that consists in thinking one knows what one does not
know is in the highest degree Sokratic. We are forced,
then, to conclude that the persons aimed at are Sokratics,
and the doubt expressed at the end of the discussion
is an insinuation that they practised an imitation of
the Sokratic method, though not always in the true
Sokratic spirit. Once more it can hardly be doubtful who
these are.
§ 205. The next section brings us to the real problem
of the dialogue. We shall find that the Sophist’s art is
one that produces deceptive images and so gives rise to
false judgements. On the other hand, the distinction of
an image from the object imitated, and also the opposition
of false judgement to true, imply that ‘“‘ what is not” in
some sense is, and this Parmenides forbade us to assume.
The argument proceeds as follows :
We have given several accounts of the Sophist, but that
shows there is something wrong with our method. His art is
called by a single name, and there must, therefore, be some
element which all these accounts of it have in common, and
to which they all lead up. Now the account which seemed
to point most clearly to this is the description of it as the art
of Contradiction (ἀντιλογική). The Sophist professes to dis-
pute on all things visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth,
but it is impossible for one man really to understand all these
things. ‘Therefore the Sophist is a master of the Art of
Appearance. He is like the painter who produces the appear-
ance of solidity by lines and colours on a flat surface, and we
may therefore call his art the Art of Imagery (εἰδωλοποιική).
That art may be divided into two, that which produces an
exact counterpart (εἰκαστική) and that which produces an
apparent likeness by deliberately altering the real proportions
(φανταστική). ‘The Stranger is about to assign the Sophist’s
THE SOPHIST 277
art to the latter when a pressing question of great difficulty
emerges (232 a—236 d).
How, indeed, can there be a deceptive image at all? And
further, how is it possible to say or think what is false,
without which there can be no deceit? In both cases we are
forced to postulate that “what is not” 7s (ὑποθέσθαι TO μὴ ὃν
εἶναι), and that is just what Parmenides would not allow. If
we say “is not,” we must apply (προσφέρειν) the words as a
predicate to something. We cannot apply them to what zs,
and, if not, we cannot apply them to anything. But, if we are
not speaking of anything, we are speaking of nothing, and are
not in fact speaking at all. Nor can anything be applied
(προσγίγνεσθαι) as a predicate to “ what is not.” We cannot
even say that it is one or many; for number zs, and we cannot
predicate what is of what zs mot. But if “Sis not”’ can neither
be subject or predicate, it is unutterable and unthinkable.
Nay, we have no right to say that it zs unutterable or unthink-
able or even to call it “it” (239 a).
Applying this to the Sophist, we find (1) that we cannot
without contradiction speak of him as producing an image ;
for, though an image is really an image, to be really an image
is to be really unreal or really what is not (ὄντως οὐκ ὄν).
Nor (2) can we speak of his producing an unreal appearance
(φάντασμα) without contradiction; for that implies a judgement
either that “ what is” zs mot or that “ what is not” is, and we
Aave seen that such judgements are impossible. ‘There is
nothing for it, then, but to reconsider the dictum of Parmeni-
des and to inquire whether we should not say that, in a certain
sense, “ what is not ”’ zs, and “ what is” zs not (241 d).
A modern reader approaching this discussion for the
first time is apt to think either that Plato is about to pro-
pound a wanton paradox or that his mind is obsessed by
the spectre of some fantastic “ metaphysical’’ conception
of Non-being. That is, firstly, because he is using
the language of his time, a language which he did not
invent and for which he is not responsible. If he had
been writing for us, he would no doubt have formulated
the problem in another way. As it was, the Megarics had
inherited from Parmenides the doctrine that ‘“ what is
not” is not (a doctrine which, in the mouth of its author, -
had a purely cosmological significance), and they had
278 LOGIC
‘imported it into Dialectic, with the result that they were
led to deny the possibility of significant negation. In the
second place, the extreme simplicity with which the problem
is stated is disconcerting to the modern mind. That is
characteristic of Greek philosophy as a whole, and is one
of the things that makes it worthy of study. There is
nothing like stating difficulties in their baldest form to
ensure that they will not be evaded. The modern reader
would feel no difficulty if Plato had announced a discus-
sion of the possibility of significant negative judgements,
and that, as a matter of fact, is the subject of this dialogue.!
It is a good thing, however, to study it in its simplest form
and stripped of conventional terminology.
§ 206. In reality, the Stranger proceeds, the reason why
we find such difficulties in “not being” is just that we do
not know what is meant by “being.” Earlier philosophers
have not taken the pains to think out clearly the import
of certain elementary terms, the meaning of which appears
to be obvious, but is really very far from being so. That
is why they have only been able to tell fairy tales. Some
say the things that are (ra ὄντα) are two or three or some
other number. Others maintain that what 15 is one;
others, again, seek to combine these views. But no one has
asked what we mean by saying of anything that it 75.
This is shown by a criticism of the Pythagoreans, who
said things were two, and of the Eleatics, who said they
were one.
If all things are two (e.g. hot and cold), how is the “being”
which this implies related to the two? Either it must bea
third thing besides them, or it must be identified with one of
them, in which case the other would not be. Or, if we say
that “‘ being” is true of both in the same way, they will be
one and not two (243 d—244 a).
If all things are one, then “being” and “one” are the
same, and only two names for the same thing. But, apart
from the absurdity of having two names for the same thing,
1Tt is precisely the problem discussed in Bosanquet’s Logic, Bk. I.
chap. vii., which will be found to throw light on the Sophist.
THE SOPHIST 279
how can there be a name at all? If the name is other than
the thing, they are two and not one, so that, if all things are
one, there can only be a name which is a name of nothing,
or the thing itself will be a name, and its name the name of a
name (244 b-d).
But they also say that the one which zs (τὸ ὃν ἕν) is a
whole. But a whole has parts and is therefore other than
one, which as such is indivisible. If, then, “what is” is a
whole, it isa many. On the other hand, if it is not a whole,
it is not the whole of what is, and it can neither come into
being nor be; for what comes into being or is comes into
being or is as a whole (244 d—245 d).
This is, of course, a summary of certain arguments in
the Parmenides, and has a similar purpose. It is as hard to
grasp the meaning of is as it is to grasp the meaning of ts
not. The difficulty is even greater when we turn from the
number of what is to its wature.
§ 207. With regard to this there is a regular battle of
the gods and giants between philosophers. Some identify
reality or being (οὐσία) with body, that which admits of
impact and contact (ὃ παρέχει προσβολὴν καὶ ἐπαφήν τινα),
while others say that true being consists Οἱ certain
intelligible and incorporeal forms or figures (νοητὰ ἄττα
kat ἀσώματα εἴδη), while everything corporeal is only a
stream of becoming (φερομένη γένεσις).
We must pause here and ask to whom the Stranger is
referring ; for this is one of the most pressing questions
in the history of Greek philosophy. In the first place, it
must be observed that the philosophers now under dis-
cussion are spoken of as if they belonged to a past genera-
tion. It can hardly be correct to suppose that the school
of Demokritos are intended by the “‘earth-born”’ (γηγενεῖς).
Demokritos, who asserted the reality of the void, could
not be spoken of as making impact and contact the test
of being. We have seen, however, that the doctrine of
Parmenides paved the way for materialism, and that
Melissos, who was a very important figure in the latter
part of the fifth century, definitely taught a materialistic
monism (ὃ 68). As to the “friends of the forms”
280 LOGIC
(εἰδῶν φίλοι), of whom Plato speaks with such aloofness by
the mouth of the Stranger, if our general view of the
doctrine of forms is correct, we have seen that there is no
difficulty in identifying them with the later Pythagoreans.}
At any rate, they can hardly be the Megarics, as is often
supposed ; for they rejected the plurality of forms alto-
gether, and identified the One and the Good (§ 129).
It is worthy of note that the Stranger speaks of them as
persons whom he understands, “thanks to his intimacy
with them” (διὰ συνήθειαν), and that suggests they were to
be found in Italy. The language in which their doctrine
is described is just that of the first part of the Phaedo, and
they may therefore be identified with the “we” of that
dialogue.
§ 208. The corporealists are hard to deal with ; but, if
we imagine them for the moment to be more reasonable
than they are, we may get them to admit that by reality
or being (οὐσία) they in fact mean force (δύναμι).
They must admit that there is such a thing as a mortal
animal, and therefore as an animate body, and therefore as a
soul. ‘hey must further admit that a soul may be good or
bad, wise or foolish, and therefore that goodness and wisdom,
the presence or absence of which make it one or the other,
are. Very likely they may say that the soul is body, but they
will hardly say that goodness or wisdom are bodies (though
it is to be feared the real earthborn would). But, once they
admit that a single incorporeal thing 7s, they must accept a
definition of being which will apply equally to it. Perhaps
they may accept as a definition of what is that it is anything
that has the least power of acting and being acted upon, that,
in fact, being is force (246 e—247 e).
It is to be observed that the Stranger does not put this
definition forward as one satisfactory to himself. Indeed,
he says expressly that we shall very likely take a different
view later.
If we turn now to those superior persons, the “ friends
1As we have seen (p. 91, 2. 1) this identification is made without
hesitation by Proclus, and is presumably the Academic tradition.
THE SOPHIST 281
of the forms,” we may expect them to be more tractable,
and more ready to admit that what zs is what can act and
be acted upon. As a matter of fact, however, we shall
find them even less amenable to argument than our
reformed corporealists. They remain in the sky and do
not answer us at all, though the Stranger knows from his
intimacy with them that they regard us with contempt.
They will not ascribe any kind of motion at all to reality
or being (οὐσία), and therefore they will not speak of
acting or being acted upon in connexion with it.
The “ friends of the forms” distinguish being (οὐσία) from
becoming (γένεσις) and say that our souls participate in
constant being by means of thought, and our bodies in variable
becoming by means of sense. But this participation surely
implies that being has a power of acting and being acted
upon; for the thought that knows being must, in so doing,
either act or be acted upon or both, and the being that
thought knows must accordingly either act or be acted upon
or both.
To this we may suppose them to reply that being is
constant and immovable, and cannot therefore either act or be
acted upon. But they must admit that we know being, and
knowledge implies soul, and soul implies life and motion. If
these are excluded from being and referred to becoming, there
can be no knowledge at all. It is equally true, however, that
being would be unknowable if it were only variable and in
motion ; for knowledge implies constancy, and that implies
rest (248 a—249 d).
We have not been able to get any answer out of the
“friends of the forms” ; but our discussion with them has
suggested that knowledge is impossible unless being is
both in motion and at rest. But, as motion and rest are
opposites, they cannot be united. On the other hand,
they both ave, and therefore being must be a third thing
over and above them. From this it follows that being
per se is neither at rest nor in motion. What are we to
make of this? We see, at any rate, that it is just as hard
to say what is meant by zs as to say what is meant by zs not,
and this gives us a ray of hope. If we can only discover
282 LOGIC
what ἐς means, the other difficulty may be got rid of at the
same time.
§ 209. We must start from the fact that, when we speak
about a thing, we not only name it, but apply many other
names to it. When we speak about a man, for instance,
we apply to him the names of colours, omic sizes, virtues
and so forth. Of course there are youthful logic- choppers
and elderly amateurs (Antisthenes ?) who say we have no
right to do this. Man is man, and good is good ; but, if
we say “the man is good,”’ we are confusing the One a
the Many. Such theories are sufficiently Peace by the
fact that they cannot be stated without contradiction.
Those who forbid us to say that A is B in virtue of A’s
“¢ participation in being affected by’”’ B (252 Ὁ) have them-
Serves 10 use Such ferms as “is,” ‘apart from, ‘from
others,” “ by itself,” and thus carry about with them an
inner voice that refutes their theory.
We must say (1) that all things are incapable of participating
in one another, or (2) that all things are capable of participating
in one another, or (3) that some things are capable of partici-
pating in one another and others are not. In the first case, rest
and motion cannot participate in being,and so cannot be. That
makes havoc of all the theories we have considered hitherto.
In the second case, it will be possible for motion to rest and
for rest to move. Only the third case is left, namely, that
some things can participate in one another and others cannot
(25276).
We shall find that these simple considerations suggest
the solution of the difficulty we have been dealing with.
This solution is briefly that zs and is not have no meaning
except in judgements or predications (Aoyor). In one
sense, this doctrine is not new. In the Phaedo Plato
made Sokrates formulate the method of seeking for truth
in judgements (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις), and there too we have the
terminology which represents the subject as “ partaking ”’
1The phrase κοινωνία παθήματος ἑτέρου is derived from the use of
πεπονθέναι to express the relation of a subject to a predicate. Cf. Parm,
139 ὁ:
THE SOPHIST 283
in the predicate, and also the way of speaking according
to which the subject “is affected by” (πέπονθεν) the
predicate.’ What is new here is that, whereas in the
Phaedo it is the particular things of sense that “ partake
in” the forms, we are now discussing the participa-
tion of the forms or “kinds” (γένη) with one another.
The need for such discussion has been shown in the
Parmenides (§§ 194, 199). It is to be observed further
that these forms or “kinds” of which we are now
speaking are just the common predicates (κοινὰ) of the
Theaetetus (δ 186). We may say, if we like, that these are
the Platonic forms as distinct from the Pythagorean or
the Sokratic.
§ 210. We have found that some forms or kinds will
participate in one another and others will not, just as some
letters will go with one another and others will not. The
vowels, in particular, pervade all combinations of letters,
so that without a vowel there cannot be any combination
at all. In the same way, some notes in the octave are
concordant and others are not. In these two cases we
have the arts of Grammar and Music to direct us, and so
we require an art which will show us what forms will
harmonise with one another and what forms will not, and
especially whether there are any kinds which (like the
vowels) pervade all combinations and disjunctions (e.g. is
and is not), That is just the art of Dialectic, and the man
who possesses that will be able to distinguish what forms
can enter into combination and what will not.
In particular, he will be able to distinguish (1) a single form
pervading many single and separate things, (2) many forms
distinct from one another but comprehended from without by
one, (3) a single form pervading in turn many such wholes
and binding them together in one, while many other forms
are quite separate and apart from it (253 d).
This passage gives us the foundation of Plato’s Logic.
The following points in it should be noted :
(a) He mee clearly between (1) genus and (2)
1 Phaed, 104 a.
284 LOGIC
species, though he uses the terms form and kind (εἶδος,
ἰδέα, γένος) indifferently of both.
(>) The single forms described under (3) are the “highest
kinds” (μέγιστα γένη), such as Being, Rest, and Motion.
These are all of them “ manners of participation,” or, as
Aristotle called them, “forms of predication” (σχήματα
τῆς κατηγορίας). They have no meaning except in a
judgement.
(ὦ In the Phaedo the question was what particular things
admit a given form as their predicate ; here the question
is one of the compatibility or incompatibility of the
“highest kinds” or forms with one another. Is it possible
for any of these to be predicated of one another ; and, if
so, which can be so predicated and which can not?
(4) As Being is only one of the categories, though the
most pervasive of all, it has no meaning except as entering
into a judgement. By itself the word “is’’ means
nothing ; it is only the bond that unites a subject to a
predicate. We may put this by saying that Plato for the
first time discovered ‘the ambiguity of the copula,”
though, for reasons which will appear, he would certainly
not have put the thing in that way.
§ 211. To avoid confusion, let us select only a few of
the “highest kinds” (μέγιστα γένη) and consider (1) their
nature, and (2) which combine with which and to what
extent. In this way we may be able to discover some
sense in which we may safely say that there really is such
a thing as “not being.” To begin with, Rest and
Motion exclude one another, but both of them are, and
therefore combine with Being. That gives us three kinds,
but each of the three is other than the other two and the
same as itself. That gives us a fourth and a fifth kind,
Same and Other; for we cannot identify these with any of
ahre first three.*
For (1) if we identify either Rest or Motion with any
common predicate of both, then it will be predicable of the
ICf. Theaet. 185 a “4. (above, p. 247).
THE SOPHIST 285
other, so that Motion will rest or Rest will move. But Same
and Other are common predicates of Rest and Motion,
therefore neither Rest nor Motion can be identified .with
Same or Other. Again, (2) if we identify Being and Same,
then, as Rest and Motion both are, they will be the same.
Lastly, (3) we cannot identify Being and Other; for Other
is essentially (τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐστίν) relative (πρὸς ἕτερον) and
Being is absolute (καθ᾽ αὑτό). Therefore Other is a fifth
kind (255 a-d).
Now Other pervades all the rest, just like Same and
Being ; for each of them is the same as itself and other
than the rest, and this amounts to saying that each of them
is itself and is not any of the others.
Thus Motion, being other than Rest, ἐς mot Rest, but it ἐς
Motion. Motion, being other than Same, is mot Same, but it
is the same as itself. (We must not mind the apparent
contradiction. If we had not shown that Motion and Rest
exclude one another, we might even have to say that Motion
was at rest.) Again, Motion, being other than Other, is
Other ina sense and zs mot Other inasense. Lastly, Motion,
being other than Being, zs mot Being, but it zs Being because
they all partake in Being. Motion, then, is really both
Not being and Being, and the same thing will apply to all the
other kinds, since each of them is other than Being and each
of them zs (255 e—256 e).
We may say, then, that each of the kinds, in virtue of its
otherness, has much Being and infinite Not being. And,
as Being itself is other than all the rest, we must say that
Being is mot just as many times as there are other things,
and they are innumerable. Not being these, it és just
itself, but it zs mot the rest innumerable times.
§ 212. But this Not being which we have discovered is
not the opposite of Being (like the Not being Parmenides
spoke of). The negative term (ἀπόφασις) produced by
prefixing “ποῖ to a word only signifies something other
than the word which follows the negative, or rather than
the thing that word denotes. Now otherness is subdivided
into as many parts as knowledge, so, just as there are
many sciences and arts with names of their own, the parts
286 LOGIC
of otherness will have names of their own. The part of
otherness opposed (ἀντιτιθέμενον) to the beautiful is the
not-beautiful, which is not other than anything else but
beauty, and the not-beautiful ἐς just as much as beauty,
and so of the not-great, the not-just, and so forth. It is
in this combination with a particular part of Being that
Not being really is; it is “ποῖ being so-and-so,” and it és
just as much as what it is not. We need not trouble
ourselves further, then, about the question whether Not
being as the opposite of Being can be thought or spoken
of or not, In the sense we have now given it, it certainly
is and is all-pervasive. It is merely childish to separate
Being from Not being, and to argue that a thing must
either be or not be. The two forms are inseparably bound
up with one another, and this is what makes rational
speech possible (διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν κοινωνίαν ὃ
λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν 259 e).
What has been proved so far is (1) that everything that
is positively determined is also negatively determined, and
(2) that negative terms are an expression of reality
(δηλώματα τῆς οὐσίας). It has been shown further, (3) that
the reality expressed by a negative term is not the contrary
of the corresponding positive term, but its contradictory.
On the other hand, it has been shown (4) that, as the
negative term must always be understood in relation to
the corresponding positive, the reality it expresses is always
a particular part of reality, so that “not-great,” for
instance, does not include “beautiful” or “just,’’ but only
small,”
§ 213. In the course of the foregoing discussion the
remark was thrown out that we have found the Not being
which was necessary to justify our account of the Sophist.
This is not explained further, but the point is quite simple.
We called him an image-maker, and he replied that there
was no such thing as an image, since an image 15 really not
real. We now see that there is nothing in this objection ;
for the art of image-making, like all other arts, includes a
part of Being and a part of Not being. The image is not
THE SOPHIST 287
the reality, indeed, and the reality is not the image, but
that involves no difficulty. We are dealing with a par-
ticular art, that of Image- making, and in it “not real”’ has
a perfectly definite and positive signification. The “not
real” is not the unreal, but just the image, which ἐς quite
as much as that of which it is the image.
Even admitting this, however, the Sophist may still say
that it is impossible to say or think what is false. Though
we have shown that Not being zs, or in other words that it
combines with Being, we have not shown that it combines
with speech. But, unless it does so, falsehood is impossible,
and so therefore is deceit. We must, therefore, scrutinise
carefully (1) speech (λόγος), (2) judgement (δόξα), and
(3) appearance (φαντασία), with the view of seeing whether
Not being and consequently falsehood can enter into them
or not.
We must begin, as we did in the case of letters, by con-
sidering whether all words combine with one another, or
whether some will and some will not. There are two kinds
of words that are expressions of reality (δηλώματα τῆς οὐσίας),
nouns (ὀνόματα) and verbs (ῥήματα). The latter express
action or inaction or the reality of being or not being (1.6. the
reality expressed by a positive or negative term); the former
express the agent, or what 1s or is not so-and-so, A statement
(λόγος) cannot consist of nouns alone or of verbs alone; the
very simplest must have one of each, eg. “man learns.”
Further, every statement must be “of some one or something”
(τινὸς εἶναι)» and it must have a certain quality (ποῖόν twa
εἶναι); i.e. it must express something | which is or becomes
in the present, past, or future (τῶν ὄντων ἢ γιγνομένων ἢ
γεγονότων ἢ μελλόντων). Now let us make a simple experi-
ment. If I say “ Theaitetos is sitting,” that is a statement
which is “ of Theaitetos,”’ and it has the quality of expressing
something which really is at the present moment. But, if I
say “ Theaitetos, to whom I am talking at the present moment
(νῦν), is flying,” that is also a statement which is “ of Theai-
tetos,” but it has the quality of saying something of him which,
1That “quality” really means tense seems to follow from the context,
and especially from the emphasis on “to whom I am talking at the preserg
moment” in the illustration which follows.
288 LOGIC
though expressing a real action, is something other than what
is real with regard to Theaitetos at the present moment. It is,
therefore, possible to speak of what is not as being, and that
is what we mean by falsehood (261 d—263 d).
In fact, what we call truth and falsehood are not to be
found in terms, whether positive or negative, but only
in the proposition, which is a copulation (συμπλοκή) of
terms.
§ 214. It will be observed that significant negative judge-
ment is explained as the affirmation of a negative predicate
(ἀπόφασις), but it would be altogether wrong to identify
this with what Aristotle calls an “indefinite” predicate
(ἀόριστον ῥῆμα), that is, a predicate which may be truly
predicated of everything alike, whether existent or non-
existent. In the present case, for instance, “15. sitting”
excludes every other form of Rest, and therefore “is
sitting” implies the negative judgements ‘“‘is not lying,”’
‘ig not standing,” and whatever other forms of Rest
there may be. In the second place, ‘is sitting ’’ excludes
all the forms of Motion, which cannot have any com-
munion with Rest, and therefore implies the negative
judgements “15. not walking,” “is not running,” “is not
flying.” The significance of the negative judgement
depends, in fact, on the system of kinds and forms to
which it refers, ane we should call a ‘universe of dis-
course.” Plato held that there was a perfectly definite
number of such forms in each kind, which it is the
business of the dialectician to discover. That is why he
insists that “not being” is subdivided into as many sub-
divisions as the arts, and that each “part” of “not being”
can be understood only in relation to the corresponding
“part. of “being.” The nepative predicate “is not
flying” does not include “is beautiful’’ or “18 just.”
In the present case, the predicate “15 flying ’’ expresses
a real form of action, a real form of the kind Motion, and
it is “of Theaitetos,” who is a realagent. The reason why
the statement “Theaitetos is flying” is not true is just
that, at the present moment (νῦν), Theaitetos ‘is sitting,”
THE SOPHIST 289
and that predicate excludes “15 flying.” It does not exclude
‘was flying ’’ or “ will be flying,” and that is why we must
attend to the ‘‘quality” of the statement.!
§ 215. But, if it is possible to say what is false, it is also
possible to think what is false ; for thought only differs from
speech in this respect, that it is “ the conversation of the
soul with itself taking place without voice,” while speech
is “the vocal stream issuing from the soul through the
lips.” Now we know that positive and negative predica-
tion (φάσις and ἀπόφασις) are found in speech, and, when
the same things occur silently in the soul, we call them
judgement (δόξα). Again, when affirmation and negation
take place in the soul, not in virtue of its own activity, but
through the agency of sensation, we call that appearance
(φαντασία). It follows that, as thought (διάνοια) is mental
speech, and judgement Cl is “16 completion of
thought,” and appearance (φαντασία) is a mixture of sensa-
tion and judgement, the truth and falsehood which are
possible in speech will also be possible in judgement and
in appearance.
Now that he has shown the possibility of false judgement
and false appearance, the Stranger goes on to give his final
definition of the Sophist. That is of no particular import-
ance for us here, though we may note some interesting
points. Of these the most significant is the way in which
advantage is taken of the division of productive art into
divine and human to assert in impressive language the
doctrine that what we call natural objects are the work of
God and not of Nature or of Chance. We shall see
presently that this thought was occupying Plato’s mind at
the time, and that he was already trying to work out a
rational justification of theism.
1 Most commentators understand by “quality” the truth or falsehood
of the statement, but that would make the argument puerile. ‘There is
no point in asking how we know that Theaitetos “is sitting” ow. We
see him, of course.
CHAPTER XV
POLITICS
The Statesman
§ 216. The dialogue entitled the Statesman (Πολιτικός)
is in form a sequel to the Sophist. The characters are the
same and the leading part is still taken by the Eleatic
Stranger. There is no reason to suppose that the two
dialogues are separated by any considerable interval of
time.
The discussion begins by an attempt to find the defini-
tion of the Statesman by the method of division, and it is
easier to trace the connexion of this with the principal
theme of the dialogue than it was in the case of the Sophist.
The first definition we reach represents the King as the
Shepherd of Men, as he is already called in Homer.
There is good reason for believing that this was the
Pythagorean view. The King to them was an “image”
of God upon earth; for God was the shepherd of the
world.1 This is, in fact, the theocratic ideal of kingship.
The Eleatic Stranger points out, however, that it rests on
a confusion between God and man, and could only be
realised if God were in person our ruler. That is the
point of the myth related by the Stranger. The course
of the world was once directed by God himself, but we are
not living in thatage. There are seasons when the captain
of the world-ship (a Pythagorean conception 5) retires to
1 See Campbell’s Introduction to the Statesman, p. xxv “4.
2 £. Gr, Pk p. 342.
THE STATESMAN 201
his conning-tower and leaves the ship to itself. At those
times the world goes round in the opposite direction to
that which God had given it, and all natural processes
are reversed (an idea which may have been suggested by
Empedokles). We are living in one of these periods, and
there can be no question for us of a divine ruler. There
is a curious hint that, after all, the ideal of mankind as a
flock or a herd fed by the hand of God may not be the
highest.. If the men of those days, who had no need to
take thought for the morrow, and who found everything
bountifully provided for them without any labour on their
part, spent their time in gathering wisdom, and made use
of their power to communicate with the beasts in the
interests of philosophy, then indeed they were happier
than we are. But if they and the beasts spent their time
in telling fables to each other such as have been handed
down by tradition to our own days, it is not hard to form
a judgement as to that either (272 ο). This passage is
very important. It is plain that the theocratic ideal of
the Pythagoreans had little attraction for Plato. He did
not think we could get rid of problems by simplifying them
out of existence.
§217. Let us turn, then, from the divine ruler to the
human. He will not be the feeder of his flock, but only
its tender (27: 6). He will have complete knowledge
of what is good for his subjects, and he will secure it for
them with or without their consent, just as the doctor who
knows what is good for the body will cure his patients
whether they like it or not. He will have no need of
laws. No law can take account of the infinite variety of
particular cases ; it can only lay down certain principles in
a rough and ready way. If the ruler were able to attend
to every case in person, and if he could always be present,
it would be absurd for him to trammel himself with laws.
If he had to go away for a time, he would no doubt make
laws to guide his subjects in his absence, just as a doctor
might leave behind him written instructions for his patient.
But, when the doctor came back, it would be ridiculous for
292 POLITICS
him to insist on keeping to these instructions. He would
feel quite free to alter the treatment if he saw fit. In the
same way, if the philosopher king were ever to appear on
earth (as he may have done in the past), there would be no
need of laws. At present there is no appearance of his
return, so we must do as well as we can without him. We
must try to frame laws as nearly as possible in accordance
with what he would approve, and we must insist upon their
being scrupulously observed. If men found they were
being badly treated by the practitioners of the arts of
medicine and navigation, they would insist upon a code of
rules for these arts being drawn up, and upon all trans-
gressions of these being punished, and that is the true
place of law in the state. It is only a makeshift (δεύτερος
mAovs); but, as things are, it is indispensable. It is in
this way that Plato deals with the philosopher king of the
Republic. His rule is still the ideal, but there is no
immediate prospect of it being realised. The use of such
an ideal is nevertheless very great. In the first place, it
gives us a standard by which we can judge existing or
possible institutions, and in the second place, it will save
us from the mistake of attaching too high a value to these,
and refusing in consequence to contemplate any alteration
of them. The true point of view from which to regard
existing laws and institutions is to look on them as more or
less tolerable expedients. They are all alike open to criti-
cism when compared with something higher, and ultimately
with the rule of the philosopher king. We may say, then,
if we please, that the purpose of the Statesman is to deter-
mine the provinces of realism and idealism in politics.
We must not put the ideal too high, as the theocratic ideal
did, but we may make it as high as we please, so long as
we take account of human nature. The analogy of the
beasts of the field is inapplicable to mankind.
§218. Plato goes on to give a classification of constitu-
tions from this point of view, and, as might be expected,
it is quite different from that of the Republic. There are
six constitutions altogether, the rule of the philosopher
THE STATESMAN 203
king being excluded as hors concours. The basis of division
is twofold. The rulers may be one, few, or many, and they
may rule according to law or lawlessly. Of the legal con-
stitutions, kingship comes first, aristocracy second, and
democracy third ; for the possibility of political knowledge
is inversely proportional to the number of rulers, But,
when we come to the lawless constitutions, the order 15
reversed, There is only one name for a constitutional
and a lawless democracy, but they are quite different in
principle. Of all possible constitutions democracy can do
the least good and the least harm, so that, while a consti-
tutional democracy is inferior to aristocracy and still more
to constitutional monarchy, even a lawless democracy is
far superior to a lawless oligarchy, and still more to a
lawless tyranny. Such is the view of Plato, but it would
be very hard to imagine Sokrates accepting any such doc-
trine. Even the Periklean democracy is not harshly
treated. It is, of course, a lawless democracy, but it is not
condemned so bitterly as it was in the Gorgias and the
Republic. lf it cannot do much good, it does relatively
little mischief. The legal democracy is more or less the
Athenian democracy of Plato’s own time, and is placed
just below true aristocracy. All this is quite in keeping
with what we have learnt as to Plato’s political upbringing
and experience (δ 158), and it agrees very well with what
he says about his political attitude in Epistle vii. It was
impossible to maintain the Sokratic condemnation of all
democracy after the events which marked the end of the
fifth century.
But that is not all. Plato does not insist in a doc-
trinaire fashion on any rigid classification of constitutions,
One of the chief functions of the true ruler is just to unite
the various elements in the state, as the weaver unites the
warp and the woof of his web, and there is room for a
number of mixed constitutions as well as for the six types
already described. In the Laws Plato’s final conclusion is
that, as things are, and in the absence of the philosopher
king, the best constitution will be a combination of legal
294 POLITICS
kingship with legal democracy.1. He is thus able to take
an extremely practical view of political questions, and he is
able to do so without abating one jot of his idealism.
That is where he goes beyond Sokrates, whose political
teaching had not, we have seen (§145), been an unmixed
blessing to his country.
Plato and Dionysios.
§ 219. Plato’s political teaching in the Academy had an
enormous influence through his pupils; for the foundations
of Hellenistic civilisation were mainly laid by them. His
personal intervention in the politics of the Hellenic nation,
which was already coming into being, was in some ways a
failure, as the world counts failure. He expected it to be
so, and he entered upon it with great misgiving; but it
seemed worth trying, nevertheless. It was just possible
that he should succeed, and friends of his who were in a
position to form a judgement were confident that he would,
so he felt unable to shirk the task offered to him. To
decline would have been treason to philosophy (£p. vit.
328e). If he had succeeded, the course of European
history would have been altered, and we shall see that his
failure was due to causes beyond his control.
In 367 B.c. Dionysios I. of Syracuse died at the age of
sixty-three, after a reign of thirty-eight years. He was in
many ways a great man, but he had failed in the main
purpose of his life, which was to drive the Carthaginians
from Sicily. He had been defeated by Hanno the year
before his death, and a peace was now concluded on the
basis of the status quo anie bellum. His successor, Diony-
sios II., was nearly thirty years old, but he was quite unfit
1Tn the Laws the best constitution isa mean between Persian monarchy
and Athenian democracy (756). Apparently Plato would have been an
adinirer of the British Constitution. It is also worthy of note that his
ideal is not very unlike that of the speech of Perikles in Thucydides, and
is just what might be expected of the stepson of Pyrilampes. ‘That does
not, of course, imply approval of Periklean democracy with Perikles left
out. The illustration from the art of weaving is common to the Statesman
and the Laws (734 599.).
DIONYSIOS II. 295
to take up the reins of government. His father had
always been jealous of sharing his power with anyone, and
had even sent his ablest minister, Philistos the historian,
into exile at Adria, near the mouth of the Po. For the
same reason he had purposely kept his son at a distance
from all public affairs, and encouraged him to find amuse-
ment in such pursuits as amateur carpentry and turning.
The young man was not, we are told, without natural
gifts, and it seemed to Dion, who was his father’s brother-
in-law and a devoted admirer of Plato, that something
might still be made of him. It was too late to send him
to the Academy at Athens, which by this time was the
recognised institution for the training of rulers and princes,
so Dion conceived the scheme of bringing Plato, now sixty
years old, to Syracuse. There was nothing in the least
chimerical in the project, and the problems Syracuse had to
face made it essential that she should have an enlightened
ruler, The great question of the day was once more how
Hellenism could maintain itself against the pressure of
Persia on the one side and Carthage on the other, and far-
sighted statesmen saw clearly that the only hope lay in
taking the offensive. We hear most, as is natural, of
Persia. The conditions imposed by the King’s Peace of
387 B.c., which left the Greek cities of Asia under Persian
rule, were humiliating and intolerable. That side of the
problem was successfully dealt with later by Alexander,
and it was from the Academy that he derived his inspira-
tion;' but the situation in Sicily was quite as serious.
The Carthaginian question was only another aspect of the
Persian question, and it is at least an instructive tradition
that represents the battles of Salamis and Himera as having
been fought on the same day.?
1Plut. adv. Col, 1126d. Delios of Ephesos, an associate (ἑταῖρος) of
Plato, was sent to Alexander by the Hellenes who lived in Asia, and did
most to enflame him and stir him up to engage in war with the barbarians.
2It is interesting to note that the struggle between Hellenes and
Semites had also been going on in Cyprus, the other great “ meeting-
place of races.” Isokrates played a similar part there to that which Plate
played in Sicily,—in his own way, of course.
296 POLITICS
§ 220. Plato refused, however, to let things be rushed.
Dionysios had a great deal of ground to make up, and
it was necessary for him to go through a serious course
of higher study before he could be trusted to make
even a beginning with schemes of reform and liberation.
Unfortunately he was rather old for this. According to
Plato’s own principles, he ought to have begun these studies
at the age of twenty, so it was natural enough that, after the
first enthusiasm had passed, he should feel them irksome.
That was the opportunity of the opposition who still clung
to the principles of the elder Dionysios. Philistos (or, as
Plato calls him, Philistides) had been recalled from exile,
and he set himself at once to undermine the influence
of Dion and Plato. The somewhat masterful and haughty
temperament of Dion also played into his hands, and
it was not hard to persuade Dionysios that his kins-
man was taking too much upon himself. Only four
months after Plato’s arrival Dion was banished, and Plato
saw it was all over with the project of reform. On the
other hand, Dionysios had no idea of losing Plato, to
whom he had become deeply attached. He had, in fact,
been jealous of Dion’s intimacy with him, and hoped to
have him more to himself now Dion was out of the way.
It was not to be expected that Plato would give up his
friend, however, and he pressed his claim in season and
out of season. A situation which threatened to become
impossible was ended by the outbreak of war. Dionysios
1Grote thinks Plato was wrong here, but that seems very doubtful.
If he was not to give Dionysios a regular training like that of the
Academy, what was the use of his coming to Syracuse at all? Possibly
the men of those days believed too much in science, but their belief in it
was perfectly sincere. Prof. Bury’s view is even more remarkable. He
thinks (vol. 11. p. 247) that Plato should have contented himself “ with
inculcating the general principles which he has expounded with such
charm in the Republic,” in which case “ Dionysius would in all likelihood
have attempted to create at Syracuse a dim adumbration of the ideal
state” ! In that case, we may add, the Carthaginians would have
annexed Syracuse. Plato was no utopian dreamer, and the notion that
he proposed to introduce the arrangements of the Repud/ic at Syracuse
(of all places) is quite unsupported by any sort of evidence.
DIONYSIOS AND DION 207
had to interrupt his studies, and Plato was free to return
to Athens. The understanding was that at the conclusion
of the war Dion should be restored to his old position,
and that then Plato would return. On his way home he
visited Archytas at Taras.
§ 221. It is not very likely that Dionysios was sincere
in his promise to become reconciled to Dion, but he
was determined to get Plato back at all costs. He tried
to carry on his mathematical studies in his absence, and
made the subject quite fashionable at court. At first
Plato declined to return unless Dion was reinstated, but
he was urgently entreated to do so by Dion himself and by
Archytas, the most successful statesman of the day. He
ought certainly to have been a good judge of the situation,
and he assured Plato that Dionysios was really enthusiastic
about philosophy, and that everything would now go
smoothly. With great reluctance Plato accordingly made
up his mind (361 B.c.) to “recross Charybdis” (/p. vii.
345 6); but he soon discovered that Dionysios had not
the slightest intention of doing anything for Dion, and
a breach became inevitable. Plato wished to go home,
but Dionysios would not let him. No ship captain would
venture to take him as a passenger in the circumstances,
and he had to wait a whole year. At last a violent
quarrel broke out on the occasion of a military revolt.
Dionysios made Herakleides, one of his officers, respon-
sible for it, and Plato with great difficulty got him ΟΕ
Dionysios could not forgive the way in which he had been
shamed into an act of clemency, and bitterly reproached
Plato with having hindered him in the work of reform
and the liberation of the Hellenic cities under Carthaginian
rule. Instead of that he had made him learn geometry !
Plato was excluded from the court and practically kept a
prisoner, until, on the intercession of Archytas, he was at
last allowed to return to Athens (360 B.c.). Even then
1We gather from the Epist/es that Plato was very unpopular with
the mercenary troops. ‘These wild Keltic warriors knew very well that
if Plato had his way their day was over.
298 POLITICS
there was no final breach. Dionysios kept writing to
Athens for explanations of difficult points, and Plato
answered him. He even wrote a book, much to Plato’s
annoyance, in which he professed to disclose the Platonic
philosophy. It is clear that Archytas and Dion were not
wrong in believing he had some natural gifts, but they
had not been cultivated early enough. He was vain and
petulant, no doubt, but his attachment to Plato was
obviously sincere, and we cannot help feeling a little
sorry for him, when we remember what he might have
been if his father had given him a chance when he was
young enough to profit by it.’
§ 222. At this point Plato’s personal responsibility for
the affairs of Syracuse ceases, but Dion was still to be
reckoned with. He was not the sort of man to wait for
ever, and he began to collect adherents all over Hellas.
He had determined to assert his rights by force of arms,
Plato would take no part in the adventure, but the young
hotbloods of the Academy were eager in the cause of their
fellow-student, among them Plato’s nephew, Speusippos,
and Eudemos of Cyprus, the friend after whom Aristotle
named his dialogue on immortality.” All preparations
were completed by the summer of 357 B.c., but difh-
culties began at once. NHerakleides, who had gone into
exile after the incident described above, would not subor-
dinate himself to Dion and remained behind. With only
800 men Dion set sail for Sicily. Philistos was waiting
for him in the Adriatic; but Dion eluded him by sailing
straight across the sea instead of following the usual coast
route. Once landed in Sicily he received accessions of
strength from every side. Dionysios, who had not ex-
pected an attack in this direction, was in Italy, and
Dion made himself master of Syracuse. All might now
have been well had Dion been a little more concilia-
tory. Herakleides arrived on the scene and had to be
1This may be why Dion had tried to secure the succession for the
sons of Dionysios J. by Aristomache. ‘They were much younger.
2 Eudemos lost his life in one of the combats round Syracuse.
DION AND KALLIPPOS 299
given a share in the government, but this proved a
constant source of weakness, and led at one time to the
temporary deposition of Dion. This is not the place
to recount the wretched details of the three-cornered
struggle between Dionysios, Dion, and Herakleides ; it
will be enough to indicate its result. Herakleides was
murdered at the instigation of Dion, and Dion himself
fell by the dagger of Kallippos, an Athenian and a
member of the Academy, who had been his most con-
fidential adviser. Kallippos only held power for about a
year, when he was once more expelled by Dion’s partisans.
Plato felt deeply the discredit which the treachery of
Kallippos had brought upon Athens and the Academy,
but he never wavered in his belief in Dion’s integrity. He
was well aware of the defect in his character which has
been pointed out,! but he continued to regard him as per-
fectly sincere and disinterested in his political action. In
support of this estimate it may be observed that it would
have been comparatively easy for Dion, who was closely
related to the royal house, to brush Dionysios aside at the
beginning of his reign and seize the power for himself.
Instead of that he did his best, in conjunction with Archytas,
to fit the young prince for the position he was called upon
to occupy. If he was embittered by the return he received
for this act of self-abnegation, we can hardly wonder at it.
His property had been confiscated, and his wife had been
compelled to marry another man.
§ 223. The overthrow of Kallippos was the occasion of
Plato’s last endeavour to do something for Sicily. The
partisans of Dion asked him for advice with regard to the
settlement of the constitution, and this gave him the
opportunity of writing the two open letters to which we
1In his letter congratulating Dion on his success (Epistle iv.) Plato
tells him that some people think him too deficient in complaisance, and
warns him against this fault (321 b). He is very anxious that the rule
of Dion should do the Academy credit. He reminds him that the ‘ you
know whos” (τοὺς οἶσθα δήπου 320 c) are expected to surpass others
even more than grown men surpass children.
300 POLITICS
owe all our knowledge of these affairs. The first (Episile
vii.) is a dignified defence of his own political attitude
throughout life, and it bears witness at once to his dis-
appointment in men whom he had trusted, and to his
unshaken confidence in his principles. He is willing to
advise the partisans of Dion, if they are really sincere in
their desire to realise Dion’s plans. He clearly does not
feel sure of them. In the second letter (Epistle viii.) he
suggests, however, a scheme for the government of
Syracuse, in which Dionysios himself was to be asked
to take a share, if he would accept it, along with Hippa-
rinos, his brother, and Hipparinos, the son of Dion. It
need hardly be said that this proposal was too statesman-
like to be accepted by embittered party men, and so the
Syracusan Empire broke up for the time being. As Plato
saw, it was in danger of falling into the hands of the
Carthaginians or the Oscans."
We have seen how very nearly Plato came to succeed-
ing. At the very least he might have done for Dionysios
what the Pythagorean Lysis did for Epameinondas. It
was said at the time that the prosperity of Thebes at this
date was due entirely to the philosophers.2, And he might
have done even more with more promising material. If
it had been an Alexander of Macedon that Plato had to
deal with instead of a Dionysios, a Greek king would have
been ruling at Carthage before many years had passed.
As it was, it was left for the Romans to carry out the task
which seemed to fall naturally to the ruler of Syracuse,’ and
D Ep. Vili. 353 €.
2 Alkidamas said: Θήβησιν ἅμα ot προστάται φιλόσοφοι ἐγένοντο
καὶ εὐδαιμόνησεν ἡ πόλις (Ar. Riet. 1398 b, 18).
3The First Punic War broke out just eighty years after the final
expulsion of Dionysios II. from Syracuse by Timoleon. Plato did not
live to see either the brief restoration of Dionysios (345 B.c.) or his final
overthrow (344 B.c.). After that Dionysios lived the life of a dilettante
at Corinth, where Aristoxenos saw him, and asked him the cause of his
quarrel with Plato. Dionysios answered that no one tells a tyrant the
truth, and that he had been robbed of Plato’s goodwill by want of frank-
ness in his so-called friends (Plutarch, Timoleon, 15).
THE LAWS 301
that brought about the division between Eastern and
Western Europe which, to all appearance, will be the
great political problem of the immediate future.
The Laws.
§224. It must not be supposed, however, that Plato’s
attempt to make a constitutional ruler of Dionysios bore
no fruit, even at the time. It was the immediate occasion
of his undertaking his longest and most comprehensive
work. It is true that a credible tradition represents the
Laws as having been published after Plato’s death by
Philip of Opous, and it is likely enough that he never gave
the finishing touch to the work. That is quite consistent,
however, with its having been begun a good many years
earlier. It is a treatise which goes into great detail, and
which must have called for considerable study of existing
codes of law. Now in Episéle iii. (316 a), written shortly
after 360 B.c., we are told expressly that Plato had been
working with: Dionysios at the ‘ preambles’”’ (προοίμια) to
laws during his second visit to Syracuse. This is explained
by a passage in the Laws itself (722 dsqq.), where we are
told that the legislator ought always to preface his laws by
a “ prelude’’ (προοίμιον) in which he explains their motive.
That gives us some insight into Plato’s method of teaching
politics and jurisprudence, which is quite in accordance
with the doctrine of the Statesman. In order to frame a
code of laws on any subject, we must first of all lay down
clearly the general principles which are to guide us, and
then go on to embody these in detailed enactments. The
general principles will as far as possible be such as woul
be approved by the ideal ruler who can dispense with laws
altogether; the particular enactments will take account of
the circumstances of the state for which they are intended.
The fiction of the dialogue is that a colony is to be
- established in Crete on a deserted site, and the magis-
trate of Knossos who is charged with the duty of
legislating for it is represented as consulting an Athenian
302 POLITICS
Stranger and a Spartan on the subject. The very first
questions asked before legislation in detail is attempted are
whether the new city is on the coast or inland, whether the
soil is fertile or not, and the like (704 4 5gg.). There is no
attempt to legislate fora city in the abstract; we are dealing
with a particular colony, and we have to take account of
all the special circumstances affecting it.
§ 225. There is no work of Plato’s which has been so
little appreciated as the Laws, and yet it contains much of
his maturest thought which we should otherwise know
nothing about, and embodies the results of a long and
varied experience of human life. It is, of course, im-
possible to summarise it here; all that can be done is to
suggest certain points which may help the reader to a
juster view of what Plato himself probably considered his
most important work.
He still believed, in spite of his disappointment with
Dionysios, that the co-operation of a tyrant with a philo-
sopher would result in the greatest blessings for the
Hellenic nation, and he reasserts this conviction emphati-
cally (709 e). Failing that, however, much might be
hoped from the influence of philosophy on law-givers
and framers of constitutions. He did not, therefore,
think it an unworthy use of his last years to codify whet
seemed best to him in Greek Law, public and private, and
especially in the Law of Athens, supplementing it with
legislative proposals of his own. To understand this we
must try to realise the condition of the Greek world at the
time. We are not accustomed in this country to systematic
legislation (what the Greeks called νομοθεσία), though such
things as the Code Napoléon may give us a notion of what
is meant, but it was very familiar to the Greeks. Every
colony had a written constitution and a code of laws, and
the task of framing these was regularly entrusted to a
single individual or a small commission. The situation
presupposed in the Laws was of almost everyday occur-
rence, and there is nothing extravagant in the idea that a
man like the Athenian Stranger—who is more or less Plato
THE LAWS 303
himself—should be able to give valuable assistance in such
circumstances. It is certain, indeed, that many of the men
who gave laws to the Greek States at this time were mem-
bers of the Academy, and that several States applied to the
Academy for an expert legislator when they were amend-
ing their constitutions! The purpose of the Laws is,
therefore, an eminently practical one, and the work is
designed to meet a real need of the time.
§ 226. No doubt it may seem strange to a modern reader
that Plato should devote so much attention as he does
to minute police regulations about water-supply and the
picking of ripe fruits by the passing wayfarer. As to
that, there are two remarks to be made. In the first place,
one of Plato’s most deeply rooted convictions is that all
human affairs are very insignificant in comparison with
the immensity of the world, and that the events of the
day are only an incident in the history of mankind through
countless ages. Sometimes he feels that Man is perhaps
no more than a plaything of God, and that human life is
not after all a serious thing. Unfortunately, whether it is
serious or not, we have got to take it seriously (803 b),
but it is absurd to suppose there is much to choose
between one department of it and another in point of
worth and dignity. Nothing is too humble, as nothing is
too exalted, for the philosopher’s attention.
Closely connected with this is his belief that homely
examples are often the best to illustrate important prin-
ciples. He had learnt that from Sokrates, and he had
discussed the matter in the Statesman. ‘This 15 particu-
larly the case in jurisprudence. Jurists, who presumably
know their business, do not quarrel with the Institutes
for their minute discussions of the ownership of stray
animals and swarming bees. It is not to be supposed that
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304 TOLITICS
these questions were treated entirely for their own sake
by the Roman lawyers; it is because such simple instances
are the best for the purpose of bringing out the funda-
mental principles of law.
This brings us to another very important point. We
have seen that many of Plato’s associates became lawgivers,
and it is hardly too much to say that his work is the foun-
dation of Hellenistic Law. That explains the fact, which
was perfectly well known to some of the older jurists like
Cujas, though it is often overlooked at the present day,
that many features of Roman Law are derived from this
source.’ The direct influence of Greek philosophy on
Roman Law has probably been overestimated, but its
indirect influence has hardly been done justice to. The
way in which this came about was as follows. When the
Romans came into closer contact with non-Roman peoples,
that is to say, especially with the Greek communities of
Italy and Sicily, it was found that the principles of their
civil law could not be applied easily to the relations between
Romans and foreigners or to the relations of foreigners
with one another. Hence arose the jus gentium, which, in
its origin, was a sort of common law of Italy. This was
administered by the praetor peregrinus and embodied in his
edict, which was simply an announcement of the principles
on which he intended to decide certain cases. The edict
was handed down from praetor to praetor with such modi-
fications as were required from time to time, and ultimately
became a regular body of law, the jus honorarium. It was
inevitable that many of its provisions should be modelled on
the laws of the Hellenic states with which the Romans came
in contact, and these in turn were profoundly influenced
by the jurisprudence of the Academy. Now that Hellen-
istic law is becoming better known from the papyri, we may
confidently anticipate some valuable discoveries in this field.
1 See Cuiacii Comm. in lib. xlix. Pauli ad Edictum, ad ὃ ad Namusam
et seg.: multa...auctores nostri ex Platone mutuati sunt, Examples
are given in Observationum lib, xxiv. c. 24.
THE LAWS 305
Education.
§ 227. In the next chapter we shall be dealing with the
most abstract aspect of Plato’s philosophy, so it will be
well to give here a brief sketch of the educational system
recommended in the Laws. This will keep us in mind
that these highly abstract speculations went hand in hand
with the most intense interest in concrete detail. It will
also be useful from another point of view. The educa-
tional theories of Plato are chiefly known from the
Republic, and it is often forgotten that there is a much
fuller and more practical treatment of the subject in the
Laws.
The first thing to secure is that babies shall be straight
(788 d), for everything depends on the start. A human
being may go on growing till he is twenty, but quite half
of this growth is accomplished in the first five years.
Now growth implies nourishment, and the nourishment
of babies is very great in proportion to their size. It
follows that they must have a great deal of bodily exercise
up to the age of five. The simplest way of putting this
is to say that babies should live as if they were always at
sea. Even nurses know that from experience, for when
they wish to put babies to sleep they employ action, not
rest, for the purpose. They shake them up and down in
their arms, and they do not use silence, but sing to “
them. The Korybantic purifications depend on the same
principle (790 d).
he next point to notice is that small babies scream
and kick, while larger ones shout and jump about in
a disorderly fashion. For three years babies can only
express their ‘wants by crying; and as three years 1s
a considerable portion of a human life to spend well or
ill, education must start from this fact, and build upon it.
Pleasure and pain are the only feelings young children
know, and we might suppose it the right thing to give
them all the pleasure and save them all the pain we can.
That, however, is wrong. What we wish to train them
υ
306 THE. LAWS
to is that state of calm which is as far removed from
positive pleasure as from pain. In order to do this we
must take advantage of the fact that from the very
earliest age children take pleasure in tune and time.
These two things must therefore be our chief educational
instrument for the first three years of life; for, by
developing this instinct, we can gradually transform the
natural screams and shouts into song, and the kicks and
jumps into dance. Punishment should begin at the age
of three, but we must be careful not to employ forms of
punishment which will produce anger and sullenness. As
to games, they are instinctive at that age, and when a few
small children are brought together, they will invent them
of their own accord. It is best to leave them to do so.
From three to six children should be taken to the
religious services of their village, and this at once raises
the thorny problem of nurses. There must be a com-
mittee of twelve ladies appointed by the head of the
Education Department to supervise all the nurses. They
will divide the country into districts, and each will visit
all the temples and celebrations in her own district, at
least once a year, to see that the nurses behave. It isa
good plan for the grandparen‘s to live at some distance
and have the children sent to visit them. In that way it
is possible to make sure that they really do get the outing
they are supposed to get.
The education of boys and girls should be separate
from the age of six, for at that age they begin actual
lessons. The boys are to be taught riding and archery
and the use of the sling. The girls are also to be taught
the use of arms as far as possible. We must also get rid
of the superstition of mothers and nurses that the right
hand is to be preferred to the left. It makes us only half
able-bodied.
The chief instruments of education at this stage will be
music and gymnastics, for which we have prepared the
children by the use of time and tune and by shaking them
when they were small. Gymnastics has two main divisions,
EDUCATION 307
dancing and wrestling. Music has two functions—one
the accompaniment of the noble words of the poets, the
other the accompaniment of dances and other exercises
of the limbs. We must not teach the children anything
elaborate or professional, but only simple physical drill
with simple songs, taking as our model what is required
in war and the service of the gods. The question of
games and toys becomes more important at this age.
The main thing is that each generation should play the
same games and have the same toys as the last, for only
so can the spirit of the constitution be preserved. The
greatest of all revolutionaries is the man who invents new
games and finer toys, for the boy who has played different
games in youth will grow up a different sort of man.
In things which are not in themselves bad change is
dangerous, and therefore the preservation of the old
games is a fundamental interest of the state. As to
music, we must take it as our guiding principle that
rhythms and melodies are imitations of character. They
are the most direct imitation there is of anything—far
more direct than painting and sculpture, for instance—
but what they imitate is not the outward appearance
but disposition of soul. These, then, must be preserved
unaltered too. New melodies and rhythms will destroy
the spirit of the constitution. . Tragedy will be ex-
cluded, of course. We cannot allow competing choruses
to blaspheme in the immediate neighbourhood of the
altars.
The difficult task of selecting songs and dances will
be left to a jury consisting of men over fifty, who will
accept or reject the old ones, or, if necessary, call in
expert assistance to correct their melody and rhythm. If
the children are once accustomed to the sober and
ordered Muse, when they hear the opposite kind of
music, the sweet kind, they will think it only fit for
slaves. On the other hand, if they have been habituated
to the sweet Muse in early life, they will find true music
cold and harsh. There must be separate songs for boys
“5
308 THE LAWS
and girls, differing in pitch and time. The boys’ music
will imitate the proud and brave character, the girls’ the
modest and pure. Gymnastics must be taught to girls
also. There is no reason for supposing that riding and
gymnastics are suitable for boys and not for girls. It is
true that women are not so strong as men, but that is
no reason for their not being made to do what they can.
A state that makes no call upon its women for military
service is not much more than half as strong as it might
be made at the same expense. It would be better that
they should be relieved to some extent from household
occupations, which might be simplified by the introduc-
tion of co-operative methods. At any rate, the human
race should be freed from the disgrace of being the only
one in which the females are incapable of defending the
life of their young.
We have not yet touched on the manner in which these
things are to be taught. It is not merely a technical one.
Everything depends on the object we have in view.
Just as a shipbuilder constructs a ship with a view to a
certain kind of voyage, so our educational methods must
be determined by a view of the best way to make the
voyage of life. Perhaps it does not matter from the point
of view of God, but we must at least play the game if it
is one, and who knows but it may be more. Even if
men and women are God’s playthings, that 15, after all,
the best thing about them. The trouble is that people
draw the distinction between jest and earnest, work and
play wrongly. They suppose, for instance, that war is
earnest and peace is not. That is wrong. Peace is more
earnest than war, and a great deal that is taken for play is
really the highest kind of work.
The question of school buildings is of great importance.
The teachers must have salaries, and therefore (this is
very Greek) they must be foreigners. Education must
be compulsory. It cannot be left to the fathers of
families to educate their children or not as they please,
for they belong even more to the state than to their
EDUCATION 309
fathers. So far we have been dealing with what
we should call elementary education, which was all the
education most men had in Plato’s time.
§ 228. But now comes the question what our young people
are to do now that their preliminary training is finished.
Is there something further, or are they to live the life of
cattle being fattened for the market ? Certainly not. Now
is the time for real hard work; all the rest, including the
military training, has really been play. There is no time
to lose. In very truth every day and night of our lives,
if devoted to that alone, is barely sufficient for a complete,
or even an adequate education. The employment of each
day must therefore be carefully ordered from one sunrise
to the next. It would be unseemly for the legislator to ὁ
enter into domestic details, but we may say at once that
it is monstrous for those "Ho are to guard a city to sleep
all night, and that it is not proper for the mistress of a
house to be wakened by her maids. She should be up first
and see that the maids are up. A man who is asleep is
worthless, and he who cares most to be alive and thinking
keeps awake longest. It is wonderful how little sleep we
need when we get into the habit of doing with little. The
boy must therefore go to school before sunrise. He wants
careful watching ; ; for he is the most awkward of beasts to
handle. That is just because he has what other beasts
have not, a native spring of thought in him which is not
yet settled or clear. Boys will now study things written,
and notall of themin metre. Along with that will goat first
the tuning of the lyre (not necessarily the playing of it), so
much reckoning as is useful for war and housekeeping, and
a certain amount of astronomy, enough to make the
calendar intelligible. These things are not to be confused
with the sciences, which come later.
The question arises how far a man who is to be a good
citizen must go in these subjects. A boy should begin
reading and writing at the age of ten and spend three years
on them; music need not be begun till he is thirteen, and
should be continued for three years. These times should
310 THE LAWS
be made compulsory whether the boy or his father has any
taste for the subjects or not. It will be enough if the boys
can read and write intelligibly; it is only in cases of special
talent that we should encourage a higher degree of excel-
lence. The time and trouble it takes are better spared for
the higher studies.
That the boys will read poetry of the right sort isa
matter of course, but prose seems a very dangerous thing.
Even as to poetry there is the question whether it should
be read in masses and whole poets learnt by heart, or
whether we should use books of extracts and make our
pupils commit these to memory. But, as has been sug-
gested, the real difficulty is the educational use of prose.
Books about the principles of legislation may certainly be
read, but the works of philosophers and scientific men are
not safe at this stage. All these things will be regulated by
the head of the Education Department, but he will have
expert advice on technical questions. He will not allow
the experts to dictate to him on general principles, but will
consult them as to the methods of carrying them out.
§229. We come now to the higher studies, beginning
with Mathematics, in its three chief divisions of Arithmetic,
Geometry, and Astronomy. Only a small number will
pursue these studies to the end, those, namely, who show —
themselves fit to become members of the Nocturnal Council,
but the prevailing ignorance of them can only be described
as “swinish” (819d). And that is not the worst. Most
teachers treat mathematical subjects in the most perverse
manner, and the greatest evil is not total ignorance, but
much learning and knowledge misdirected. Most people
take it for granted that all lengths, breadths and depths
are commensurable, whereas it is really the problem of
incommensurability that should hold the first place in
mathematical education. The study of questions arising
out of this is a far better game than backgammon. The
teaching of astronomy must be reformed on similar lines.
We may easily miss the significance of Plato’s proposals
as to the education of boys and girls from the age of ten
EDUCATION 311
onwards. We must remember that in his day there were
no regular schools for young people of that age. They
were taken to one teacher for music-lessons and to another
to be taught Homer, and there was no idea of coordinating
all these things in a single building under a single direction
with a regular staff of teachers. By founding the Academy
Plato had invented the university, and now he has invented
the secondary school. In consequence we find such schools
everywhere in the Hellenistic period, and the Romans
adopted it with other things, quaintly translating the Greek
term σχολή by /udus. That is the origin of the medieval
grammar school and of all that has come out of it since.
It will be seen that the Laws is not a work we can afford
to despise if we wish to understand Plato’s influence, but
it is time to turn to a very different side of his activity.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NUMBERS
§ 230. It is by no means easy for us at the present day
to interpret the central doctrine of Plato’s philosophy. As
we have seen ($162), he did not choose to commit it to
writing, and we are almost entirely dependent on what
Aristotle tells us. What makes matters worse is that
Aristotle is a very unsympathetic critic of Plato’s teaching,
and that he looks at it too much in the light of certain results
to which it had led in the Academy of his own day. In
one place he complains that the men of his time (oé νῦν)
had replaced philosophy by mathematics.1 That was re-
pugnant to him as a biologist, and he made the teaching
of Plato responsible for it. We shall have to see how far
he was justified.
In dealing with Aristotle’s evidence, it is necessary to
make two distinctions. We must, in the first instance at
least, distinguish (1) between doctrines attributed to Plato
by name and doctrines vaguely stated to be those of
“some,” a way of speaking which may include Pytha-
goreans and the contemporary Academy. We must also
distinguish even more carefully (2) between statements as
to facts which must have been well within Aristotle’s
knowledge and his interpretation of these facts. When he
tells us, for instance, that Plato held numbers to be unadd-
ible, we are bound to belicve him. He could not have
made such a statement unless it was true and was known
1 Met. A. 9, 992 a, 32 : γέγονε τὰ μαθήματα τοῖς viv ἡ φιλοσοφία.
ARISTOTLE ON PLATO 313
to be true by his contemporaries. On the other hand,
when he tells us what Plato really meant by this, we have
to remember that he is one of those people who always
know what another man means better than he knows him-
self. Above all, when he describes the historical origin of
any doctrine, we must bear in mind that he is speaking of
things he could know nothing about except from inference
or hearsay. ‘These obvious distinctions are often ignored.
Speculations as to the influence exercised on Plato by
Sokrates and Kratylos years before Aristotle was born are
quoted as evidence of fact, and at the same time a philo-
sophy is expounded as Plato’s, which differs in the most
important points from that which Aristotle says he heard
from his own lips.
One thing, at any rate, seems clear. Aristotle knows
of but one Platonic philosophy, that which identified the
forms with numbers. He never indicates that this system
had taken the place of an earlier Platonism in which the
forms were not identified with numbers, or that he knew
of any change or modification introduced into his philo-
sophy by Plato in his old age.’ That is only a modern
speculation. Aristotle had been a member of the Academy
for the last twenty years of Plato’s life, and nothing of
the kind could have taken place without his knowledge.
We may be sure too that, if he had known of any such
change, he would have told us. It is not his way to cover
up what he regards as inconsistencies in his master’s teach-
ing. Ifthe “theory of Numbers” had been no more than
a senile aberration (which appears to be the current view),
that is just the sort of thing Aristotle would have delighted
to point out. Ass it 1s, his evidence shows that Plato held
this theory from his sixtieth year at least, and probably
earlier.
1In M. 4. 1078 b, 9 s99., it seems to me impossible to identify those
who “first said there were forms” with Plato, though it must be admitted
that things are said of them which are said of Plato in A. 6. The ex-
pianation is, I think, that in both cases Aristotle is thinking primarily of
the εἰδῶν φίλοι in the Phaedo (cf. p. 280).
314 ARISTOTLE ON PLATO
§ 231. It is certain, then, that Plato identified forms
and numbers ; but, when we ask what he meant by this,
we get into difficulties at once. In the last two books of
the Metaphysics (M and N), which deal expressly with
the objects of mathematics (τὰ μαθηματικά) and with forms
and numbers, the name of Plato is only mentioned once
(1083 a, 33), and the doctrine there attributed to him 15
that numbers “are not addible to one another” (ov συμβλη-
τοὺς εἶναι τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς πρὸς ἀλλήλους). In an earlier passage
(1080 a, 12 sgg.) three versions of the doctrine that
numbers are ‘‘separate”’ (xwpicra) and the first causes of
things are given as the only possible ones, but no names
are mentioned. We are even told (1081 a, 35) that one
of these versions had never been held by anybody, which
does not prevent Aristotle (if he is the author of these
books) from refuting it as vigorously as the other two.
Obviously we cannot make anything of this for the present,
and it is unsafe, at least in the first instance, to use these
books as evidence except for the single doctrine attributed
in them to Plato by name.
§ 232. There is, however, a chapter in the First Book
of the Metaphysics (A. 6) which seems more hopeful. It
is the only place where Aristotle professes to give a careful
statement of Plato’s philosophy, attributing it to him by
name and distinguishing it from other systems. The
method he adopts is to compare Platonism with Pytha-
goreanism, which, he says, it followed in most respects
(ra πολλά), though it had two peculiarities (ἴδια Πλάτωνος)
which distinguished it from ‘the Italic philosophy.”
These two points of difference were as follows: (1) The
Pythagoreans said that numbers were things, while Plato
held not only that sensible things were distinct from
(παρα) numbers, but also regarded the objects of mathe-
matics as distinct from both and intermediate between
them. (2) The Pythagoreans held the matter of numbers
to be the Unlimited and their form the Limit; Plato
regarded the elements of number as the One and the dyad
of the Great-and-Small.
ARISTOTLE ON PLATO 315
These two points are all that Aristotle regards as really
peculiar to Plato; for he looks upon the substitution of
the term “participation” for “imitation” as a merely
verbal difference. Both the Pythagoreans and Plato left
it an open question (ἀφεῖσαν ἐν κοινῷ ζητεῖν) what imitation
or participation of things in forms could be. That is the
outline of the chapter, but it is somewhat confused by a
long parenthesis intended to show that the first difference
between Plato and the Pythagoreans was due to the influ-
ence of Herakleitos (through Kratylos) and Sokrates.
That may or may not be correct, but Aristotle’s statements
on this subject do not stand on the same level as his account
of the peculiarities themselves, which he must have heard
Plato expound.
I. Forms, Mathematicals and Sensibles,
§ 233. The first of these peculiarities is, then, that, while
the Pythagoreans said numbers were things, Plato regarded
sensible things as distinct from numbers, and made the
objects of mathematics intermediate between the two. It
is important to observe that Aristotle is here contrasting
Plato with the Pythagoreans and not with Sokrates, who
is only introduced to explain his divergence from the
Pythagorean theory of numbers. It is also to be noted
that by “Sokrates” Aristotle means, as he usually does,
the Sokrates of the Phaedo. We are expressly told
(987 b, 29) that the distinction made between numbers
and the sensibles and the “introduction” (εἰσαγωγή) of
the forms was due to the practice of ‘considering things
in statements” (διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἐγένετο σκέψιν) and
that is as clear a reference as can be to the new method
introduced by Sokrates in that dialogue (99 6 sqq.). We
are also told that the predecessors of Sokrates were un-
versed in dialectic, and that is explained by what has been
said above (987 a, 20) about the Pythagoreans. They
began, we are told, to discuss the “‘ What is it?” of things
(τὸ τί ἐστιν 3), and to define them, but in a naive and
316 ARISTOTLE ON PLATO
superficial way. Sokrates introduced universal definitions
and busied himself with ethical matters instead of with
nature as a whole, and it was Plato’s acceptance of his
method that made it impossible for him to follow the
Pythagoreans in identifying numbers with things. He
had convinced himself of the Herakleitean doctrine that
sensible things were in flux, and he saw that the definitions of
Sokrates could not apply to them, so he gave the name of
forms to something other than sensible things, and said
that sensible things were distinct from these (παρὰ ταῦτα)
and were called after them; for the multitude of things —
sharing the same name as the forms were what they were _
in virtue of their participation in these forms. It will be —
observed that in this passage Aristotle insists ratheron the _
distinction of sensible things from the forms than on that _
of the forms from sensible things, and he implies that this _
is what distinguished Plato from Sokrates. We haveseen Ὁ
reason already for believing that Sokrates recognised no —
reality in sensible things apart from the forms, and Aris-
totle’s language here confirms this view. Of course itis
equally true to say, as Aristotle usually does, that the forms
are distinct from the sensible things, but it is significant —
that, when he first has occasion to mention the point, —
he emphasises the other side of the distinction. ἣν
§ 234. Closely connected with this separation (words) —
of sensible things is what Aristotle calls the “introduction” —
(εἰσαγωγή) of the forms. This term does not imply that —
Plato invented them. The metaphor is, I believe, derived
from the use of the word for bringing on the stage or
‘“‘ producing,” and the suggestion appears to be that the Ὁ
ethical inquiries of Sokrates had made it necessary to
assume certain universals which were not numbers, and —
these, of course, would be separate from the things of ©
sense just as the numbers were. The Pythagoreans had
defined Justice, for instance, as a square number, but
Sokrates had shown that we must postulate a special form
of Justice (αὐτὸ 6 ἐστι δίκαιον). That is not mentioned as
an innovation of Plato’s. The only difference which
SEPARATISM 317
implied between Sokrates and Plato is that the latter
separated sensible things from the forms while the former
did not. That is stated in so many words in the Tenth
Book (1078 b, 17), though it is also said (1086 b, 3) that
Sokrates gave the impulse to (ἐκίνησε) this separation. He is
commended for not going further, and it is implied that
his doctrine was much the same as Aristotle’s own. That
can hardly be historical, but Aristotle may have thought it
a legitimate interpretation of the second part of the Phaedo,
where the forms are certainly iz things. It seems to me
a far more serious anachronism to represent Sokrates as
seeking for universals (τὰ καθόλου), a term not yet invented,
than to represent him as seeking for ‘“‘forms,’’ It is worse
still to make him talk about “concepts.”! Realism is prior
to Conceptualism, and I doubt very much whether anyone
ever ‘‘hypostatised concepts.” As we have seen (ὃ 195),
Conceptualism is tentatively put forward in the Parmenides
as a solution of the problem of participation, but it is
rejected at once.
§ 235. This parenthesis, then, is at best Aristotle’s
speculative reconstruction of history from his own point
οὗ view, and throws very little light on his definite state-
ment that Plato not only made numbers distinct from
sensible things, but also made the objects of mathematics
intermediate between them. It is that statement of Aris-
totle, and not his historical notes upon it, which we have
really to interpret. He tells us further that the objects
of mathematics differed from the things of sense in being
eternal and immovable and from the forms in being many,
whereas each form is one and unique (αὐτὸ ἕν μόνον). If
we can interpret that, we shall know what Plato’s “‘separa-
tism ” (χωρισμός) really meant.
_ The difference between the objects of sense and the
objects of mathematics is a simple matter, and is fully
dealt with in the Phaedo. The mathematician is not really
_ speaking about the sensible diagram he traces in the sand.
1 The term λόγος cannot possibly mean “concept.” So far as there is
any Greek word for “concept” at this date, it is νόημα.
318 THE MATHEMATICALS
The sensible circle is only a rough “image” (εἴδωλον) of
what he really means. In the Phaedo, however, the
objects of mathematics are certainly regarded as forms,
and we have now to ask what is meant by distinguishing
them from the forms. It cannot, of course, be meant
that mathematical forms are on a lower level than others,
That is the last thing Plato would think of, and the point
is rather that they are on a higher level. The object of
the mathematician’s reasoning is not, indeed, the sensible
circle, but neither is it she circle, the form of circularity.
He speaks of circles of greater or smaller radius, and even
of two circles intersecting one another. Mathematical
reasoning, then, has to do with many circles, whereas the
circle is one and one only. In the same way, the triangle
about which we reason is either equilateral, isosceles or
scalene, but she triangle is none of these. In fact, it 15
really the circles, triangles, etc., of which the geometer
speaks that are the “many” which partake in the forms.
And this is even truer of numbers than of figures, the
spatial character of which has something of the sensible
about it. We speak of adding two and two to make four,
as if there were many twos. It is clear that we do not
mean by these twos the pebbles or counters we may use
to symbolise them, but neither do we mean the number
two. There is only one number two, the form of two or
the dyad. The arithmetician’s twos, however, are even
less like things of sense than the geometer’s circles ; they
are the nearest approach we can get to the purely
intelligible. From this point of view, Plato’s separatism
is a good deal less arbitrary than Aristotle seems to
think.
§ 236. This distinction, moreover, furnishes the real
explanation of the doctrine Aristotle attributes to Plato
1There is a hint, perhaps unconscious, of this doctrine in the Phaedo,
where Sokrates speaks of αὐτὰ τὰ toa (74 ε). These are not identical
with the more or less equal things of sense nor yet with αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον.
Probably such things as the two angles at the base of an isosceles triangie
are meant
NUMBERS UNADDIBLE 319
by name, that numbers are “unaddible” (ἀσύμβλητοι).1
When we say “two and two is four,” we mean that two
units of a given kind added to two units of the same kind
are equal to four units of that kind; we do not mean that
the number two added to the number two is the number
four. That would be nonsense; for the number two does
not consist of two units nor does the number four consist
of four units. Each number is a universal, and every
universal is one and unique. The units we call ‘“‘ two”
somehow partake in the number two, but it is not identical
with them. There is only one number two. From this
it follows further that the relation between the numbers
themselves is not one that can be expressed by any additive
formula. The number five is not the number four p/us a
unit. The relation of four and five is simply one of
priority and posteriority. What, then, are the “two and
two” which we say make four? The answer will appear
if we remember that the particulars of the mathematical
sciences are objects of thought just as much as the
universals. We can think particular “twos” without
regarding them as inhering in any sensible substratum, so
that the “two and two” which ‘make four” are dis-
tinguished on the one hand from the “two and two
pebbles” which make four pebbles, and on the other from
the unique universal, ‘he number two.
It is clear, then, that numbers are unique forms, and we
have seen some reason for thinking that they are forms in
a pre-eminent sense, That is certainly the doctrine Aris-
totle attributes to Plato, but we cannot understand it com-
pletely till we have discussed the relation of the forms of
number to the other forms. That brings us to what
Aristotle regards as the second peculiarity (ἴδιον) of Plato’s
philosophy.
11 am much indebted here to Professor Cook Wilson’s article in the
Classical Review, vol. xviii. (1904) pp. 247 599.
320 THE ELEMENTS OF NUMBERS
Il. The One and the Indeterminate Dyad.
§237. The Pythagoreans had regarded the Limit (πέρας)
and the Unlimited (ἄπειρον) or Continuous as the elements
of number, and therefore as the elements of things. Plato
substituted for these the One and the dyad of the Great-
and-Small. The only difference, according to Aristotle, is
that the Pythagorean Unlimited was single, whereas Plato
regarded the “ matter” of numbers, and therefore of things,
as dual in character. It also follows, as Aristotle points
out elsewhere, from Plato’s separation of numbers and
things that there will be what he calls “matter” in the
numbers as well as in things. This is called the Inde-
terminate dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς) to distinguish it from the
Determinate dyad, which is the number two. From this
dyad the numbers are generated as from a sort of matrix
(ἐκμαγεῖον).2
§ 238. Now itis at least clear that the term Indeterminate
Dyad is a new name for Continuity, and it expresses more
clearly than the old term Unlimited its twofold nature.
It not only admits of infinite “increase” (αὔξη), but
also of infinite “diminution” (καθαίρεσις). That is why
it is also called the Great-and-Small. The new idea which
Plato intended to express was that of the infinitesimal,
the infiniment petit. ‘The introduction of this conception
1The use of this term is not attributed to Plato by name, but Met.
1091 a, 4 seems to imply that he used it.
2 Aristotle’s account of the way in which the numbers are generated is
extremely obscure. Mr. George A. Johnston has suggested a most
interesting explanation of the matter, which I have his permission to
quote. We have seen (p. 53, 7. 1) that the ratio between the sides
of successive oblong numbers (i.e. the sums of the series of even numbers)
is always changing. It is a dyad, because it is always a ratio between
two numbers ; it is indefinite because the ratio is always changing. ‘The
one, on the other hand, is the square root of the successive oblong
numbers, ,/2, ,/6, ./12, etc., which are means between the sides of 2
(2: Ὁ 0 (452), 12 (4-3 5), etc.
8 Not necessarily by division (διαίρεσις). The term καθαίρεσις is
more general, and covers subtraction (ἀφαίρεσις). It is used in the
extract from Hermodoros given below, p. 330.
ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY 321
involves an entirely new view of number. That need not
surprise us; for we have learnt from the Repudiic that it is
the business of Dialectic to ‘destroy the hypotheses”’ of
the special sciences, and also that the hypothesis of Arith-
metic is the series of natural integers, each consisting of so
many equal and indivisible units, and each either odd or
even. From our present point of view, these units and
their sums belong to the “intermediate” region. They
are not sensible, indeed, but neither are they numbers in
the true sense. The destruction of this hypothesis allows
us to extend the conception of number so as to include
quantities which are not a sum of units (μονάδων πλῆθος),
and which are neither odd nor even. We have seen that
it was the study of incommensurables that made this
extension necessary. That is indicated by the prominence
given to the study of quadratic surds in the Theaetetus. If
“irrationals” are once regarded as numbers, the old hypo-
thesis of Arithmetic is destroyed.
This is not, as 1 understand it, tantamount to making
the numerical series itself continuous; for in that case
number would be identified with the mere potentiality of
plus and minus, which is the Indeterminate dyad. It does,
however, get rid of the indivisible unit, which was the
source of all the trouble about irrational numbers. We
may now regard the origin of the numerical series, not as
1 but as o, and there is no reason for refusing to call such
quantities as ./2 and ,/5 numbers. The best proof that
this was really the step which Plato took is that Aristotle
always insists against him that there is no number but
number made up of units (μοναδικὸς ἀριθμός). It follows
that Plato maintained there was.
§ 239. The hypotheses of Geometry were, of course,
submitted to a precisely similar criticism. The new view
of number had really broken down the barrier which
Zeno had erected between Arithmetic and Geometry, and
the old view of the point as ‘“‘a unit having position”’
(μονὰς θέσιν ἔχουσα) was superseded. Aristotle has pre-
served a very important piece of information as to Plato’s
Χ
322 INDIVISIBLE LINES
oral teaching on this subject. He tells us that Plato
objected altogether to the conception of a point as being
a mere ‘“‘ geometrical dogma,” and preferred to speak of
“the origin of a line” (ἀρχὴ γραμμῆς). That implies the
view that the line is generated from the point by what we
know from other sources was called “ fluxion”’ (ῥύσις).3
This corresponds to the doctrine that the numerical series
has zero, not the unit, for its origin. In the same way,
the plane is a fluxion of the line and the solid of the
plane. On the other hand, Aristotle adds, Plato often
postulated indivisible lines.’ Aristotle says it 1s easy to
refute this doctrine, and the later commentators throw no
light upon it. No doubt the term is paradoxical, but
not more so than ‘‘infinitesimals.”” What Plato meant
was clearly that, if you postulate indivisible units and
regard 1 as the origin of the numerical series, you are
also committed to indivisible or infinitesimal lines as the
spatial unit. All this brings us very close to Newton
and Leibniz, and the historical connexion can still be
traced.
§ 240. When we look at geometry in this way, we
see that its spatial character tends to become irrelevant.
It becomes a form of Arithmetic, dealing with continuity
in general, whether spatial or not. This view is fully
developed in the Epinomis, where we are told (990 d)
that Geometry (which is said in passing to be “a very
absurd name’’) is really “an assimilation by reference to
1 Mer. A. 992 a, 1: τούτῳ μὲν οὖν τῷ γένει (sc. τῷ τῶν στιγμῶν) καὶ
διεμάχετο Ἰ]λάτων ὡς ὄντι γεωμετρικῷ δόγματι.
2Simpl. in Phys. p. 722, 28 (Diels): ἦ γραμμὴ ῥύσις στιγμῆς,
Proclus in Eucl. i. p. 97, 6 (Friedlein),
8 Met. ib. : τοῦτο δὲ πολλάκις ἐτίθει τὰς ἀτόμους γραμμάς.
4The recently discovered Discourse on Method by Archimedes has
thrown unexpected light on the development of the method of
infinitesimals among the Greeks, See Milhaud, Nouvelles études, pp. 134
sqg., and especially p. 154. Cavalieri’s “method of indivisibles” is
the connecting link between Greek and modern higher Mathematics,
Newton and Leibniz got their knowledge of the former trom Wallis
and Barrow, Wallis translates ῥύσις by fuxus,
ARCHYTAS ON ARITHMETIC 323
surfaces of numbers not similar to one another by
nature.’ That is just the development of what we
read in the Theaetetus (148 a), to the effect that certain
numbers are incommensurable “in length” (μήκει), but
commensurable “by means of the surfaces of which they
are roots” (τοῖς ἐπιπέδοις ἃ δύνανται). In precisely the
same way Stereometry is said to be the art by which
certain numbers not naturally similar can be assimilated
by being raised to the third power. Aristotle strongly
objects to what he regards as the confusion of Geometry
with Arithmetic. He insists that the proper hypotheses
of each science must be left undisturbed, and that it
is illegitimate to prove a geometrical proposition by
Arithmetic. We may infer that Plato held otherwise.
There is also a fragment of Plato’s friend Archytas
which puts the matter very clearly, and proves this was
really the direction mathematical thought was taking at
the time. He says (fr. 4):
I think that in respect of wisdom Arithmetic surpasses all
the other arts, and especially Geometry, seeing it can treat
the objects it wishes to study in a far clearer way....
Where Geometry fails, Arithmetic completes its demonstra-
tions in the same way, even with regard to figures, if there is
such a thing as the study of figures.
§ 241. In the last resort, then, geometrical figures are
reduced to numbers, and these in turn are generated from
the One and the Indeterminate dyad. What is new here
is the assumption of a material element even in the forms,
though that element is nothing more than abstract con-
tinuity. The importance of this is that it tends to make
the intelligible forms less disparate from the things of
sense. It will be observed that it is precisely because
Plato ‘separated’ numbers from sensibles that it became
1 Diels, Vors3 i, p. 337, 6 καὶ δοκεῖ ἃ λογιστικὰ ποτὲ τὰν σοφίαν
“ Ν LANG “A * λὺ ὃ , > Ν ᾿- Ν “a “
τῶν μὲν ἀλλᾶν τεχνῶν Kal TOAD διαφέρειν, ἀτὰρ καὶ τᾶς γεωμετρικᾶς
a , Ὁ. ΟΝ
ἐναργεστέρω πραγματεύεσθαι ἃ θέλει. .. καὶ ἃ ἐπιλείπει at a γεω-
> nw lal
μετρία, καὶ ἀποδείξιας ἃ λογιστικὰ ἐπιτελεῖ καὶ ὁμῶς, εἰ μὲν εἰδέων
τεὰ πραγματεία, καὶ περὶ τοῖς εἴδεσιν.
324 THE PHILEBUS
possible for him to justify the world of appearance. This
cannot be fully explained till the next chapter ; all we
have to note at present is that the One combines with the
Indeterminate dyad to generate the numbers, just as the
forms combine with the Great-and-Small to generate
sensible things. In that sense the elements of numbers
were the elements of things, That is how Aristotle states
it, and by great good fortune we possess a dialogue which
must have been written while he was a member of the
Academy, and which, though it deals primarily with
another subject, and avoids the doctrine of form-numbers
altogether, contains nevertheless some indications of Plato’s
thought at the time. I refer to the Philebus, one of his
maturest works.
The Philebus.
§ 242. From certain discussions in Aristotle’s Evhics we
get a hint of how the Philebus probably came to be written.
Eudoxos had introduced into the Academy the heresy that
Pleasure is the Good, a doctrine he probably received
from the school of Demokritos, as Epicurus did at a later
date. This raised considerable discussion, as was natural,
and Speusippos in particular opposed Eudoxos vehemently,
going so far as to maintain that Pleasure was an evil.
Plato was interested, of course, and he did what he had
not done for years; he wrote a Sokratic dialogue on the
subject. It was quite an appropriate theme for Sokrates
to discuss, and there is little in the greater part of the
dialogue which the Sokrates of the Gorgias or the Phaedo
might not have said. On the other hand, Plato’s dramatic
power is no longer what it was, and the characteristic
touches of the Sokratic manner are fewer than in the
earlier dialogues, though more than is often supposed.
Undeniably, too, the voice is sometimes that of the
Stranger from Elea and sometimes that of the Athenian
Stranger in the Laws, and in those cases we are justified
in thinking that we have a hint at least of Plato’s personal
PLEASURE AND THOUGHT 325
thought. I propose, for the present, to summarise only
that portion of the dialogue which bears directly on the
subject we are now discussing ; the general theory of
Pleasure, though of the highest importance in itself, can
only be adequately treated in connexion with the views of
Eudoxos and Speusippos and of Aristotle’s criticism of
these. We get the impression from the Philebus that we
are dealing with a dispute between the younger members
of the Academy, in which Plato condescends to take part,
though, by transferring the conversation to the fifth
century and by making Sokrates the chief speaker, he
avoids committing himself too much. .
§ 243. Before the opening of the dialogue, Sokrates and
Philebos (a youth of whom nothing is known) have been
discussing the Good. Philebos has stated the position
that the Good is Pleasure (ἡδονή), while Sokrates has
identified it with Thought (φρόνησις) or Wisdom. Philebos
declines to argue the question, and Protarchos (another
young man of whom nothing is known") undertakes to
replace him as the advocate of Pleasure. It is not a little
remarkable that the dialogue should be called after a per-
sonage who takes practically no part in it.
The two positions are more distinctly stated thus. That
of Philebos is that Pleasure, understood in its widest sense
as including joy, delight, and so forth, is the highest good
for all living beings without exception.2 That of Sokrates
is that Thought, understood in its widest sense as in-
cluding memory, right belief, true reasoning, and so forth,
is the highest good for all living beings that are capable
of it. The two positions agree in this, that both make
Happiness (εὐδαιμονία) a habit (ἕξις) or disposition (διάθεσις)
1 He is addressed as “son of Kallias” (19 b), but there is no ground
for identifying him with one of the two sons of Kallias son of Hipponikos,
mentioned in the 4pol/ogy (20 b) as pupils of Euenos in 399 B.c.
2'This seems to refer to ‘the argument of Eudoxos that Pleasure must
be the Good, since all things, rational and irrational, aim at it (Arist.
Eth. Nic. 1172 Ὁ, 9 599).
326 THE PHILEBUS
of soul.’ It is further pointed out that there may prove
to be a third habit of soul which is better than either
Pleasure or Thought, in which case we must give the pre-
ference to whichever of these two is most nearly akin to
it (II a—I2 a).
§ 244. Sokrates begins by calling attention to the fact
that pleasures may be very unlike and indeed opposite, so
that we cannot apply the same predicate to all of them,
but it soon appears that it will be necessary to go deeper
than this. We cannot, in fact, make any advance without
coming to an understanding on the troublesome old ques-
tion of the One and the Many. By this we do not mean
the puzzle about the predication of opposite attributes like
great and small, heavy and light, of the same subjects.
That is child’s play, and the solution has long been public
property. Nor do we mean the question arising from the
fact that every sensible thing has parts, and is therefore
both one and many. The real difficulty is with regard to
such units (s#onads, henads) as horse, ox, beautiful, good
(i.e. the ‘“‘forms”’ of the Phaedo and the Republic). With
regard to these we have to ask (1) in what sense we are to
hold that each of these units really is, (2) in what sense
we are to hold that each of them being ove, and admitting
neither coming into being nor ceasing to be, nevertheless
is that one,? (3) in what sense we are to hold that these
units can be present in the innumerable things of the
sensible world, whether (2) in part, or (4) as wholes, so
that (what seems quite impossible) they should be identical
both in their unity and in their plurality (12 c—1§ c).
1 The terms ἕξις and διάθεσις are taken from medicine. A “habit”
is a more lasting “ disposition” (Arist. Cat. 9 a, 8). ‘The doctrine that
Happiness is a habit of soul is characteristic of the Academy ; Aristotle
made it an “activity” (ἐνέργεια). See my edition of the Evhics, p. 3.
2The sense of the second question (15 b, 2-4) has been much dis-
puted. I think that, if we read it with an emphasis on the first μίαν
and on εἶναι, we shall see that it refers to the difficulty that arises when
we predicate “ being” of “one,” that is, when we speak, not merely of
τὸ ev ἕν, but of τὸ ev ὄν. When we do that, the One at once seems to
become two. That is a chief crux of the Parmenides.
THE ONE AND THE MANY 327
This section serves to link the Philebus to the Par-
menides. At the beginning of the latter dialogue, the
question of the One and the Many, so far as it refers to
the predication of opposite attributes, and to the relation
of whole and parts, is disposed of by the participation of
sensible things in the forms, and it is then shown that the
real difficulty lies in the union of One and Many in the
forms themselves. If we say that the One is, it seems to
become two on our hands; while, if we say that sensible
things participate in it, it is either broken up into parts
and so becomes infinitely many, or the whole form must
be present in each of the participants, so that we have an
infinite number of ones alongside of the one One. No
direct solution of this difficulty is given in the Parmenides,
but a hint was thrown out that a solution was possible.
We shall see that the PAi/ebus puts us on the way to it.
§ 245. The difficulty that a thing turns into a one and
many whenever we speak of it, really pervades all state-
ments (λόγοι) or propositions we can make about anything
whatsoever. It is “an affection of propositions in our
minds (ἐν ἡμῖν) that never dies nor ages.’”’ It is this that
gives rise to all eristic disputation, and we cannot get rid
of that till we have formed a sound theory of it. The
only way to reach one is a way of which Sokrates has
always been a lover (ἐραστής), though it has often left him
stranded, and it is the way in which all inventions and
discoveries in the arts have been made. It is this.
The gods once revealed to mankind, and the ancients,
who were of a higher nature and nearer to the gods than
we are, have handed it down as a tradition, that everything
we say at a given moment (ἀεί) is consists of one and
many, and has Limit and Unlimitedness innate in it. What
we have to do, then, is first to find a single form (ἰδέα) in
the thing we say is, and then to look in that for two
subordinate forms, or three, or whatever number there
may be. After that we must look at each of these new
units and see how many forms are in them, until we are
able to say of the original unit, not only that it is one and
328 THE PHILEBUS
many, but also how many it is. We must not predicate
the Unlimited (τὴν τοῦ ἀπείρου ἰδέαν) of the manifold, before
we have gained a clear image of the number which is
intermediate between the Unlimited and the One. Then,
and not till then, may we give it up and let the manifold
slip into the Unlimited. That is the genuine revelation
of the gods, but the wise men of to-day are both too quick
and too slow in setting up a One and a Many, and the
middle terms (τὰ μέσα) escape them. That is just the
difference between dialectical and eristical discussion
(15 d—17 a).
Voice, for instance, is both one and many, but to know
that does not make you a “ grammarian” (phonetician). To
become that, you must know also how many and of what
nature the indefinite manifold is. In the same way, he is not
a musician who can only say of a note that it is high or low
or of the same pitch (as the keynote); he must know also
how many intervals there are and of what nature, and what
are the terms (ὅροι) of the intervals (1.6. the numbers, such
as 12, 9, 8, 6, which express them), and how many scales
these give rise to. Further, he must know to how many
rhythms and metres the motions of the body when measured
by numbers give rise (17 a—17 e).
Just in the same way, when we have to start from the
side of the Unlimited, we must not go straight to the One,
but must carefully note the number of the intermediate
Terms:
If we start from sound, which is unlimited, we find first
that there is a certain number of vowels, and then a certain
number of liquids (μέσα) and a certain number of mutes, and
considering all these we bring them under the single unity of
letters (στοιχεῖα). ‘Then, and not till then, do we see clearly
that the art of grammar has letters for its province, and not
merely sound (18 a—18 d).
A good example of the premature introduction of the
Unlimited is afforded by the early Pythagorean treatment
of the scale. If we were right in holding that they only
determined the intervals of the fourth, the fifth, and the
octave, referring all the internal divisions of the tetrachord
THE MORE AND LESS 329
to the Unlimited (§ 30), that is just the sort of thing
Plato means here. It is the more likely he had this
in mind that we know Archytas and Plato busied them-
selves with this very problem of the division of the
tetrachord. We must also observe carefully that we do
not eliminate the Unlimited altogether, but reach a point
where we can no longer introduce number. That, too,
can be illustrated from the musical scale, where we come
ultimately to intervals which cannot be expressed as the
ratio of one whole number to another. So far as we have
yet gone, there is a point where division must cease.
§ 246. To illustrate what he means by the Unlimited,
Sokrates takes the example of “the hotter and colder,”
and this enables us to elucidate his meaning with the help
of the distinction between heat and temperature, a distinc-
tion historically connected with the Pythagorean doctrine,
since, as we have seen, “ temperature” is a translation of
Kpactg,
If we consider the sensation or quality of heat, we see
at once that it varies in intensity. Water may be much
hotter than our hand or only a little hotter, or nearly as
hot, or not nearly so hot. In other words, heat ‘‘ admits
of plus and minus” (τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον). On the other
hand, these degrees of intensity are quite indefinite. We
cannot attach any clear meaning to the statement that one
sensation of heat is equal to another, or that one sensation
of heat is the double of another. These considerations
explain what Plato meant by “the dyad of the Great-and-
Small,” which was his own name for what he calls the
Unlimited in the Philebus. It is the possibility of indefinite
continuous variation in both directions from a fixed point.
The Limit, on the other hand, does away with this inde-
finite “more and less.”’ Its simplest form is “‘ the equal
and the double” (4 and 2), and in general it is everything
which ‘has the ratio of one number to another or one
measure to another.” This is the conception of quantity
as distinct from that of quality, and its chief characteristic
is that it enables us to speak with perfect clearness of equality
330 THE PHILEBUS
and of addition, the simplest form of the latter being “‘ the
double.’ What enables us to do this is the introduction
of a unit, in terms of which we may measure degrees of
intensity. We cannot attach any clear meaning to the
statement that it is twice as hot to-day as yesterday, but
we do understand what is meant by saying that 60° is twice
30°. That implies further that a zero of temperature has
been fixed, all temperatures above which are p/us and all
below it minus. The conception of negative quantity is
thus clearly formulated for the first time in the history
of science.
§ 247. Aristotle tells us further that the Great-and-Small
was identified with ‘“‘not being.”! This doctrine is not
attributed to Plato by name, but we fortunately possess a
fragment of Hermodoros? which leaves no doubt upon
the subject and also suggests the explanation. He says:
Those things which are spoken of as having the relation of
great to small all have the “ more and less,” so that they can
go on to infinity in the direction of the “still greater” and
the “still less.’ And in the same way, the broader and
narrower, the heavier and lighter, and everything which is
spoken of in that way can go on to infinity. But what is
spoken of as equal and at rest and attuned has not the “ more
and less” as their opposites have. ‘There is always something
more unequal than what is unequal, something more in
motion than what moves, something more out of tune than
what is out of tune. [The text of the next sentence is
corrupt].... So that what is of this nature is inconstant and
formless and infinite, and may be called “not being” by
negation of “ being” (κατὰ ἀπόφασιν τοῦ ὄντος).
If we have read the Sop/ist aright, the meaning of this
is plain. It is not meant that the indefinite continuum
of the more and less is othing, but rather that it is not
anything. We predicate of it the significant negative term
(ἀπόφασις), “not being,” not a blank negation which has
no meaning
1 Phys, 192 a, 6 599.
2See Simpl in Phys. p. 247, 30597. (Diels)
ΟΥ̓́ΣΙΑ 331
§248. From all this it appears that we shall have to
assume a third “kind” in addition to the Limit and the
Unlimited, namely, the Mixture of both. We see this
both in Medicine and in Music, where health and “ har-
mony’’ are produced by the due mixture of the two. We
see the same thing in climate; for a temperate climate is
produced by such a mixture. The same explanation may
be given of all goodness whether of body or soul, beauty
of body and order of soul, and indeed all good things are
due to such a mixture (25 e sgq@.).
The thought here is obviously Pythagorean ; it is just
the tuned string once more. But there is a fundamental
change in the point of view. The Pythagoreans had
identified the Limit with good and the Unlimited with
evil, but here we are distinctly told that, so far as human
life is concerned, good things are all to be found in the
Mixture. It is just for that reason that the ““ mixed life,”
which includes both Thought and Pleasure, is found to be
superior, not only to the life of Pleasure alone, but also to
the life of Thought alone.
§ 249. Closely connected with this is the new sense in
which Plato uses the term “being” (οὐσία) in this passage.
The Pythagorean doctrine simply identified the Form with
being and the Unlimited with becoming, but Plato dis-
tinctly states that the Mixture alone is truly ‘“ being.”
The process of mixing is indeed a “ becoming” (γένεσις),
but it is a becoming which has being for its result (γένεσις
εἰς οὐσίαν) and the mixture itself is being, though a being
which has become (γεγενημένη οὐσία). Just in the same
way we are told in the Timaeus (35 a) that being (οὐσία) is
a blend of the Same and the Other. These are only
hints, and there are no others of the same kind in the
dialogues, where they would be out of place, but they
supplement what Aristotle tells us in the most interesting
way. As the form-numbers are themselves a mixture, it
follows that even sensible things may be real in spite of
the fact that they are mixtures, In other words, the
mature philosophy of Plato found reality, whether
332 THE PHILEBUS
intelligible or sensible, in the combination of matter and
form, and not in either separately.
§ 250. There has been considerable discussion as to the
“kind” to which the “ideas”’ or forms belong in this
scheme. The traditional view was that they were repre-
sented by the Limit, and that is, of course, in accordance
with the earlier Pythagorean version of the theory. It
would be quite correct to refer the forms of the Phaedo
and the Republic to this kind. Professor Jackson, on the
contrary, maintains that the forms belong to the Mixed
kind, and we have seen that the forms were certainly
regarded by Plato as a mixture. On the other hand, it 1s
surely plain that the Mixture of the PAi/ebus is the world
of sense, and the forms must, therefore, be referred to the
Limit. The difficulty arises, I think, from the fact that
Plato refrains from giving his full doctrine on the subject in
this dialogue. From the point of view here taken, the
forms belong to the Limit, but that does not alter the fact
that they themselves are in turna mixture. In the sensible
world, their function is to limit, but in the intelligible
world they themselves appear as a limited continuum, as a
blending of matter and form, of the One and the Indeter-
minate Dyad.
§ 251. Now this new view of reality clearly implies not
only the categories of Being and Not-being, Same and
Other, but also that of Motion, which was already asso-
ciated with these in the Sophist (§ 211), and this not only
in the sensible but also in the intelligible world. We
could only explain the generation of lines, planes, and
solids by the help of this category (§ 239), and if the
sensible world is also a mixture, there must be a cause of
the Mixture. That will be a fourth “kind” (27 b),
and we must now go on to consider what Movement
implies. Unless we can give an intelligible account of
this, we have failed to explain the world we know.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOVEMENT
The Soul
§ 252. It was his theory of Soul that enabled Plato to
account for Motion. Apart from that, we should have
nothing but a string of what we may best represent to
ourselves as algebraical formulae. The early Pythagoreans
had grasped the conception of Soul as something more
than the mere ghost ‘of popular belief, but their later
tenet that the soul is an “attunement” of the body made
them lose hold of it again. Sokrates had insisted on the
reality and eternity of the soul; but Plato was the first to
attempt a scientific justification of this belief. It is signifi-
cant that the argument which seemed decisive to him does
not occur in the Phaedo, though Sokrates is made to state
it in the Phaedrus. In that dialogue we are told (245 c)
that what moves another thing, and is in turn moved by
something else, may cease to be moved and therefore
cease to move anything else; but what moves itself will
never cease to move. It is the source and beginning of
motion (ἀρχὴ κινήσεως). Now such a beginning can never
have come into being; for everything that comes into
being must have a beginning, while this is itself a begin-
ning. Nor can it have any end ; for, if it perished, every-
thing would come to a standstill. Such a beginning is the
soul ; for it is the self-moved (τὸ αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ κινοῦν), and is
therefore without beginning and without end.
§ 253. If this doctrine occurred only in the Phaedrus, it
334 THE SELF-MOVER
might be set down as mythical, though, despite the enthus-
iasm of the passage, the language is curiously technical and
scientific. It might also be said that it only proves the
eternity of soul in general or of the world-soul, not that
of the individual soul. In fact, however, the phraseology
of the Phaedrus remained in use, and the question of the
“first mover’ continued to be a fundamental one. All
doubt on the point is set at rest by the perfectly matter-of-
fact treatment of the subject in the Laws, where we have
an indication of Plato’s mature thought on the subject.
He begins (893 b) by distinguishing ten kinds of
motion, of which the ninth and tenth alone concern us at
present. The ninth is the motion that can move other
things but cannot move itself, and the tenth is that which
can move both itself and other things, It is really, Plato
says, the first, since it is the beginning of motion (ἀρχὴ
κινήσεως) to the other nine. Now we do not find motion
of this kind in earth, fire, or water, but only in what lives,
that is, in what has a soul; and if we ask for a definition
of the soul, we can only say that it is “the motion which
of itself can move itself” (τὴν αὐτὴν αὑτὴν δυναμένην κινεῖν
κίνησιν). The other motions all belong to body, and soul
is therefore prior to body (896 b).
But, if soul is prior to body, it follows at once that all
the attributes of soul, such as characters, wishes, reason-
ings, beliefs, forethought, and memories are prior to the
attributes of body, such as length, breadth, depth, and
strenoth ; and, if this is so, soul alone can be the cause of
good and bad, fair and foul, righteousness and wickedness,
and all other such opposites. There are such things as bad
habits and bad reasonings, so there must be at least two
souls, one that does good and the other that does the
opposite (896 e).
This passage is generally supposed to assert the exist-
ence of an evil world-soul as well as of a good one, but it
is important to observe that this does not follow from the
words of Plato. He does not say there are two souls, a
good and a bad one, opposed to one another, but that
PLURALITY: OF SOULS 335
there are not less than two. It is as illegitimate to infer
that there is only one evil soul, as it would be to infer that
there is only one good soul, and it is rather implied
that there is a plurality of souls, some good and some evil.
We shall see presently that there is one pre-eminently
good soul, namely God, but there is no suggestion of a
pre-eminently evil soul, ‘and that view is expressly rejected
in the Statesman (2704). The main point is rather that,
since evil exists, there must be a plurality of souls; for
evil as well as good must be caused by a soul, whether by
one soul or many. That is the important thing. We can
no longer refer evil to body or matter ; the philosophy of
movement requires us to attribute it to soul just as much
as good.
God.
§ 254. Now, if we look at the motions of the heavenly
bodies, we.see at once that they must be caused by a good
soul or souls, and indeed by the best, since they are the
most regular of all motions. That is due to their circular
character, which must have been given them by a good soul,
since, if left to themselves, things do not move in a circle
but in a straight line.’ These souls are what we call gods,
if there are many, or God, if there is one only, or -one
which is the best of all. It is in this way that Plato
reaches what he believes to bea scientific proof of the exist-
ence of God, and it is only when he has done this that he
canexplain the world. There can be no sort of doubt that
Plato regarded this as the central thing 1 in his philosophy,
and we shall understand that just in proportion as we
realise this fact. At the same time, we must note at once
1 This was rightly insisted upon by the Platonist Atticus (2nd cent. a.p.)
as the fundamental distinction between the theories of Plato and Aristotle.
Aristotle made the circular motion (κυκλοφορία) natural to the heavens,
while Plato held that it must havea cause. We call this cause Gravity,
and we know much more than Plato did of the way in which it acts, but
we know no more than he did of its nature. Plato knew there was a
problem here; Aristotle denied that there was any.
336 GOD AND THE GOOD
that, though he believes this line of argument sufficient to
demonstrate the existence of God, it tells us no more about
him than that he is the self-moving source of good motions.
Even so this is something quite different from anything
the earlier philosophers had meant when they spoke of
God. | The Ionians had called fire, air, water and the like
gods, but that only meant there were no other gods but
these. Anaximander and Xenophanes had called the worlds
or the World gods or God, but that was at most a sort of
pantheism, as it was also with Parmenides. Belief in God
was doubtless part of the Pythagorean religion, but it was
hardly a part of Pythagorean science. Plato brought the
idea of God into philosophy for the first time, and the
form the doctrine took in his mind was that God was a
living soul and that God was good.) So much as that, but
no more, he believed himself to have established by strictly
scientific reasoning.
We must not assume, therefore, that Plato meant by
God exactly what a modern theist would mean by the
word. Plato’s God is certainly a “ personal” god, as we
should put it; for he is Mind (νοῦς) existing in a living
soul, but it does not follow that he is the “supreme being”.
We have seen (§ 171) that Plato continued to lecture on the
Good to the last, and it is clear that his deepest thought
was expressed in this lecture, so far as it was expressed at
all. ‘The way in which one of his followers after another,
including Aristotle himself, endeavoured to publish an
authentic report of it proves that it was regarded as
fundamental. The question that arises, then, is whether
we are to identify God with the Good or not; and, if we
are not, what relation we are to understand God to have
to the Good. This question is not so simple as it appears ;
indeed, it is highly ambiguous. If it is asked whether the
Good is to be identified with the conception of God as
held by modern theists, the answer is that it is certainly
included in that conception, though it by no means
exhausts it. If, on the other hand, it is asked whether the
Good is to be identified with the God whose existence
GOD AND THE GOOD 337
Plato believed himself to have proved by the argument
just explained, the answer must certainly be that it is not.
The Good is not a soul, but a “form.” That is just how
Plato avoids pantheism, which he regards as equivalent to
atheism.
§ 255. This conception is not without its difficulties, as
Plato was well aware. In the Timaeus he says (28 c) “To
find the maker and father of this universe is a hard task ;
and, when you have found him, it is impossible to speak
of him before all people.” That is a sentence of un-
questioned authenticity, and fully explains the enigmatic
manner in which Plato speaks of the same difficulty to
Dionysios (who imagined he had solved it) in the Second
Epistle (312 6). It also explains why he never wrote or
published the Lecture on the Good, and why in the Laws,
which was written for publication, he always speaks of God
and never of the Good, though the Laws must be con-
temporary with that very lecture. The problem continued
to be discussed wherever there was living Greek thought.
Some later writers regarded the Good as the supreme God,
and made the Creator of the world subordinate to him,
and there were many other attempted solutions. The
difficulty is, in fact, the source of the controversies which
were ultimately settled by authority at the Council of
Nicaea, though this did not prevent it from continuing to
trouble the minds of original thinkers. That does not
concern us here. All we have to make clear is that Plato’s
God is not a form but a soul, and that he is the self-moved
mover of the best motions. ‘The Good is not a soul, but
it is independent of God, and even above him, since it is
the pattern by which he fashions the world. cde’,
It is equally certain that God is not the only self-moved
mover but simply the best of them. No doubt the sub-
ordinate gods of the Timaeus belong to the mythology of
that dialogue, and we can hardly doubt that Plato was a
monotheist. The question, however, of monotheism or
polytheism was not an important one to the Greeks, and
Plato might have admitted other gods, so long as they
4
338 THE TIMAEUS
were strictly subordinate. The main point is that human
souls, though inferior, exist just as truly as the divine soul,
and that in this way Plato thought it possible to reconcile
the existence of evil with the absolute goodness of God.
Here too we are faced by a difficulty which continues
to trouble mankind. Are individual souls in any sense
created by God, or is their existence entirely independent
of him? In the Timaeus there is a hint of a possible
solution of this question. We learn there that individual
souls are indestructible, not in their own nature, but
because to destroy what he has made is inconsistent with
the goodness of God. How far such a solution would
really express the mind of Plato cannot be determined till
we have come to a conclusion about the principles on
which the Timaeus is to be interpreted.
The World.
§ 256. The Timaeus, which was certainly written long
after the Republic, professes to describe a meeting which
took place the day after Sokrates repeated the conversation
narrated in the earlier dialogue, and consequently two days
after that conversation itself. That makes a busy three
days, especially as the Timaeus was to be followed at once
by the Cvitias, which Plato has left unfinished, and by
the Hermocrates, which was never written at all. We learn
for the first time in the Timaeus that the audience to
which Sokrates repeated the Republic consisted of Plato’s
great-grandfather, Kritias,’ Timaios the Lokrian, Hermo-
krates, and an unnamed fourth person who is prevented
by illness from being present the next day. It is not very
profitable to speculate who he may have been, but it is at
least certain that he was a Pythagorean; for Timaios is
1See Appendix. It is made perfectly clear that this Kritias is not the
Kritias who was one of the Thirty, but his grandfather, though the two
are hopelessly confused by modern writers. He is a very old man, who can
hardly remember what he was told yesterday, but remembers the scenes
of his boyhood clearly (26 b). At that time the poems of Solon were
still recent (210). It seems clear to me that most of the poetical frag-
ments ascribed to the younger Kritias are really his grandfather’s.
THE TIMAEUS AND THE REPUBLIC 336
represented as his understudy and agrees to replace him
If a name has to be given, I would suggest that of Philo-
laos, and I should explain his absence by the consideration
that the Timaeus, though certainly based on his system, in
several points goes beyond what we can reasonably attri-
bute to him. If that is so, we can understand the origin
of the famous scandal that Plato plagiarised the Timaeus
from the ‘“ three books” of Philolaos which had come into
his possession.’
However that may be—and I only offer the suggestion
for what it is worth—the elaborate mise en scéne must
surely have some significance. If Plato took so much
trouble to attach the Timaeus to the Republic, he must
have meant the later dialogue to supplement the earlier in
some way, and this must be connected with the startling
fact that Sokrates begins by giving a recapitulation of the
Republic which includes Book V., but ignores Books VI.
and VII. altogether. We are not allowed to attribute
this to an oversight ; for Sokrates asks Timaios whether
the summary is complete, and receives the answer that
nothing is lacking (19 b). This can only mean that
the Timaeus and its projected sequels were intended to
replace in some way the later books of the Republic. The
fact is that the central books of the Republic do not, except
in the matter of solid geometry, go materially beyond
what Sokrates might have learnt and probably did learn,
from his Pythagorean associates, and Plato now wishes to
make a further advance. For the same reason, Sokrates
is no longer the chief speaker. The new views, however,
are introduced with great reserve and somewhat obscurely
expressed, so that there has been much dispute as to the
meaning of some of the most important passages. Plato
does not forget that the dialogue is supposed to take place
in the fifth century.
§ 257. ‘The Timaeus professes to give an account of the
creation of the world, and the question at once arises
whether this represents Plato’s own doctrine or not. It
14, Gr. Ph.2 § 140,
340 THE TIMAEUS
is quite certain that Xenokrates and other early Platonists
held it did not. The world, they said, was represented as
having a beginning in time only for purposes of exposi-
tion (διδασκαλίας χάριν), just as the construction of a
diagram may be the best way to exhibit the properties
of a figure. Aristotle thought it necessary to argue
against this principle of interpretation, and we may say
that, on the whole, the Platonists regard the Timaeus as
mythical, while the Peripatetics take it literally. That,
however, is impossible for anyone who has grasped the
central doctrine of Platonism. We can infer the existence
of the soul and of God from the fact of motion, but we
cannot give any scientific account of the way in which
they act. The world of experience is only, after all, an
image, and it belongs to the region of becoming, and
we can therefore do no more than tell “likely tales”
(εἰκότες λόγοι) about it. Cosmology is not, and cannot
be science, any more than Theology or Psychology. It
is only a form of “play” (παιδιά). Science, in the strict
sense, must be mathematical. And yet Cosmology 15 not
mere play either, for our account of the world will be
related to the truth in the same way as the world 15
related to reality. It will be truth in the making, just as
the sensible world is the intelligible world in the making.
The appropriate vehicle for half-traths of this kind is
myth, and here we must note once more that myth
expresses something lower than science, and not some-
thing higher. That is fundamental for the interpretation
of Plato. The matter is put quite clearly in the Timaeus
itself. We are dealing with what is always becoming and
never is, not with what always is and never becomes (27 d).
The former is an image (εἰκών) of the latter (29 δ), and
the work of ordering the sensible world after the pattern
of the intelligible is assigned to God. No description of
this process can have a scientific character, for we are
dealing with what cannot be an object of knowledge, but
only of belief (29 b-c), and knowledge is higher, not
lower, than belief.
NECESSITY 341
§ 258. We are first told that God found a visible mass
moving in a disorderly fashion, and resolved to bring it
out of disorder into order. If we ask why he did so, the
answer is ““ΕἼ6 was good, and the good has never at any
time a feeling of jealousy towards anything, so he wished
everything to become as like himself as possible” (29 e).
This he brought about by creating a soul of the world, into
which he introduced mathematical and harmonic relations
(35 a «49...
We note here, in the first place, the phrase “as like
himself as possible.” ‘This reservation is called for because
Mind (νοῦς) is confronted by Necessity (ἀνάγκη), and
cannot, therefore completely effect its purpose (47 6). We
must, then, consider the “errant cause” (πλανωμένη αἰτία).
In particular, we must explain how the elements came into
being. For these cannot be ultimate. So far from being
“letters” (στοιχεῖα, elementa), they are not even syllables.
The conception of Necessity to which we are here
introduced is not by any means an easy one. It is
certainly not what we call physical necessity, for we are
told that it can be “persuaded” by Mind. We are even
told that it is a cause, and a cause “subservient to” the
divine. Itisa‘‘concomitant cause ”’ (συναίτιον) of the good-
ness of the world, which could not be realised without it.
This idea is as old as the Phaedo, where the concausa as dis-
tinct from the causa is defined as “ that without which the
cause would never be a cause” (99b). We learn further
that this “concomitant” or ‘‘subservient” cause is corporeal,
and that most people make the mistake of confusing it
with the true cause, explaining everything, as they do, by
warming and cooling, rarefaction and condensation, and
so forth. The true cause is Mind and Mind alone, and
the corporeal is a hindrance as well as a help. Mind
could do nothing without something to work on, but
that of itself stands in the way of it carrying lout its
purposes completely. We learn also that these secondary
causes “are moved by something else, and then of
necessity move something else,” as contrasted with the
342 THE TIMAEUS
primary cause, which is self-moved. That is to be under-
stood in the light of the doctrine of soul discussed above
(§ 256). It may help the reader to appreciate the account
Plato makes Timaios give of Mind and Necessity if he
will compare it with the theory of Leibniz that this
is the best of all possible worlds. The difference is that
Plato regards his explanation as a myth, while Leibniz
considered his to be an adequate solution of the difficulty.
§ 259. This purely mythical character of the cosmogony
becomes still more evident if we consider its details. In
particular, motion is ascribed to the disordered mass before
the world has received a soul, and that is in flat contradic-
tion to Plato’s doctrine that soul alone is self-moved.
Plutarch, one of the few Platonists who took the Timaeus
literally, can only get out of this difficulty by the help
of the evil world-soul supposed to be assumed in the
Laws (§ 256). That, according to him, is eternal, and
is to be identified with Necessity ; only the good world-
soul was created. But, even supposing Plutarch to be
right in finding an evil world-soul in the Laws, there
is certainly nothing said about it in the Timaeus, and it is
impossible to suppose it would not have been mentioned
if so much depended upon it. Besides that, we have seen
that Necessity is “‘ subservient’? to Mind. A similar diffi-
culty arises when we consider what is said about Time.
In the Timaeus it is spoken of as a ‘moving image of
eternity’’ (27 4), and we are told that it comes into
being ‘‘along with the heavens”’ (38 b), that is to say,
after the creation of the world-soul, which does not, there-
fore, take place in time. That gives us the explanation of
the necessarily mythical character of the whole story. We
can only think of motion as in time, for time is just the
measure of motion. On the other hand, knowledge is of
the eternal and not of the temporal. It follows that,
when we have te speak of motion, our language is perforce
unscientific and pictorial. It can only convey an “image”
of the truth, since time itself is only ‘‘a moving image of
eternity.” This does not mean, as we shall see, that time
TIME AND SPACE 343
is subjective, but only that we fail to grasp its true nature.
It is really the continuum implied in the conception of
motion, but that cannot be known in abstraction from
motion itself.
§ 260. But, besides being temporal, the “errant cause’
is spatial. This is also hard to express in words; for
space is apprehended neither by thought nor by sense, but
by “‘a sort of bastard reasoning” (λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ). It
is a sort of “receptacle” (ὑποδοχή) or “ nurse” (τιθήνη) of
all things (49a). To understand this, we must go back
to the elements, which we have already denied to be
primary. We see that they pass into one another by rare-
faction and condensation, and it is safest not to call any of
them ‘this,’ but only “such” (49d). The only thing
which can be called “this ’’ is that “in which” (ἐν ᾧ) they
all appear to arise and pass away (49 e).
This may be illustrated by an example. If we were to
make all sorts of forms out of gold and keep constantly
changing them, the only answer to the question ‘“ what
is that δ᾿ would be “Gold.” We should not speak of
the transient forms it assumed as “things” (ὡς ὄντα) at
all. It is the same with “the recipient of all things”
(τὸ πανδεχές), the matrix (ἐκμαγεῖον) on which the forms
are “impressed” (ἐντυποῦνται). It has itself no form,
but remains always the same, taking on with complete
indifference the forms that “pass in and out of it” (ra
ἐἰσιόντα καὶ ἐξιόντα), and these in turn are ‘imitations of
what is ever” (τῶν ὄντων ἀεὶ μιμήματα). They are, in fact,
the elementary triangles and their products the regular
solids, and we know from Aristotle, though we are not
told so in the Timaeus, that they are imitations of numbers.
We must, therefore, distinguish three things, the Form,
which is the father, the Recipient, which is the mother, and
the offspring of the two (the Mixture of the Philebus),
which is the Corporeal. The Recipient is altogether form-
less; all we can say of it is that it is an invisible, all-
receptive something, partaking in a mysterious way in the
intelligible. It is, in fact, space (χώρα).
᾽
344 THE TIMAEUS
§261. That the so-called “primary matter” of the
Timaeus is space of three dimensions and nothing else is
really quite certain both from Plato’s own language on the
subject and from the statements of Aristotle. Nor is there
any occasion in the system for any other kind of “ matter.”
The “ elements” of the corporeal are completely accounted
for by the regular solids, and they in turn can be con-
structed from the elementary triangles. Plato undoubtedly
means to say that the corporeal can be completely reduced
to extension geometrically limited. Indeed, he goes a
great deal further than that, though he only gives us a few
hints of his real meaning here. We do not perceive space
at all by the senses; we only infer it by a species of reason-
ing, and that reasoning is a “bastard” one. It is “ina
dream”’ that we say everything must be in a place and
occupy a space (52 Ὁ), and when the elementary triangles
are discussed, it is said that the principles (ἀρχαί) which
are higher than these God knows, and of men he who is
dear to God (53d). Space is only one aspect of Con-
tinuity, and not an essential one. These considerations,
however, take us beyond the mythology of the Timaeus,
for which space is ultimate.
§ 262. The corporeal world, then, is in space and time,
and for that reason it can only be described in mythological
language. That does not, however, exhaust Plato’s teach-
ing on the subject. What we say of the world is not,
indeed, the truth, but it may be more or less like the
truth, and it is our business to make it as like the truth as
possible. The boundary-line between the intelligible and
the merely sensible is not a fixed one, and the sensible
may be made progressively intelligible. It will, I think,
be admitted that this is the doctrine to which all the
dialogues from the Theaetetus onwards naturally lead
up, and I believe we shall find proof that Plato held it.
Unfortunately, however, his followers were not able to
rise to this point of view, and Plato has been generally
credited with an absolute dualism. Xenokrates confined
the province of science to the things ‘‘outside the heavens,”
THE SENSIBLE AND THE INTELLIGIBLE 345
and made the heavens themselves the objects of belief
(δόξα). They were intelligible by the help of astronomy,
but they belonged to the sensible world as being visible.
If this report does justice to him, he made absolute a
distinction which for Plato was merely relative. At the
same time, it is just possible that this report may be only a
distortion of what we shall find to be the true Platonic
doctrine. There is no doubt about Aristotle, however.
It is certain that he introduced for the first time the
fatal notion that the nature of the heavens was quite
different from that of the sublunary world. It is this
doctrine, generally known as that of “ the incorruptibility
of the heavens,” that the Platonist Galileo was chiefly con-
cerned to disprove by calling attention to such phenomena
as the new star in Sagittarius, and it is strange that Aristotle,
who condemned Plato’s perfectly legitimate separation of
forms from sensible things, should himself be responsible
for a much more questionable “separation” (χωρισμός)
like this. There is no trace of anything like it in Plato.
He certainly assigned an exceptional position to Astronomy
and its sister-science Music in his philosophy, but that
was simply because, in his own day, these were the sciences
in which the intelligible was most obviously advancing at
the expense of the merely sensible. Even in the Republic
(530d) it is hinted that there are more sciences of motion
in space than these two, and we can see from the Par-
menides (130 e) that a comolete science would have to
account for “hair, mud and dirt” as well as for the
planetary motions. It is, however, from his astronomy
alone that we can gain a clear idea of the relation Plato
held to exist between the sensible and the intelligible. It
would be out of place to discuss it fully here; it will be
enough to look at a single branch of it, and I shall select
one which is commonly misunderstood.?
§ 263. The great problem of the day was that of the
1This applies even to the recent discussion of it in Sir T. L. Heath’s
Aristarchus of Samos, which in other respects is an excellent guide in such
matters.
346 THE PLANETARY MOTIONS
planetary motions. For the senses these are hopelessly
irregular, and that is probably why we hear in the Timaeus
of the “errant cause” (πλανωμένη αἰτία). In the first
place, since the paths of the planets are oblique to the
equator, their apparent courses are spirals (ἕλικες), not
circles. In the next place, Mercury and Venus at one
time travel faster than the Sun, so that they get in front
of it and appear as morning stars; at another time they -
lag behind it and appear as evening stars. In fact, these
three bodies are always “overtaking and being overtaken
by one another” (38d). The other planets behave even
more strangely. Sometimes they seem to accelerate their
velocity so as to appear stationary among the fixed stars
or even to get some way ahead of them ; at other times,
they are retarded and seem to have a retrograde motion.
There is a further irregularity in the Sun’s annual course.
The solstices and equinoxes do not divide it into four equal
segments as we should expect them to do.
Now this irregularity cannot be ultimate. If we ask
why not, the only answer is that the Artificer created the
world on the pattern of the Good, and disorder of any
kind is opposed to the Good. That is the ultimate ground
of the rule that hypotheses are not to be needlessly multi-
plied. The postulate of simplicity and regularity which
still guides scientific research is at bottom teleological,! and
we probably come nearest to Plato’s thought about the
Good if we say that, according to him, reality must be a
system. There is something to be said, however, for
his simpler way of expressing this. At any rate, it does
not admit of doubt that Plato conceived the function
of Astronomy to be the discovery of the simplest hypo-
theses which would account for the apparent complexity of
celestial phenomena. We know as a fact that he pro-
pounded the solar anomaly as a problem to his scholars
(§ 174).
1It is worth while to note that this term is derived from τέλειον,
“complete,” not immediately from τέλος. It has no implication of an
external end,
THE EARTH IS NOT THE CENTRE 347
§ 264. Now we know further that Eudoxos invented a
beautiful hypothesis, that of concentric spheres, to account
for all these irregularities on the assumption of the earth’s
central position,! and we know also that Plato did not accept
his solution as satisfactory. ‘The assumption of twenty-
seven spheres did not seem simple enough, and fuller study
showed that still more were required. Kallippos added to
their number, and Aristotle had to add still more. Finally,
the concentric spheres were replaced by eccentric spheres
and epicycles, and what we call the Ptolemaic system was
the result. Besides this, Aristotle transformed the geo-
metrical hypothesis of Eudoxos into a mechanical system
of material spheres in contact with one another, and all
that arrested the growth of a true astronomy for nearly
two thousand years.
§ 265. Plato, on the other hand, saw clearly that the
geocentric hypothesis was the source of the trouble. The
later Pythagoreans had taught that the earth revolves round
the Central Fire, and it was in this direction that a solution
was to be looked for. Here again we have direct first-
hand evidence. Theophrastos (who came to Athens before
the death of Plato, and was almost certainly a member of
the Academy) said that ‘ Plato in his old age repented of
having given the earth the central place in the universe, to
which it had no right.’’? This is unimpeachable testimony,
and no interpretation which ignores it can be accepted.’ It
does not follow from it, however, that Plato adopted the
heliocentric hypothesis.
1 For a clear account of this, see Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 190
“4.
2Plut. Quaest. Plat. 1006 c: Θεόφραστος δὲ καὶ προσιστορεῖ τῷ
Πλάτωνι πρεσβυτέρῳ γενομένῳ μεταμέλειν ὡς οὐ προσήκουσαν ἀποδόντι
τῇ γῇ τὴν μέσην χώραν τοῦ παντός. In the Life of Numa, 11, Plutarch
says, doubtless on the same authority: Πλάτωνά φασι πρεσβύτην
γενόμενον διανενοῆσθαι περὶ τῆς γῆς ws ἐν ἑτέρᾳ χώρᾳ καθεστώσης,
τὴν δὲ μέσην καὶ κυριωτάτην ἑτέρῳ τινι κρείττονι προσήκουσαν.
8 Sir T. L. Heath (p. 186) says Theophrastos got the statement “ from
hearsay.” No doubt, but he probably heard it from Plato himself, and
certainly from his immediate disciples.
348 THE EARTH’S MOTION
ὃ 266. Now there is a sentence in the Timaeus (40 Ὁ)
which can only refer to the same doctrine, if we adopt the
best attested reading! The only admissible translation of
this is “ earth, our nurse, going toand fro on its path round
the axis which stretches right through the universe.” The
choice of a word which properly means “ to go backwards
and forwards’’? is specially significant ; for it is just that
aspect of the terrestrial motion which accounts for the
apparently retrograde motion of the planets. This is enough
for our present purpose, and I do not propose to discuss
here the vexed question of whether the heliocentric
hypothesis was mooted in the Academy or not. I believe
it was, but in any case Aristarchos of Samos, who did pro-
pound it, must have got his inspiration from the Academy
and not from Eudoxos.
§ 267. Now let us see what light all this throws on
Plato’s philosophical position. In the first place, it is the
phenomena of the visible heavens that furnish the problem
for solution, and the assumption throughout is that it is
possible to give an intelligible account of these. There 1s
no attempt to shirk the difficulty by referring the irre-
1This is: γῆν δὲ τροφὸν μὲν ἡμετέραν, ἰλλομένην δὲ τὴν περὶ τὸν
διὰ παντὸς πόλον τεταμένον. Everything here depends upon the word
τὴν, which is quite distinctly written in Par. A, though omitted in all
printed texts before my own. It can only be explained on the principle
of τὴν (sc. ὁδόν), and we must “ understand ” περίοδον or περιφοράν. No
“scribe”? could have invented such a reading, which is also that of at
least one other first-class MS. It is true that Par. A has εἱλλομένην for
ἰλλομένην, but that is an everyday confusion, and the agreement of the
MSS. of Aristotle, Plutarch and Proclus with other Plato MSS. turns the
scale of evidence.
2The verb ὄλλεσθαι (which cannot be etymologically connected with
εἵλλεσθαι) has no other meaning than this in classical Greek literature.
It is used by Sophokles (4nz. 340) of ploughs going backwards and
forwards in the furrow, and Xenophon (Cyz. 6) speaks of κύνες
ἐξίλλουσαι τὰ ἴχνη, going to and fro till they find the scent. If
Apollonios Rhodios confused ἴλλω and εἵλλω, that proves nothing.
Aristotle certainly understood the word to mean motion of some sort
(de Coel, 296 4, 5), and this is confirmed by the use of the present
participle. It is quite incredible to me that Aristotle should have mis-
understood or misrepresented Plato’s teaching on a subject like this,
CONCLUSION Sas
gularity of the planetary motions to the shortcomings of
the sensible world, or to ““ matter ” or to an evil world-soul,
as popular Platonism did later. Nor is there any attempt
to represent the phenomena as illusory ; on the contrary,
the whole object of the inquiry is to “save” them. The
appearances remain exactly what they were, only we now
know what they mean. The gulf between the intelligible
and the sensible has so far been bridged; the visible
motions of the heavenly bodies have been referred to an
intelligible system, or, in other words, they have been seen
in the light of the Good. If we ask why they should
appear to us as they do, the answer must be on the same
lines. It is because we are placed on a spherical earth
which revolves round the axis of the universe, and that is
because it is good that we should be so placed, though we
cannot clearly see why in the present state of our know-
ledge. That, I take it, is how Plato laid the ghost of the
two-world theory which had haunted Greek philosophy
since the time of Parmenides, and that is what he meant
by saying that the sensible world was “the image of the
intelligible.”” He had shown already in the Sophist that
to be an image was not to be nothing. An appearance ts
an appearance, and is only unreal if we take it for what it
1s not.
Conclusion.
§ 268. The account just given of Plato’s mature philo-
sophy is of necessity meagre and in a measure hypothetical.
As to that, I can only say that in this case the phenomena
to be “saved” are the writings of Plato himself and the
statements of Aristotle and others who knew him, and the
only proof or disproof the hypothesis admits of is its effi-
cacy in accounting for them. It cannot be otherwise tested.
Personally I have found this hypothesis efficacious during
a course of Platonic study extending over twenty years at
least. I claim no more for it than that, and also no less.’
ΤῸ is nearly a quarter of a century ago that I found the current views
of Sokrates and Plato leading me into a hopeless scepticism and resolved
350 CONCLUSION
I do not pretend to impose my conclusions on the reader,
who must make the experiment for himself. He will
certainly find it worth while.
There is another point still. It must be admitted that
Plato’s immediate followers fell very far short of the ideal I
have attributed to their master. Aristotle was impatient
with the mathematical side of the doctrine and did not even
trouble to understand it. The result was that this did
not come to its rights for nearly two thousand years. Even
those men who were really carrying out the work Plato
began felt bound to put their results in a form which
Aristotle’s criticism would not touch. The Elements of
Euclid are a monument of that position.1 Xenokrates
confused Plato’s philosophy of numbers with his philo-
sophy of motion, and defined the soul as a “ self-moving
number.” Speusippos held that the Good was not
primary, but only arose in the course of evolution. The
Neoplatonists did more justice to Plato’s doctrine of the
Good and of the Soul, but they failed to remember his
warning that the detailed application of these could only
be ‘* probable tales’ in the actual state of our knowledge.
Yet these very failures to grasp Plato’s central thought
bear witness to different sides of it and justify the attempt
to reconstruct in such a way as to explain how it could be
misunderstood in so many different ways. After all, these
“broken lights’’ are also among the phenomena which
have to be “saved,” and for this reason many sides of
Plato’s philosophy ail only appear in their true light when
we have seen how it fared in the hands of his successors,
and especially in those of Aristotle.
to see what could be done with the hypothesis that Plato really meant
what he said. Since then I have edited the whole text of Plato, and an
editor necessarily reads his text through minutely many scores of times,
1 Perhaps the most significant touch is that he calls the axioms κοιναὶ
ἔννοιαι or “ innate ideas.” ‘That is a Stoic formula which enables him
to avoid discussing the true nature of hypothesis.
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ENGLISH INDEX
Abaris, 40.
Abdera, 194}.
Academy, 213 599., 303.
Achilles and the tortoise, 84.
Adeimantos, son of Ariston, 206 sg.
Aether (αἰθήρ) 21, (=Fire in Anaxa-
goras) 78.
Aggregation, states of, 27.
Aigospotamos meteor, 80.
pA (1.6, Mist), 21; 25, 30, 44. δῖ,
67, 72, 95.
Air (atmospheric), 72, 78.
Aischines against Timarchos (1) 139%,
(52175) 187.
Akoumenos, 190.
Alexander the Great, 295.
Alkibiades, 137, 1385g., 141, 150, 187,
190.
Alkidamas, 3007.
Alkmaion, 50, 75.
Analysis, 219 sgq.
Anaxagoras, 76-81.
Anaximander, 22-24,
Anaximenes, 24-25.
Andokides, 189 σφ.
Anthropomorphism, 29, 35.
Antichthon, 92.
Antisthenes, 172, 251 sg., 282.
Anytos, 110, 180, 186, 187, 188.
Apocalypses, 65.
Apolaustic life, 42.
Apollo, 40.
Appearances, saving, II.
Arabic figures, 54.
Archelaos of Athens, 124 sg., 147.
Archimedes, 199, 3228.
Archytas, 297, 323.
Aristarchos of Samos, 348.
Aristeas of Prokonnesos, 40.
Aristeides the elder, 128.
Aristeides the younger, 138.
Aristokles, 2301.
Aristophanes, 123, 142 sg., 144 5ζ.»
184 sg.
Aristotle, 11, 72, 345, 350; on Atom-
ism, 95; on Sokrates, 1574; on
Plato, 178, 312 599.3 Categories (θα,
8) 326%; Prior Analytics (67a,
21) 158; Sophistict Elenchi (165a,
22) 108, (1784, 36) 260; Physics
(192@, 6 sg.) 330, (203@, 13) 53%
(250a, 20) 114 sg., (2654, 25) 2775
De caelo (296a, 5) 3487; De genera-
tione (3354, 10) 166; . Metaphysics
(987a, 20) 315, (987a, 22) 157,
(9874, 1) 157, (9874, 29) 315, (9892,
5 59.) 26*, (992a, 1) 322% 8, (9922,
32) 3121, (998a, 2) 114, (10144, 16)
271, (10430, 5 597.) 251 5929.» (10788,
9 594.) 3131, (10788, 11) 157, (10782,
17) 317, (10786, 21) 157, (10786,
30) 165, (1080a, 12 sgqg.) 314, (10814,
35) 314, (1083@, 33) 314, (10864, 3)
317, (109Ia, 4) 320%, (10954, 8)
537; Poetics (14510, 25) 183.
Aristoxenos, 41, 48, 49, 87, 124, 129%,
114, 153, 221, S00.
Arithmetic, 84, 224, 323.
Arteries, 77}.
Astrology, 6, 7%.
ENGLISH INDEX
Astronomy (Babylonian), 7 sgg. ; (Aca-
demic), 225 sg,
Athens as the meeting-place of Italic
and Ionic philosophy, 85, 119, 123,
122, 214.
Atomism (Ὁ. Leukippos and Demo-
kritos), 86; (origin of), 95; and Pytha-
goreanism, 97.
Atoms, motion of, 96.
Atticus the Platonist, 3351.
Axiochos, 190.
Babylonian astronomy, 7 sgq., 19.
Being (οὐσία) and becoming (yévesis),
90, 155 sgg-, 159, 162, 224, 284,
331 $9.
Biology, 24.
Blend (xpdaous), 48.
Blood, 75.
Body, 31.
Boundless, 22.
Bryson, 254, 263.
Campbell, Lewis, 2121, 252.
Carthaginians, 294 sg., 300 “9.
Categories, 247, 257, 283599.
Catharism, 41,
Charmides, 138, 207, 210.
Conceptualism, 1541, 258, 317,
Condensation, v. Rarefaction,
Constitutions, 292 sg.
Continuity, 83, 84, 90, 114 sg., 198 5.»
320 sgg.
Copernicus, 5.
Cosmogony, 4, 18.
Crete, 17, 30, 40.
Croesus, 19.
Cujas, 304},
Cyprus, 295%.
Damon, 190.
Darkness, 51 s5¢., 60.
Delios of Ephesos, 2953.
Delos, 30.
Demeter, 30.
Demiourgos, 49.
353
Democracy, 293.
Demokritos, 193-201 ; and Protagoras,
116, 1947, 197 5.» 244},
Diagoras, 76.
Dialectic, 134 57..0 164, 228 :ζ., 263,
28357.
Dialexeis, 2213,
Diapason, 47.
Dikaiarchos, 87, 153.
Diogenes of Apollonia, 123, 145.
Dion, 211, 295 sg.
Dionysios I., 211, 29459.
Dionysios II., 294 sgq.
Dionysos, 30, 31.
Division, 220.
Dodecahedron, 6, 55, 83.
Dramatic and narrated dialogue, 234.
Dropides, 207 sg.
Dualism, 89.
Dyad, indeterminate, 314, 320sg¢.
Earth, Mother, 26.
Earth (shape), 20, 23, 25, 36, 44, 72,
80, 100; (place), 92, 347; (inclina-
tion), 100; (as an ‘‘element”), 26.
Echekrates, 152.
Eclipses, 8, 18, 19, 24, 44, 60, 80, 92
Ecstasy, 31.
Education, 305-311.
Effluences, 75, 119.
Egyptian mathematics, 5 sgg., 210 sg.
Flea, 33, 64.
Eleatic Stranger, 237, 273 sq.
Elements (v. στοιχεῖα), 26, 61, 69, 72,
77, 78, 87, 88, 99.
Empedokles, 43, 71-75, 119.
Enlightenment, 32 sgg.
Epameinondas, 219, 300.
Epicharmos, 63.
Epicurus and Epicureans, 23, 36, 96,
194.
Eristics, 172, 231, 242, 254, 263, 273.
Eros, 138 sg.
Eryximachos, 190.
Euclid (axioms) 350, (Ie 47) 40, 54;
(II. 11) 55, (XIII.) 219.
354
Eudemos of Cyprus, 298.
Eudemos of Rhodes, 20.
Eudoxos, 24, 199, 214, 263, 324, 325°,
347.
Eukleides of Megara, 152, 161, 210,
230 59g., 235.
Eurytos, 532, 90 sg.
Evil, 334 sg.
Evolution, 24, 75.
Experiment, 10, 72, 78.
Explanation, I0.
Figurate numbers, 54.
Figures (v. εἴδη, ἰδέαι), 49, 50, 51, 52,
54, 88 σφ.
Fire, 60, 61; central, 92.
Flux, 61.
Fluxions, 322.
Force, 70.
Form and matter, 44, 56.
Forms (v. εἴδη, ἰδέαι), 154 599., 255 599.
Fractions, 85.
Galileo, 24, 220, 345.
Geocentric hypothesis, 92.
Geometry, plane, 20, 225.
Geometry, solid, 213, 225.
Glaukon, son of Ariston, 206 sg.
Gnomon, 7, 53.
God (gods), 23, 25, 28, 29, 32, 35, 63,
81, 117, 123, 169', 289, 335 57.
Golden section, 55.
Good, the, 169 sg., 221, 231 sg., 33659.
Goodness, 109 sg., 170 5g., 173 57.»
175 5g.
Gorgias, 119 sqq.
Great-and-small, the, 314, 320 s9q.,
329.
Gymnastics, 396 sg.
Harmonic mean, 48.
Harmonics, 227 sg.
‘“‘Harmony” (ἁρμονία), 45;
spheres, 56.
Health, 50.
Heart, 73, 75.
of the
ENGLISH INDEX
Hekataios, 22.
Hellenes and barbarians, 34, 218.
Herakleides, 297.
Herakleitos, 57-63.
Herakles, 118, 121.
Hermodoros the Platonist, 205, 210,
330.
Hermodoros οὗ Ephesos, 58.
Hermokopidai, 189 sg.
Herodotos, 106 sg., (i. 74) 18, (ii. 109)
7, (iii. 38) 107, (iv. 95) 107,
(v. 28) 17.
Hesiod, 28, 34 sg.
Hiero, 33
Hipparchos, 7.
Hipparinos, 300.
Hippasos, 55, 87 sg.
Hippias, 118.
Hippokrates of Chios, 118.
Hippokrates of Kos, 10, 32, 33, 86,
IOI, 163.
Hippon of Samos, 123 sg.
Hipponikos, 1117.
Homer, 28, 34 sg.
Homeric Hymns, 30 sg.
Homo mensura, I14 sg.
Hyperboreans, 30.
Hypotenuse, 40.
Hypothesis, 149, 162, 222, 224, 220,
261.
Images, 89, 276 sgy., 286 sgq., 315.
Incommensurability, 54, 90, 114, 310.
Indian science, 9.
Indivisible lines, 322.
Infinitesimals, 199, 320, 322.
Infinity, 86,
Injustice, 22, 48, 106.
Intelligible and sensible, 316, 340 sgq.
Intervals, musical, 45 sgg., 328 sg.
Ionia, 214.
Irony, 132.
Isokrates, 107, 172, 215 sgq., 273, 295%,
(10. 1) 171, (10. 2) 113, (10.3) 120,
(10.5) 172, (11.5) 1381, 150%,
(13.1, 3) 172.
ENGLISH INDEX
Justice (cosmological), 22, 61, 106.
-Kallias, 110.
Kallikles, 120 sg., 186.
Kallippos, 299.
Kebes, 151 sg.
Kepler, 38.
Klepsydra, 72.
Korybantes, 41.
Kratylos, 241 57.9 315.
Kritias, son of Dropides, 208, 3381.
Kritias, son of Kallaischros, 138, 187,
209 5g.
Kroton, 39, 41.
Kylon, 39.
Law and nature, 105 sgg., 117, 122.
Lawgivers, 106.
Leukippos, 92, 94-101.
Likeness, v. Images.
Limit and unlimited, 44, 51, 327 sg.
Lives, the Thee, 42.
Love and strife, 72 sq.
Lydia, 17, 19.
Lyre, 45.
Lysimachos, 128.
Lysis, 219, 300.
Maieutic, 139 s¢.
Man is the measure, 114 sg.
Materialism, 279 sg.
Mathematicians and Akousmatics, 88.
Mathematics, 38; wv. Arithmetic and
Geometry.
Matter and form, 27, 44, 56, 68.
Mean, 48, 56.
Measure, 114 sg.
Medicine, 41, 49 sgq., 88, 123 σφ.
Megarics, 134, 152, 230 sg., 235, 242,
254, 272, 273 597+) 277 “φῦ:
Meletos, 180.
Melissos, 85 5.) 95.
Menon’s /atrika, 88, 123.
Metapontion, 39, 40.
Metempsychosis, 43.
Might is right, 121.
355
Miletos, 17, 28.
Mind, 79, 123.
Mixture (v. Blend), 31, 74, 76.
Moon, 24, 36, 60, 80, 92, 226.
More and less, the, 329 sg.
Motion, 68, 69, 79, 84, 98, 245, 333,
338.
Music, 41, 45 sgq., 306.
Myrto, 129%.
Mysteries, 12, 189 sg.
Mysticism, 168.
Myth, mythology, 3 sgg., 167 sqq., 183.
Narrated and dramatic dialogue, 234 sg.
Nature and law, 105 sg.
Necessity, 341 sgq.
Negative quantity, 330.
Not being, 274 52.) 330.
Numbers, 51-54, 83, 85, 89, 312-324.
Oinopides, 80.
One and many, 264 sgg., 326 sgq.
Opposites, 22, 48, 49 sy., 79, 88.
Orbits, planetary, 24.
Orphicism, 31, 32, 59, 71, 130 τη;
101:
Parmenides, 51, 63-68, 133, 236.
Participation, 165, 255 sgqg., 282 sqy.,
315.
Pentagon, regular, 6, 55.
Pentagram, 55.
Pentalpha, 55.
Perikles and Anaxagoras, 76, 81; and
Zeno, 82; and Melissos, 86.
Persia, 295.
Phaidros, 190.
Pherekydes, 4, 18, 26, 40.
Philip of Opous, 301.
PhilistOs, 295, 296.
Philolaos, 87, 92, 153, 339.
Philosopher-king, 218, 291 sg.
Philosophy, 3 5¢¢-) 42, 215.
Phleious, 152.
Pindar, 107, 121.
Planets, 7, 8, 226, 346 59.
22
350
Plato, 182, 205-350; Euthyphro (2a)
180, (3¢ sg.) 184, (56) 154", (62) 183,
(6c, δ) 1541; Apology 180 sgg., (17a)
128, (26c) 180%, (314) 1842, (33a) 138,
187, (342) 206, (384) 210, (394) 187;
Crito (456) 151, (§24) 1241, (524) 128 ;
Phaedo 42, (584) 152, (594) 151, 210,
(61d) 153 (65¢, 664, €) 421, (732) 158,
(742) 3181, (766) 155, (782) 158, (82a)
174, (84c) 160, (844) 160, (85¢) 160,
(854) 160, (864) 50, 93, (886) 161,
(88c) 161, (882), 93, 153, (89a sg.) 161,
(96a sg.) 132, (966) 75, 125, (966) 135,
(974) 125, 162, (986) 80, (994) 162,
(99¢ sgg.) 315, (1000) 155, (100c) 164,
(101d) 164, (10Ie¢) 162, (1024) 153,
(1026) 255, (108e) 201; Cratylus
(3896) 1542, (400c) 1313 Zheaetetus
237-253, (142c) 152, (1434) 236, (143)
235, (1482) 323, (1516) 146, (1522)
113, (180¢) 86, (2102) 238; Sophist
218, 273-289, (2230) 108, (2424) 64,
(2482) 91; FPoliticus 290-294, (262d)
218, (270a) 335; Parmenides 253-
272, (128c) 82, (1282) 163, (1302)
134, (1304) 155, (130c-d) 91, (1354)
134; Philebus, 324-332; Symposium
1824) 139, (2024) 251, (2154) 141 sg.,
(220d) 130, 137, (215a)141; Phaedrus
(2276 sgg.) 185, (231¢) 139%, (245c)
333, (247¢) 167, (2504) 140, (26γα)
134, (268a) 190, (2794) 216; Char-
mides 176, (1334) 136, 190, (1582)
207; Laches 176 (178a 59.) 146,
(1814) 137, Huthydemus 135, (290c)
229; Protagoras (3094) 111, (3116)
111}, (312c) 2281, {2156} 11}. (317)
109, (3174) 111, (3614) 134; Gorgias
(4564) 175, (4846) 121, (504@ sgg.)
177, (5212) 186; Meno (72c) 154,
(76c) 119, (794) 140, 251, (81a)
130, (864) 157, (9t¢ sgg.) 110, (916)
111, 112, (944) 186, (974) 173, (98a)
174; Hipptas maior (2822) 111; Htp-
pias minor,175; Republic(3286) 111,
(332c) 176, (332¢ sg.) 175, (3682) 206,
ENGLISH INDEX
(4354) 224, (4762) 165, (5045) 224,
(5057 599.) 169, (510c) 229, (5114) 162,
228", (520c) 245, (524-5256) 224, (5274
599.) 225, (528d sqq.) 225, (529d sgq.)
226, (5334)229, (534@)159!; Zimaeus
338-349, (19 a-@) 237, (28¢) 337, (352)
331, (406) 348, (48d) 88, (51c) 155,
(526) 99, (584) 51 “φ.; Critéas (110d
59g.) 223; Laws 301-311, (6362 sg.)
138 sg., (6564) 210, (7094) 219, 302,
(722d σφ.) 301, (7344) 294, (7474)
211, (7474) 6, (7566) 294, (8034) 303,
(8194) 211, (8194) 310, (860d¢) 171,
(8894) 122, (891c) 271, (8936-896e)
334; Epinomis (9876) 8, (990d sag.)
225, 322; {είς 205 sg.; ii. (312¢
337, (7142) 212; iii. (1164) 301; v.
(3224) 209; vii., viii. 300; vii.
(320c, 3214) 2991, (3244) 211, (3246)
209, (3254) 210, (3264) 218, (328¢)
294, (341 c-d) 11, 221, (345¢) 297,
(3534) 300; xiii. (360c) 263, (3616)
208.
Pluralism, 69 σφ.
Point, 83, 84.
Polykrates of Samos, 34, 38.
Polykrates the sophist, 1381, 150, 172,
187.
Polyxenos, 254, 259 sg.
Pores, 75.
Practical life, 42.
Problem, 222
Prodikos, 118.
Proklos on εἰδῶν φίλοι, 913,
Protagoras, 110 Sgg., 238 sgg.; and
Demokritos, 1122, 194, 197 sg.; and
Zeno, 82, 114 sg.; and Sokrates,
133 sq.
Purgation, 41.
Purifications, 31, 41, 71.
Pyramid, 6%.
Pyrilampes, 206, 207, 208, 210.
Pythagoras, 36-56.
Pythagoreans, later, 87-93, 289 sgg.,
315, 328, 331; εἰδῶν φίλοι, 280.
Pythagorists, 88.
ENGLISH INDEX
Quadratrix, 118.
Rarefaction and condensation, 25.
Ratio, 47.
Reality, problem of, 11.
Rebirth, 43, 71.
Reminiscence, 43, 157 s¢q.
Renaissance, 217.
Respiration, cosmic, 25, 44, 67, 73.
Rhetoric, 119.
Rhind, papyrus, 7.
Rings, planetary, 24, 56.
Roman Law, 303 sg.
Roots, 72.
Rotation, diurnal, 74.
Sabazios, 31.
Sardeis, fall of (546 B.c.), 19.
Saving appearances, II.
Scales, 46.
Science and philosophy, 11-13.
Seeds, 77.
Sensation, 75, 196 sg., 238 sq.
Sensible and intelligible, 8957., 159, 164.
Seven Wise Men, 18.
Simmias, 151 sg.
Sokrates, 126-192, 64, 90, 124, 186
$9Y+, 236.
Sokrates the younger, 238.
Solar anomaly, 346.
Solids, regular, 89, 323.
Sophists, 105-122, 170, 273.
Soul, 25, 20, 31, 42, 59, 62, 61, 92,
153, 160, 161, 166, 177, 333 599.
Space, 51, 67, 343 59.
Speusippos, 205, 223, 298, 324, 350.
Sphere, 55.
Spheres, ‘harmony’ of, 56.
Stars, 24, 36.
Stereometry, v. Geometry, Solid.
Stewart, Prof. J. A., 168.
Sulva-sutra, 9.
Sun, 24, 36, 75, 80, 227.
Surds, 83, 85, 238, 321.
Survival of the fittest, 24.
Tarantism, 41.
357
Taras, 87.
Taureas, 190.
Taylor, A. E., κοῦ, 85%, 184%, ror.
Temperament, 50.
Temperance, 50.
Temperature, 50.
Terms, 48.
Tetraktys, 52.
Thales, 18-21.
Theaitetos, 89, 225, 237 sg.
Thebes, 300.
Theodoros, 211, 238.
Theophrastos, 347.
Theoretic life, 42.
Thourioi, 71, 86, 106, 111.
Thrasymachos, 121 sg.
Thucydides (i. 6), 35.
Time, 342 sq.
Tranquillity, 199.
Transmigration, 43.
Triangles (3 : 4: 5), 20, 40, 543 (iso-
sceles right-angled), 54, 83, 89, 156.
Unit, 83, 321 σφ.
Unlimited, 44, 51, 83.
Up and down, 23, 74 5Φ., 96.
Voice of Sokrates, 183 sg.
Void, 95.
Vortex, 99.
Weight, 96, 97, 100.
Worlds, innumerable, 23, 25, 99.
Xanthippe, 129.
Xenokrates, 340, 344 sg.
Xenophanes, 33-36.
Xenophon and Sokrates, 126 sg., 147
$99.5 185 ; Memorabilia (i. 2, 12 sgq.)
187, (i. 2, 48) 151, (i. 6, 14) 148, (iii.
G, 1) 207; (ii. 7) 210, (in. 11, 17)
148, 152, (iv. 5, 12) 228, (iv. 6, 13)
149, (iv. 7, 3-5) 148; Apology (29)
187.
Zagreus, 31.
Zeno, 82-85, 82 sg., 89, 114 5g.) 134
σΦ.» 156.
GREEK
ἁβρότης, 34.
ἀγαθόν, v. Good.
ἄγραφα δόγματα, 221.
ἀὴρ, 21} Ὁ: Air.
αἰθήρ, 21, 78.
αἴσθησις, 238 sag.
αἰτία, 174.
᾿Αλήθεια of Protagoras, 113.
ἀμοιβή, 61.
ἀναθυμίασις, 62.
ἀναιρεῖν (ὑπόθεσιν), 163, 229.
> /
ἀνάλυσις, v, Analysis.
3 i
ἀνάμνησις, v. Reminiscence.
ἀνήκεστοι, ἀνίατοι, 31.
ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν, 29.
ἀντέρεισις, 99.
ἀντιλογία, 116, 275, 276.
ἀντίχθων, 92.
“ ἀνυπόθετος ἀρχή, 230.
ἄπειρον, 22, 39, 44, 51, 90.
ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις, 222.
ἀπορροαί, 75.
ἀπόφασις, 285 sgg., 288, 289, 330.
ἀρετή, v. Goodness.
ἀριθμητικὴ μεσότης, 48.
ἀριθμός, v. Number.
᾿ ἁρμονία, 45, 49, 50, 56, 62, 92, 177.
ἁρμονικὴ μεσότης, 48.
ἀρτηρία, 77".
ἀρχὴ κινήσεως, 333 59.
ἀσέβεια, 76, 81, 112.
ἀσύμβλητοι ἀριθμοί, 314.
αὔξη, 320; τρίτη αὔξη, 225.
αὐτὸς ἔφα, 43.
δ eee ee een ees Pe en 3 ὦ ΩΣ
INDEX
βόρβορος, 31.
γένεσις, v. Becoming.
γένεσις καὶ φθορά, 70, 76, 161 seg,
δαίμονες, 28.
δαίμων, 199.
δείκελα, 196.
δεύτερος πλοῦς, 162, 292,
διάθεσις, 325 Sg.
διαίρεσις, 220.
διάνοια, 289.
διαφορότης, 253.
δίκη, v. Justice.
divn, v. Rotation, Vortex.
διπλάσιος λόγος, 53.
δισσοὶ λόγοι, 231.
δόξα (dist. ἐπιστήμη), 172, 173 “9. ; (in
sense of judgement), 248 sgg., 287
597., 289.
εἴδη, 49, 50, 51. 52, 53, 881, go, gt’,
119, 154, 57g, 196.
εἴδωλα, 196.
εἰδῶν φίλοι, 91, 279 sgg., 313}.
εἰκασία, 159}.
εἰρωνεία, 132.
εἰσάγω, εἰσαγωγή, 2541, 315, 316.
ἐκμαγεῖον, 320.
ἐξαίφνης, τό, 268.
ἕξις, 325 Sg.
ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας, 232.
ἐπίτριτος λύγος, 53.
ἐπίψαυσις, 99.
date δὰ νὼ
GREEK
ἐπόγδοος λόγος, 47.
ἑτερομήκεις ἀριθμοί, 52.
εὐδαιμονία, 199, 325.
εὐθυμίη, 199 sg.
ἡμιόλιος λόγος, 53.
θεῖον, τό, 29, 32.
θεός, θεοί, 28; uv. God, gods.
θέσις, 106.
θεωρεῖν, 42.
ἰδέα, 881, 98, 154 sgg.
ἴλλομαι, 348.
ἰσονομίη, 50.
ἱστορίη, 38, 58.
καθαίρεσις, 320.
καθαρμοί, 31, 71.
κάθαρσις, 41.
καθαρταΐί, 32.
καθίστασθαι, 50.
καταβάλλω, 113%, 198, 231.
κατάστασις, 51.
κατέχω, 166.
κοινά, 247.
κοινωνία, (of forms with sensibles) 165 ;
(of forms with forms), 225 sgg. ;
282 597.
κόσμος, 23.
κρᾶσις, 48, 50, 74, 177, 329.
κρατήρ, 49. 2
κυκλοφορία, 3351.
λογισμός, 174.
λόγος (speech, language), 287 sg. ;
(‘ Word’), 58; σκέψις ἐν λόγοις, 146,
162, 282, 315, 3171, 3273; λόγον
διδόναι, 10, 228; μετὰ λόγοι, 174,
250 379.) 252 sg. 3; ratio, 47, 53, 74,
85.
See also δισσοὶ λόγοι, ἀντιλογία.
λύσις, 31.
μαθηματικά, τά, 314, 315 sgg.
μεσότης, v. Mean.
INDEX 359
μεταξύ, τά, 315 sgg.
μετέωρα, 24.
μέτρον, 115.
μηδὲν ἄγαν, 30.
μοῖραι, 26, 78.
μοναδικὸς ἀριθμός, 83, 221,
μονὰς θέσιν ἔχουσα, 83.
μορφή, 51.
νεῖκος, 72 Sq.
νήτη, 45).
νομίζειν θεούς, 180%,
νομοθεσία, 106, 302 sg.
νόμος (dist. Pots), 105 5g.
νόμῳ (dist. éren), 197.
vous, 79.
ὁμοιομερῆ, 77.
ὄνομα (dist. ῥῆμα), 287.
ὅρος, 48, 54, 328.
ὅσιος, 31.
οὐρανός, 23}.
ovoid, v. Being and becoming.
παλιγγενεσία, 43.
πανήγυρις, 42, 2001,
παρουσία, 165.
πέρας, Ὁ. Limit.
περιτροπή, 244},
περιχώρησις, 80.
πλανῆται, 8.
“ληγαί, 46.
ποιότης, 245, 287, 289.
πόροι, 74, 75, 196.
πρόβλημα, 222, 226.
προοίμια, 301.
πρότασις, προτείνω, 222.
πυραμίς, 6°,
ῥέοντες, οἱ, 245.
ῥύσις, 3227.
σκῆνος, 2001,
σκοτεινός, 57.
σοφία, τι.
σοφιστής, 1087, 228%,
360 GREEK
στασιῶται τοῦ ὅλον, 246.
στοιχεῖα, 61, 72, 88, 97, 251, 252, 341.
συλλαβή, 72, 86.
συμβαίνοντα, 163, 261.
σύμφωνα, 45.
συνέδρια, 30.
συνεχές, 83, 90.
συζῆν, τό, 11, 222.
σχῆμα, 52, 119.
σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα, Τί.
σῶμα σῆμα, 31, 131.
τετραγωνίζουσα, 118.
τετράγωνοι ἀριθμοί, 52.
τετρακτύς, 52.
τόνος, 47.
τρίτος ἄνθρωπος, 254, 259 sg.
τρόποι, 49.
ὑπάτη, 45),
INDEX
ὑπόθεσις, ὑποτίθεσθαι, 162 5g.,222, 3825;
v. Hypothesis.
φαντασία, 280.
φαινόμενα, τά, ΤΙ.
φάσις, 280.
φθόγγοι ἑστῶτες, κινούμενοι, 46.
φιλία, 72 5.
φιλοκερδεῖς, φιλότιμοι, φιλόσοφοι, 42.
φιλοσοφία, v. Philosophy.
φύσις, 27, 74', 105.
χρήματα, 78.
χύσις, 62.
χώρα, 54.
χωρισμός, 165, 167, 262, 314, 316.
ψῆφοι, 55*, 90.
ὠφελία, ὠφέλιμον, 243, 248.
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