Volume 54 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. JULY, 1871. (continued 5)

But we think that these great Churchmen would have found themselves entirely out of tune with the ablest doctors who should seek to settle the faith on the basis of legal authority, and whose Church courts could give no dispensation to the word of the Bible, or the illumination of the Spirit, to move men to think and speak in the Church otherwise than it had been determined that they should think and speak three centuries ago. We hear much of historic Churches. It is, we believe, Mr. Arnold's term. The writer of the very able and liberal article in the current number of the Edinburgh Review adopts the term with high approval, and sustains Mr. Arnold's argument against us, that by separation we cut ourselves off from history. We answer that the Church of England made a new thing in history at the Reformation,—a poor, base image of a Divine idea; while the Nonconformists maintain and cherish the traditions of history, and are in full tune with all that has been deepest and strongest in the life of Christendom, in holding fast this liberty, to watch for, to entertain, and to reflect, the 'fresh light that is ever breaking forth from the word of God.' It was the Article of the Church Covenant of the Pilgrims, it is in our Church Covenant still, and it will remain in our Church Covenant while Independency endures.

And herein our Church Covenant is at war with the idea which Sir Roundell Palmer developed briefly, in his able and earnest argument for establishment in the debate on Mr. Miall's motion. His speech was probably the ablest which was delivered on his side of the question. He seemed to think that there was a certain fixity in religious truth, which offers a strong contrast to the continually progressive character of scientific truth, and which renders Establishment a more feasible thing in relation to religion than it would be in relation to truths belonging to the continually shifting and expanding scientific sphere. There can be no question, we imagine, that this idea of fixity possessed the minds of the men who created the Anglican formularies, and is behind the defence of their integrity which a powerful party in the Church so strenuously maintains. Some of the ablest and most loyal of English Churchmen hold firmly this finality doctrine; indeed it is the only logical justification of the subscription which has hitherto been the imperative demand of the Church. Lord Bacon's remarks on this point are interesting and important. He presses the question, 'Why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every three or four years by Parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief; and contrariwise the Ecclesiastical Estate should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no attention now for these five and forty years and more?' With Bacon in his question stand Greenwood, Barrowe, Ainsworth, Robinson, Jacob, and the long line of Nonconformists; while the principle of finality has ruled in all ages the policy of the National Church, and has been decisively and even vehemently expressed at critical periods of its history. New adjustments of doctrinal belief establish themselves within the Anglican pale; but it is by doing violence to the fundamental principle on which the Church is founded, for it is unquestioned in our ecclesiastical courts that the Articles of Religion were intended to fix the form of truth to be developed in the teaching of the Church of England so long as that Church should endure.

But there is a complete confusion in this notion between the subject matter of theology and the modes of its manifestation in the forms of human thought. In the sense in which theology takes its place among the creations of the human intellect, the highest, the noblest, the most influential on the culture of mankind, it is subject to movement and progress like the rest. Because the science of divine things has been treated systematically as a fixed form of truth, capable of at any rate approximately complete expression in the propositions which form the creeds of the Church; because the measures of bygone centuries are rigidly applied, and all excursion of the reason beyond their logical pale is treated with stern repression, theology has fallen from the upper heaven of man's intellectual sphere, and grovels weakly and painfully in the dust. Theology learns nothing and forgets nothing, like the Bourbons; and, like the Bourbons, she has fallen out of the march of the world. There is no province of human thought about which men so shrug their shoulders as about theology.

We believe that those champions of the Church of England who glory in their formularies, as containing and maintaining the 'form of sound words once delivered to the saints,' and who regard them as the strongest bulwarks of the truth, are glorying in her weakness. She has followed systematically the policy against which the great Founder of the empire of modern thought so energetically protested. She suffers no revision, no readjustment, except by tricks of interpretation which fill timid men with distress and honest men with shame. And yet readjustment is imperative. Theology, in the very nature of things, must progress with the progresses of the world or fall out of its march. The connection is a profound one, as we have said, between the secular life of an age and its religious beliefs. The history of the growth of the Augustinian, the Calvinistic, and the Arminian theologies is profoundly interesting, when studied in the light of the vital secular movements of the ages which gave them birth. The present collapse of the Augustinian theology has its springs distinctly in the secular sphere. Because the world has been progressing so rapidly, enlarging its views of all things around it, searching out the secrets of nature and of man, theology must move on or perish. And, in truth, in no province of human thought and life is there stronger fermentation; spirit working out new forms of expression and action, and working so strongly that the old vessels of the State creed can contain it no longer; they must be unbound, or it will burst them to pieces. The belief of this age about God, man's relation to God, God's work for man, God's way in the government of the world, demands readjustment quite as much as the biography, the chemistry, the geology which our fathers handed down to us; and the idea that this new spirit must be made to let theology alone, that theology is too sacred, too settled in a fixed form by a Divine hand, to be capable of progress or expansion, is the nurse of atheism and the mother of despair.

But it seems to us that a State Churchman, to be entirely consistent, is bound to maintain this as the fundamental principle of the constitution of his Church. Room for vital growth and progress cannot be afforded openly without involving the destruction of the whole system. The ultimate test is not the word of truth or the mind of the Spirit, but the construction, more or less liberal, and this is largely a matter of accident, of formal, and on some points narrowly dogmatic documents, formulated in the heat of intense controversy three centuries ago. We recognise fully and cordially rejoice in the progress of belief which the thinkers and writers of the Anglican Church have practically secured, in spite of their bonds. There is no little truth, to our shame be it spoken, in the boast which is often on their lips, that the progress of theology in our generation is due far more largely to the labours of Anglican than of Nonconformist divines.

But the reason of this does not lie in our system; it was founded in freedom, and to maintain and develop freedom; it lies in our own weak, timid, and faithless hearts. But the very fact of the large development of liberal ideas, of an expansive and progressive theology in the Anglican Church, must surely call not only serious but decisive attention to the miserably uncertain and insufficient basis on which it rests. There is nothing broader and firmer for an Anglican of the liberal school to rest upon than the chance of a liberal interpretation of stringent articles, by a court the composition of which is always changing, the most influential member of which is the State officer, who has risen to the proud pre-eminence of the first lay subject in the realm by the arts and services of legal and political life. A latitudinarian chancellor, a Gallio, it may be, 'caring for none of these things'—not but that Gallio was in his day and with his duties quite right—may pronounce a judgment which fills one great party in the Church with dismay, and strains the system nigh to bursting on that side. A pious and conscientious chancellor may, by another judgment, strain the system as strongly on the other. But recently the pious and able Lord Hatherley pronounced a judgment, in which he laid down certain propositions concerning the penal character of the sufferings of Christ, which led to much searching of heart, and a great deal of anxious correspondence, before it could be settled whether with a good conscience the Broad Churchman could remain in the Church if the dicta of the Voysey judgment were to be accepted as law. And these swayings on one side or the other are pure matter of accident. A Dean of the Arches with one bias gives offence to one party, a Dean with another bias offends equally their opponents. And Churchmen are kept in constant and painful uncertainty as to the authoritative decisions which may at any moment be laid down on matters which they feel to be of supreme, of sacred importance, and on which they believe that a man, rather than be untrue to his own convictions, should be prepared to die.

It appears to us that this growing freedom in the Church, the fact of which we gladly recognise, is revealing, by the new decisions which it is constantly challenging, the miserably narrow and uncertain basis on which this boasted culture and liberty rest. What progress the advance of society compels Church teachers to make is made in violation of the fundamental pact on which the community rests; and it seems to be inevitable that sooner or later this fact will become so glaring, that the attempt to maintain the articles of religion in face of the opinion of Churchmen will be abandoned in very shame.

So much the better, many broad Churchmen will say. The articles are the skeleton of a dead theology, it would be well if it were buried out of sight. Not so, say Sir R. Palmer and the great body of zealous Churchmen whom he represents so ably. And of the rest—the synagogue of the Libertines, we might call them—we may surely say that a Church in which all sorts of opinions are endowed and invested with such sanction and influence as a State establishment can impart, would become in time more like a synagogue of Satan than a Church.

We contend, then, strenuously for an honest liberty of thought, bounded only by the broad limits of Scripture and the teachings of the Holy Ghost; and we hold that it is only possible to realize it under our independent conditions. The attempt to square the free movements of the Christian mind of the community with the legal construction of ancient Church documents must grow increasingly impracticable, and in the end hateful to all upright, earnest, truth-loving souls.

But it is not as the minister to the intellectual progress of the community, though the progress of an age is never secure until it is keyed by its theology, that the genius of Nonconformity has rendered the most conspicuous service to the world. Its great mission in all ages has been to care for the purity and intensity of the spiritual life of society. Power to live in holier, closer fellowship as Christians, to make the Church more like what Christ meant it to be, and through the Church the world, has been the one thing which Nonconformists have striven to secure by separation, and to cherish for the help and salvation of mankind. They have done much for the light of divine truth; they have done more for the life of God in society. It may be said of them with a truth of which Lucretius little dreamed, noble dreamer as he was—

And to estimate this fairly we must turn again to the past, to the fons et origo of our power.

The English Reformation differed in one most essential point, be it for good, be it for evil, from all the other Reformations of Europe. It was distinctly a constitutional movement, carried out from the commencement to the close by the constituted authorities of the land. It was not forced on the rulers by a burst of popular enthusiasm, stirred by some great preacher; nor on the other hand, and on this point we often do it scant justice, was it forced by the rulers on a careless or unwilling people. In the first and second Parliaments of Elizabeth, the House of Commons was far in advance both of the Lords and of the Queen. It was fairly the movement of the nation acting through its political organs. Hence it had a character of compromise here in England which it bore nowhere abroad. Various interests had to be conciliated, as is inevitable in government under a mixed constitution like ours. The laggards had to be thought of as well as the vanguard. Catholics as well as Puritans had to be considered in every bill that was passed through Parliament; and thus our cumbrous incoherent Church system, the child of policy and compromise, was shaped and grew.

This method was the parent of many miserable evils. The monarchical and aristocratic influence was altogether too potent. Had the House of Commons under Elizabeth been free to carry out its judgment, a Church might have grown up pure, noble, beautiful, compared with the present, and might have spared the nation some of the sorest pains of Nonconformity. A hint of what might have been possible we see in the curious account of the Church at Northampton in 1571; and still more perfectly in the first draft of the Constitution of the Hessian Church. But then the result would have been gained most probably, and none knew it better than Elizabeth, at the cost of a tremendous and premature civil war. The key of Elizabeth's policy, and the secret of the great work which she accomplished, was that beyond even Cecil she was a national politician. But on the whole, and in the long run, we are bound to confess that the evils were not without at any rate some counterbalancing advantages. It is always thus with all great human institutions and movements. More or less of evil mingles with the good in all of them; and even in those in which the evil seems largely to preponderate, there are always some elements of blessing to be set in the opposite scale.

Now this feature of our English Reformation has had one remarkable result. Being essentially a compromise, a concession to parties on this side and on that; being the fruit, not of the toil and travail of our most spiritual men, but of the politic judgment, of the average intelligence and spiritual life of the community, the purer spirits, the men of the higher order, touched with the diviner fire, were from the very first driven into opposition. Instead of resting in the movement and ruling it, they found that it stopped miserably short of what they believed to be practicable, and were sure was right. The foremost men of the nation in point of spiritual insight and power from the first were discontent, and then, as time wore on, malcontent, through the earlier days of the Puritan struggle; and then, when time brought no reform, but rather tightening of bonds, they were constrained to become Separatists. A pure and intense, if not powerful, Nonconformist party began to organize itself, of whose life and aims in the early days we could say much did our space allow, which, sealing its testimony with its tears and its blood, handed down its sacred legacy to succeeding generations. We owe it to the special constitution of the Anglican Church, the method of whose growth we have glanced at, that in all generations since the Reformation there has been a considerable, earnest, enthusiastic body of Christian men and women in England devoted to the cause of political and ecclesiastical reform.

This state of things, the coincidence of political and ecclesiastical tyranny on the one side, and of political and ecclesiastical Nonconformity on the other, due to the special organization of the National Church, has had two notable and benign results. It has identified the spiritual and the secular progress of society in England. With us the great political questions fell early into spiritual hands. The men who sympathized with the 'Millenary Petition,' were the men who commenced under James the Parliamentary struggle which was conducted to a triumphant issue under Charles. And if we contrast our own revolutionary struggles with the French, the last—dare we say the last?—the ghastliest, and most horrible act of which is but now complete, we shall estimate the full significance of the fact which we have noted. Then, and not less important, it has kept our best and most earnest men constantly in opposition—in the wilderness as it were, voices crying in the desert—whereby the purest life of the nation has been kept free from the corruption which never fails to attend on worldly prosperity and power. Thus it has been able to preserve its life pure, its light intense, to illumine the darkness and enlighten the dulness of the whole community.

We hear much of what the culture of the Church has done for Nonconformity; and we gladly acknowledge it. We hear less of what the life of Nonconformity has done for the Church. The balance of the exchange would show the largest debt, the debt of life, due to the Nonconformist side.

And this great Nonconformist party has been in all generations the salt of our national life, politically as well as spiritually. The resistance of the seven Bishops to the despotic tolerating edict of King James, is often quoted by Church writers as a noble contribution of the Establishment to the cause of political liberty; and justly, though the Non-jurors must be set in the opposite scale. But we cannot but think of the nobler Nonconformists, persecuted and ground down, to whom the edict would have offered a door of escape from grievous ills, but who stood with the party of resistance, because they cared more for the liberty of the nation than for their own welfare, and preferred to suffer still if the constitutional liberties of England might thereby be sustained. This despised and persecuted band has at the critical moment ruled our revolutions, it has kindled our revivals, it has won and watched our liberties. By the stimulus it has afforded, and the confidence it has created, it has saved us the tremendous catastrophes, the cataclysms, through which alone progress has won its way in less favoured countries. And this is one of the high elements of our happy estate as a people, which we owe incidentally—no thanks, however, to the founders of the Establishment—to the special form which the Reformation assumed in England, and to the organization of our national Church.

Whether the incidental good has or has not been counterbalanced by the very grave and palpable evils which our establishment of religion generated, we have no time here to consider. But a comparison of the actual state of religion, the vigour and vitality of the religious life in England at this moment, with that of Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, and Switzerland,[39] where we should say that the Reformation had at once freer course than in England and more decisive results, may suggest the question whether, looking at the matter on a large scale, and through a long day, the loss is altogether on our side.

Now, it is just this Nonconformist element, this light, this leaven, as we contend, of our national life for ages, which it is proposed by an able and influential party to bring into the national Establishment, making it thereby partaker of the fatness of the olive tree of the State Church. But if our argument is worth anything, it is just the missing this through all these ages which has been its salvation. Bring it in, make it rich and powerful, give it State props and stays, and you will rob it of all that makes its life so pungent and stimulating, and will rob the nation thereby of an element which nothing else can supply, and which it would most surely miss. Endow it, and write over its temple, 'Ichabod: The Lord has left it, the glory is gone.'

But why should it be so? Here we approach the core of the controversy between ourselves and the ablest and most liberal of our opponents, with a glance at which we shall conclude. It may be said, and is said, by the broadest of the advocates of Establishment: This spirit has done its work as Nonconformist, and done it bravely; but in that form its work is done. The time is come, we are told, when it should leave the wilderness and enter the pale of society, to work from within, inside the legal pale, at the building up of the Christian State. Surely, it is urged, there is something unhealthy in the life of a community when so much that is purest and most intense is Nonconformist; the more it can be brought in, the better manifestly for the State. On this point the real controversy with those of our opponents whom we most respect and sympathize with, hinges; and it can only be dealt with by opening a yet deeper question, out of which the true answer must come. In such a world as this, the purest spirit, the spirit of Christ, must always to a large extent be Nonconformist. It was so with the Patriarchs, it was so with the Judges, it was so with the Prophets, it was so with the Lord, it was so with the Apostles, it was so with the founders of the great Orders, it was so with all the chief leaders of Reformations and Revivals, who at critical moments have brought salvation for a nation or for the world.

And it must be so, at least, until some far off millennial day. Perfect amalgamation of elements is not possible in a world constituted like this. Unity of form, a visible body comprehending all the higher movements of the life of society, is a thing we may dream of, but shall never see. Just as spirit and flesh keep up an interior antagonism, and progression is possible only through this inward conflict, so there must be this interior discord in every human political society; and its progress will be realized by the action on its mass, its material, of some finer spirit, which must in some measure dwell apart, feeding its life from a diviner spring.

And this separation is the reverse of isolation. 'In the world, not of the world,' is the Christian rule, and it is the very opposite of that of the ascetic. It is the glory of England that there is the freest opportunity for the play of the influence of the smaller communities, which are held together by some special sympathies and beliefs, on the great community at large. And now at last the nation, by opening the Universities, has allowed to these communities the fullest advantages for the culture of their own individual life. It appears to us, to sum up the argument, that the subjection of the free Christian spirit, which seeks and strives to gather light and inspiration continually in fellowships which rest on the word of truth and watch for the guidance of the Spirit, to the regimen of legal authority, just destroys that in it which makes it mordant to the lust and the selfishness of the world around it, that which has been kept in comparative purity through all these ages by being Nonconformist, and which will remain Nonconformist, or, at any rate—for when there is no Church there can be no Nonconformity—will remain free with the freedom which reigns where the Spirit of the Lord is, while the world endures.

No doubt it is at first sight a fair vision, this inclusion of all decently orderly and decently Christian ministries in the land within one pale of order and law: one service, one liturgy, one recognised ministry, one administration of ordinances, throughout the whole country,—the whole people taught out of the same books, at the same time, and by men who have the same claim to their attention, until the nation, in the visible uniformity of its religious acts and expressions, presents a fair image of one visible Church. But it is a mere mirage, a mocking image, no more. The kind of spiritual order which would grow up under such conditions would be deathlike and not lifelike; and the visible uniformity could be maintained only by the strong repression of all that makes the life and progress of a Church.

There is, in the intellectual sphere, something very like this in France. The course of instruction for the youth of France, in all the institutions which are sustained and directed by the State, is very elaborately and admirably organized. It used to be said of a recent Minister of Public Instruction, that it was his glory to reflect that he could sit in his bureau and read from a manual on his table the lesson which was being taught at that particular moment in all the public schools in France. Now, the French Government manuals are admirable. There has been an immense improvement in our English schoolbooks since their compilers condescended to look into the schoolbooks of France. The lesson thus given at a particular hour throughout the country would probably be in every way excellent—the best of its kind. But what is the broad result of this monstrous uniformity, this par ordre supérieur, in every department of a youth's education? It turns out admirable scholars, devoted to scholarship, and admirable theoretical politicians educated in the philosophy of citizenship above every nation in the world. But when a tremendous shock, as at this moment, has broken up their accustomed order, and thrown each in a measure on his own resources to choose the wisest course in perilous emergencies, an utter want of the highest faculty—the faculty of self-guidance in emergencies—is revealed; the people have been as shepherdless sheep, and for want of the higher leadership, we may say, France has been lost.

We see, then, all that is fair in aspect in this vision of one happy, united, and prosperous Church in the country, leaving no room for Nonconformity; but we see too plainly the disastrous cost at which it would be purchased. And we turn to gaze upon another vision, fairer, nobler, more fruitful by far, which would realize our aspiration for the religious future of our land. The country full of a zealous and independent ministry of the Gospel, independent in the highest sense, which includes dependence on Christ; each community working out in entire freedom its conception of what a Church ought to be and what a Church ought to do, and under the guidance of one whom it recognises as Christ's minister, ordained for its service by the manifest unction of the Spirit: diversities of gifts, diversities of methods, diversities of operations, diversities of results; but each Christian company honouring the other and rejoicing in its work, recognising that each one is adding a contribution to a great whole which can be built up only of these independent cells of spiritual life; the whole spiritual body, the Church of England, having no visible form of unity, but manifesting itself spiritually in the whole social estate, the commercial, intellectual, and political activity of England; a fair image, it seems to us, whose grand and solemn aspect could only be parodied by the most elaborate and comprehensive pattern of a law-made National Church.

The broad truth about our times from a spiritual point of view is—and it is a truth on which both Churchmen and Nonconformists may stand—that we have utterly outgrown the power of Establishment to help us, if it ever had any; and that the spiritual conversion and education of the community must be carried on by some higher method, or abandoned in despair. We are struggling out of the pupa state of protection, when the ark of our religious estate was slung tenderly by a net-work of bands and ligatures to the government wall. Slowly, with sore effort and pain, as is the way with all these supreme acts of development, we are emerging into a higher, because freer and more spiritual stage of our religious life as a people. Anxiously and fearfully those who have been trained under the shadow of Protection watch the process. We Independents, who have been nursed in a freer school, look calmly on the pains and struggles: we have faith in the destiny of the fair, bright-winged creature which is being born.

Art. VI.—The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English, with Analyses and Introductions, by B. Jowett, M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek. Four vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1871.

Professor Jowett has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world a complete English translation of Plato's 'Dialogues;' for it certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands of all, conveyed in language, divested, as far as possible, of mere technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible and alluring to average students of ancient or modern philosophy. And as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted. We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their integrity, without foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which the nature of Mr. Grote's great work rendered necessary, and of the occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr. Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful, endeavour to present Plato—in part, at least—in a popular form to the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philosophy, which is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is constantly working out with variations the same leading ideas, it is essential to the English student to have the work complete. The Republic, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and Vaughan has for some time been before the world, is to a considerable extent a résumé of Plato's earlier views—an epitome of Platonism, in fact; but a student may know the Republic fairly well, and yet have a vast deal to learn from such dialogues as the Theætetus, the Philebus, the Parmenides, the Timæus—all very difficult in their way; or from the more genial Protagoras, Phædo, and Gorgias; or the more transcendental and imaginative Phædrus and Symposium, which last may be called the most fascinating and brilliant of the dialogues, excepting always the Republic itself. Some of the minor, easier, and shorter dialogues, which fall within the range of average school reading—the Apology, the Crito, the Menexenus, the Lysis, the Charmides, the Ion—hardly touch the Socratic philosophy in its deeper sense; they are genial sketches of the idiosyncrasies of the wise old man, or deal with matters distinct from dialectics properly so called. Very little of Plato proper (so to speak) will be learnt from these alone. But the subtle reasonings of Plato, in some of his greater works, are sufficiently difficult to make even the best Greek scholars glad to have occasional recourse to studied English versions, on which they can with tolerable confidence rely.

Mr. Jowett has not given us a general introductory dissertation on Plato, or Socrates, or on the Sophists, or on the influence of ῥητορικὴ, or on the progress of Greek philosophy—subjects in themselves, as he doubtless felt, almost interminable, and already so well discussed in Mr. Grote's great work, 'Plato and the other Companions of Socrates,' and his 'History of Greece.' His preface, comprised in the modest limits of four pages of large print, might seem intended as a protest against the licence of writing long introductions, which, after all, are, perhaps, seldom read. We could have wished, indeed, to see some opinion expressed on a point of not less interest than importance—how far the Socrates of Plato, who differs so widely from the Socrates of Aristophanes, partook of the Platonic ideality, and was a typical and imaginary talker, used as a peg, so to speak, to hang speculative opinions upon, rather than the real author of all or any of the conversations attributed to him by his pupil. Mr. Jowett, however, though he has given us no general introduction, has been liberal, even to diffuseness, in the special introductions to the separate dialogues. In these, which are drawn with a masterly hand, and are of great value and interest, he gives us the object and scope, as well as the condensed and analyzed matter of each dialogue, so as to form a most useful summary to the right understanding of it. Such introductions, though they add greatly to the bulk of the work, are necessary, and all editors and translators of single dialogues have adopted them, e.g., Dr. Thompson in his Phædrus and Georgias, Mr. Cope in his translation of the latter dialogue, Mr. Campbell in his Theætetus, Messrs. Davies and Vaughan in their translation of the Republic, Professor Geddes in his edition of the Phædo, and Stallbaum in all his dialogues. In fact, the diffuseness and almost desultoriness of some dialogues—the ποικιλία, or variety of matter introduced—render a clear and well-arranged analysis of each absolutely necessary for the right understanding of it. Such a work, with the further advantage of a good index of Platonic words and topics, by Dr. Alfred Day, had been published the year before (Bell and Daldy, 1870). By such aids, we more easily attain the real scope of a dialogue than by the perusal of the dialogue itself. A casual reader would think that the Phædrus and the Symposium are primarily essays on 'Platonic Love,' or the Gorgias a satire upon the vanity of the Sophists, and that each of these ends with a topic totally alien from that with which it commenced. Thus Plato might appear a desultory essayist rather than a close thinker. But when a student is forewarned that the Phædrus is, in fact, a critical and psychological essay on the true principles of rhetoric, or, rather, of dialectic as distinct from rhetoric; that the point of the Gorgias (in the words of the Master of Trinity) is 'a discussion of the ethical principles which conduct to political well-being,' or, as Mr. Jowett somewhat differently puts it, 'not to answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth;' and that the Symposium is a sketch of the course of transcendental thought and education in the science of abstract beauty, which can alone fit man for the inheritance and enjoyment of a blessed eternity;—when all this is made perfectly clear to a reader at the outset, he not only sees each dialogue in quite a new light, but what is far more important, he then only realizes why it was written, and what it was really designed to inculcate. Thus much we have said, almost apologetically, for the addition of so very much introductory matter in four octavo volumes, already of a bulk sufficient to discourage some of the less enterprising class of readers.

Viewed as a literary composition, and as emanating from one who has the highest reputation for Greek scholarship, as well as for Platonism, we must plainly say that Professor Jowett's work has its serious demerits as well as its merits. The style is somewhat jaunty rather than closely faithful to the original. It is throughout far more of a paraphrase than of a translation, in the accurate sense of the word. Over the verbal difficulties, the subtle syntactical niceties, even the grammatical meaning of the more involved sentences, the author passes very lightly. He shows that unconcern for Greek, as mere Greek, that ῥᾳστώνη of an interpreter of philosophy rather than of a philosopher's very words, which we should hardly have looked for in a professor of the language. The grammarian, in fact, is so merged in the philosopher that his peculiar province has become quite secondary. No doubt considerable latitude must be conceded to those who would win the attention of purely English readers. Between the Greek and the English idioms, where no compromise can be made, the preference must be given to the latter; otherwise, the version will be, or, at least, is liable to be, somewhat stiff, pedantic, awkward, and wanting in that brilliant and genial spirit of talk that the original undoubtedly had to a Greek, and which, in truth, gives the chief fascination to the exquisite and perfect language of Plato.

With all this, and more that might be pleaded in Mr. Jowett's defence or excuse, there are certainly very many of his renderings which show a laxity that is neither necessary for the relief of the English reader nor satisfactory to the accurate Greek scholar. There seem to us even indications of haste, which, though not, perhaps, to be wondered at, when the vastness of the whole work is considered, must certainly be set down as a blemish in the performance of it. We may go considerably further, and express our fears that actual errors in the rendering are by no means very infrequent. We say this, not in a random way, nor from a casual inspection, but after having carefully gone over five of the dialogues (Phædo, Phædrus, Theætetus, Philebus, Symposium) verbatim with Plato and Mr. Jowett's translation. Some passages we have noted for critical remark, not, of course, as exhausting all that could be said with truth, but as examples of the kind of incompleteness, or vagueness, or faultiness of rendering of which we have taken occasion rather seriously to complain.

Let us take first the opening of the Symposium, of which the following is a close translation, made with due regard to tenses, moods, arrangement of words, and other niceties of the original:

'Apollodorus. I flatter myself I am pretty well practised in the matter you are asking about. The fact is, only the day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from my house at Phalerum, when an acquaintance of mine, who had caught sight of me from behind, called to me from a distance, and with a joke on my name as he called, exclaimed, "Ho there! you, Apollodorus, of Phalerum, wait for me!" So I stopped till he came up. "Why, Apollodorus!" he said, "I was looking for you just now, as I wanted to hear a full account about the party Agathon gave to Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of the company who were present at the feast,—in a word, to learn what was said in their speeches about Love. Another friend did indeed essay to give me some account—he had heard it from Phœnix, the son of Philippus, and he said that you also knew—but, to confess the truth, he had nothing definite to tell. Do you, therefore, give me information in full; for none so fit as yourself to report the conversations of your bosom-friend. But first tell me," he said, "Were you present yourself at this party, or not?"'

We do not think that the above, though quite a literal version, strikes on the English ear as in any way harsh. Whether the much looser rendering of Professor Jowett has a more truly English ring, or any other advantage, as a set-off to the evident laxity of it, we leave as an open question for others to decide. Here it is in extenso:—

'I believe that I am prepared with an answer. For the day before yesterday I was coming from my own home at Phalerum to the city, and one of my acquaintances who had caught a sight of the back of me at a distance, in a merry mood commanded me to halt. "Apollodorus," he cried, "O thou man of Phalerum, halt!" So I did as I was bid; and then he said, "I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now, that I might hear about the discourses in praise of love, which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper. Phœnix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them, and he said that you knew; but he was himself very indistinct, and I wish that you would give me an account of them. Who but you should be the reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell me," he said, "were you present at this meeting?"'

It might, perhaps, seem to savour of pedantry, to remark, that the nice distinctions between the aorists διαπυθέσθαι and διήγησαι and the imperfect διηγεὶτο, are needlessly slurred over; but the clause παίζων ἅμα τῇ κλήσει must mean something more than 'in merry mood.' We do not know precisely what the joke was; but probably φαληρὸς or φαλαρὸς was applied to one who had a bare patch on his head, a white whisker perhaps, or some such facial peculiarity.

Let this, however, pass. We admit there is no serious error here, but the passage will fairly well illustrate the kind of paraphrastic version Professor Jowett has generally adopted,—we do not say wrongly, for we repeat that it is quite a matter of taste and judgment; and neither of these qualities in so experienced a scholar is it our desire to impugn. His object was to give the matter of Plato, certainly not to compose 'a crib' for young students. But, whatever the motive was, we are rather afraid that this slipshod way of translating, and of inverting or perverting the order of the Greek words, not unfrequently borders closely on inaccuracy. For instance, and not to go further than the first chapter of this same Symposium (p. 173, A.), Apollodorus says, in his impulsive way, that he has kept close company with Socrates for something less than three years; 'Before that, I used to run from one to another without any fixed object; and though I persuaded myself I was doing something, I was the most miserable of men; aye, as miserable as you (Glaucon) are, in thinking you ought to do anything rather than study philosophy.'

The point of the passage is the hit at his friend as one of the χρηματιστικοὶ (not 'traders,' but) those absorbed in money-making, and the eulogy of his own novitiate in philosophy. In Mr. Jowett's version the passage stands thus: 'I used to be running about the world, thinking that I was doing something, and would have done anything rather than be a philosopher; I was almost as miserable as you are now.' A little further down (173, D.) he appears to us to miss the true sense, or, at least, to misrepresent it. The friend (ἕταιρος) says to Apollodorus, 'How ever you came to be called by this name, "The Excitable," I know not; for in your conversations you are always the same; you are savage at yourself and everybody else except Socrates.'

An impulsive man does things by fits and starts, and does not, like Apollodorus, in this matter at least, follow a consistent course. We doubt if the right meaning is conveyed by the following: 'True in this to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you acquired, of Apollodorus the madman, for your humour is always to be out of humour with yourself and with everybody except Socrates.'

One more instance of what seems a very slovenly rendering, we will add from Symp., p. 179, E. In this passage every clause of the original seems, for some reason inexplicable to us, to be disarranged, and the whole to be hashed up, as it were, into a new hodge-podge:—

'Far other was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus—his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and he was much younger, as Homer informs us, and he had no beard). And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired, and valued, and rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine and more worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death, and return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless, he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only on his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest.'

What Plato really says, with all the logical accuracy of carefully balanced sentences, is as follows:—

'Far different was the honour they paid to Achilles, the son of Thetis, in sending him to the Islands of the Blest, because when he knew from his mother that he was destined to die on the field if he slew Hector, but if he did not, to return home and die old, he had the courage to make the nobler choice,—to take the part of his lover Patroclus and avenge his death, and so not only to die for him, but to do more, to die after him (i.e., when he could no longer help him). That was the reason why the gods held him in such extraordinary regard, and paid him such special honour, viz., because he held his lover in such high esteem. Æschylus, by the way, talks absurdly in saying that it was Achilles who was the lover of Patroclus. For Achilles was much better looking, not only than Patroclus, but than all the heroes without exception; and besides that, beardless, and so greatly his junior, as Homer affirms. But, be that as it may, it is a truth that the gods do hold in special honour this chivalrous spirit when it is shown in attachment to another; albeit they feel more regard and admiration, and have more disposition to confer benefits, when the favourite shows affection for his lover, than when the lover does so towards his favourite; for the lover has more of the divine in him than the favourite, since he is inspired by them. For these reasons also they honoured Achilles more than Alcestis, by sending him to the Isles of the Blest.'

A comparison of these two versions will show how widely—we had nearly said, how recklessly—the Greek Professor departs from the letter of his author. A conspicuous example of this occurs also at p. 194, E., where about one hundred Greek words are expressed in less than seventy of English; whereas the differences of idiom require, as a rule, in really accurate translation from Greek, the use of, at the very least, one-third more English words. The difficulty to us is to see wherein lies the gain on the side of the loose paraphrase—unless, perhaps, in brevity, i.e., in giving something less than Plato gives. Even as a matter of accuracy, we might object to the rendering of τὴν ἀρετὴν τὴν περὶ τὸν ἔρωτα, 'the virtue of love.' It means evidently, 'bravery shown in the cause of love,' which surely is a very different thing. So, too, in p. 183, A., δουλείας δουλεύειν οἵας οὐδ' ἂν δοῦλος οὐδεὶς, is not 'to be a servant of servants,' but 'to perform services such as no menial would.' In p. 186, E., ἡ ἰατρικὴ πᾶσα διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου κυβερνᾶται, 'it is by the influence of love (i.e., a knowledge of the natural loves and desires) that the whole art of the physicians is regulated,' Mr. Jowett wrongly refers τοῦ θεοῦ to Æsculapius, whereas Ἔρως is clearly meant. Just below (p. 187, B.), ὁ ῥυθμὸς ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος καὶ βραδέος γέγονε, is not 'rhythm is composed of elements short and long'—a proposition hardly intelligible—but 'time (in music) is made up of quick and slow,' i.e., when two instruments either slacken or quicken their pace so as to harmonize with each other and keep true time. And in p. 205, D., τὸ μὲν κεφάλαιόν ἐστι πᾶσα ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐπιθυμία καὶ τοῦ εὐδαιμονεῖν, ὁ μέγιστός τε καὶ δολερὸς ἔρως παντὶ, is not, 'You may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is due to the great and subtile power of love,' but 'Love is, in its most general sense, all that desire which men feel for good things and for happiness—that greatest of all loves, which every man finds so deceptive.' The meaning is, that no form of love is so generally deceptive and disappointing as the desire to be happy. Again, in p. 206, D., is a passage very badly rendered. All the delicate and accurate points in the imagery are missed, and the coyness of an animal not in a state of desire, compared with the free and ecstatic surrender of itself to the favourite when it is so disposed, so exquisitely expressed by the Platonic words, is not expressed at all, or in phrases neither appropriate nor significant. The sense, in fact, is very superficially given. The philosopher is speaking of mental, not of bodily τόκος, and means to say that when an idea has been conceived, the author of it keeps it to himself till he can find a congenial person (the καλὸς, and not the αἰσχρὸς) who will help him to bring it into the world. The same notion exactly occurs in Theætet., p. 150, and is repeated more explicitly shortly below, p. 209, B., though even that passage is very inaccurately rendered:—

'And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him, and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. And he wanders about seeking beauty, that he may beget offspring—for in deformity he will beget nothing—and embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed; and when he finds a fair, and noble, and well-nurtured soul, and there is a union of the two in one person, he gladly embraces him, and to such an one he is full of fair speech about virtue, and the nature and pursuits of a good man.'

In this version the words, 'and there is a union of the two in one person,' are hardly intelligible. But in a correct rendering, as follows, their meaning is at once apparent:—

'When, again, one of these (viz., whose aspirations are for mental rather than for bodily offspring) has been pregnant with some great idea from early youth—as may be expected in one possessing a god-like nature—and when at length, the proper age having arrived, he first feels a desire to bring forth and give it birth, then he, too, I take it, goes about looking for the beautiful, on which (i.e., in contact with which) he may generate; for on the unsightly he will never be able to do so. Accordingly, he not only likes to keep company (ἀσπάζεται) with the persons (bodies) which are comely rather than with those which are ugly, as being in a condition of pregnancy, but, whenever he falls in with a soul which is beautiful, noble, and apt to learn, then he does heartily welcome the union of the two (viz., the handsome body combined with the beautiful soul); and in his converse with such a man as this, he at once finds himself at no loss for words about virtue, and the duties that a good man ought to engage in, and his pursuits.'

Of course, all this is said in respect of that philosophic and unsensual παιδεραστία which is a favourite fiction with Plato. A well-disposed youth, who has some idea or theory to communicate, is supposed to keep it to himself till he meets with some older friend, whose mental qualities, as well as bodily appearance, inspire him with affection and confidence. The result is the τόκος ἐν καλῷ, the bringing out the idea or eliciting and giving tangible form to it, by the aid, the sympathy, and the co-operation of the good-looking and congenial friend.

A little below (p. 210, D.), an erroneous rendering goes far to make nonsense of a very grand and transcendental passage—one of the first passages, probably, in all Plato. The philosopher says, that a youth should be trained gradually in the science of beauty, rising ever higher and higher in the objects of his admiration, 'that by looking to the beautiful, now wide in its scope (πολὺ ἤδη), he may no longer by a menial service (δουλεύων ὥσπερ οἰκέτης) to the beauty in some one—that is, being content to admire the comeliness of a stripling, or of some particular person, or institution—became a feeble and trifling character, but, betaking himself to the vast ocean of beauty, and contemplating it, may give birth to many fine and stately discourses and sentiments on the boundless field of philosophy.'

The confusion of Mr. Jowett's rendering here appears to us extraordinary. 'Being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth, or man, or institution, himself a slave, mean and calculating, but looking at the abundance of beauty, and drawing towards the sea of beauty, and creating and beholding(!) many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom.'

We are compelled to ask, in all earnestness, Would such construing as this be tolerated from a boy of the sixth form in any public school in the kingdom? Our suspicions are aroused, that the Oxford Greek Professor has admitted aid from less competent hands, and, in a too generous confidence, has failed to look closely over the contributions which he invited and received. Plato, we cannot doubt, in the above passage, has been expounding his own aspirations for leaving behind him what he elsewhere calls 'offspring of the mind,'—viz., immortal records of his own genius in the composition of his Dialogues. He goes on to speak of the ultimate attainment of that highest καλὸν, the knowledge of abstract science, or rather of science, ἐπιστήμη, in the abstract; and in language evidently borrowed from the economy of the Eleusinian mysteries, he proceeds to ask what must be the happiness of those who, as the result of a right discipline on earth, attain hereafter to the enjoyment of the τὸ θεῖον μονοεῖδες, the Beatific Vision of God, or rather (if we might say) of 'Godness,' unmixed with human frailties and imperfections. The passage itself reads almost like one inspired; and it is very remarkable how exalted and spiritual an idea of the Deity Plato had realized. He seems to transcend the anthropomorphic doings and sayings attributed to the Jehovah of the Old Testament. In rendering such a passage, Mr. Jowett should have devoted especial pains to attain the closest accuracy possible, for every word is a jewel. Yet he wrongfully renders τὰ καλὰ έπιτηδεύματα, 'fair actions,' and τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, 'fair notions,' (p. 211, C.), whereas 'institutions' (laws, &c.), and 'lessons,' or 'instructions,' are really meant; and the important words, ἐκεῖνο ᾦ δεῖ θεωμένου, 'contemplating that beauty by and with the proper faculty, i.e., νῷ, with mind, not with mere eyes,' he omits, apparently because ὁρῶντι ᾦ ὁρατὸν τὸ καλὸν occurs a little further on.

We have devoted some space to the examination of the Symposium, because we have found in it, perhaps more than elsewhere, indications of hasty and superficial rendering. Yet Mr. Jowett himself says, in his introduction, 'Of all the works of Plato, the Symposium is the most perfect in form,—more than any other Platonic dialogue, it is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty "as of a statue."' Special care, therefore, should have been taken in presenting it accurately to the English reader. Turn we now to the Phædo,—that remarkable essay, which has exercised more influence than some are willing to suppose on all subsequent theology, and which, though of little weight as an argument in proof of the immortality of the soul, is of such special interest as standing alone among the writings of the age in advocating anything approaching to the Christian idea of a good man's hopes and prospects of a happy existence hereafter. For even Aristotle, it is well known, in a professed treatise on the laws and ends that influence men's action (the 'Ethics'), in no case appeals to moral responsibility, obedience to Divine commands, or the hopes of a happy eternity. He does not seem to rise above the conception of the half-conscious Homeric ghost or εἴδωλον wandering disconsolate in the shades below. And even of this state of existence he speaks doubtfully (Eth. i. ch. x.) In this treatise, the Phædo, we may say at once, and with pleasure, Mr. Jowett has given us a tolerably close, as well as a fairly accurate rendering throughout. It is hard indeed to believe that the two dialogues can have been translated by the same hand. Let us cite, as a good example, the following extract (p. 66, B.):—

'And when they consider all this, must not true philosophers make a reflection, of which they will speak to one another in such words as these: We have found, they will say, a path of speculation which seems to bring us and the argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the body, and while the soul is mingled with this mass of evil, our desire will not be satisfied, and our desire is of the truth? For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and also is liable to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after truth, and by filling us as full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly, prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a thought. For whence come wars, and fightings, and factions—whence, but from the lusts of the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and in consequence of all these things, the time which ought to be given to philosophy is lost. Moreover, if there is time, and an inclination towards philosophy, yet the body introduces a turmoil, and confusion, and fears into the course of speculation, and hinders us from seeing the truth; and all experience shows that if we would have pure knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the soul in herself must behold all things in themselves; then, I suppose, that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom: not while we live, but after death, as the argument shows; for if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow—either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the body.'

There is not a word we could wish altered in the above, except, indeed, that 'a path of speculation which seems to bring us and the argument to the conclusion,' should rather have been, 'a kind of path which carries us on, with reason for our guide (μετὰ τοῦ λόγου), in the speculation.' A little below (67, B.), μὴ καθαρῷ καθαροῦ ἐφάπτεσθαι, is not exactly, 'no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure'—a version that savours too much of the language of Christian theology—but, 'to realize the pure with that faculty which is not itself pure,' i.e., with νοῦς not entirely dissociated from σῶμα. The abstract, he says, cannot be realized by the intellect while bound up with the concrete. In p. 80, B., τὸ νοητὸν and τὸ ἀνόητον are not 'the intelligible and the unintelligible;' nor, in p. 81, D., is τὸ ὁρατὸν, 'sight.' Everyone knows that τὰ αἰσθητὰ, 'the sensuous,' or things which are the objects of sense, are opposed to τὰ νοητὰ, those which are abstract, and can be realized only by the mind; and a soul, or ghost, is said μετέχειν τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, not as 'cloyed with sight,' but as 'having yet something of the visible,' or concrete, i.e., some lingering remnants of body, which render it visible.

The passage in p. 82, E., is rather difficult, and has been misunderstood by others. Mr. Jowett's rendering is, 'the soul is only able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance; and philosophy, seeing the horrible nature of her confinement, and that the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity,' &c. We think that τοῦ εἱρχμοῦ ἡ δεινότης means, 'the strong tie, or hold, that the prison—i.e., the body—has on the soul;' and that ὅτι δι' ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶ means, 'that it, the prison, is actually liked.' Thus, says Plato, attached as the soul is to the allurements and pleasures of the body, the latter 'helps the captive to remain in captivity.' Thus, in Æsch., Prom. v. 39:

Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἤ θ' ὁμιλία,

and elsewhere, δεινὸν, 'a serious matter,' is opposed to φαῦλον, what is trifling and unimportant.

On the whole, this version of the Phædo is well and carefully executed. As a treatise, it is of the highest interest, if only from the firm belief it everywhere shows in the immortality of the soul—a belief which is nothing short of a real faith, and which seems almost to labour at demonstration by varied and often very subtle arguments, as if the writer was half conscious, all the while, that demonstration in such a matter is quite beyond the province either of logic or physics. But 'dialectics' were thought equal to any difficulty. Says Cebes (p. 72, E.), 'Yes, I entirely think so; we are not walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead; and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.' In this remarkable passage we recognise the same sublime faith which gave birth to the ecstatic exclamation, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,' and also the germs of the doctrine of a Resurrection in τὸ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. No pagan writer before Plato had attained to such exalted ideas of the destiny of a good man, to be with God in the life hereafter. He is full of hope, Socrates says (p. 63, B.), that he shall meet in the other world the wise and the good who have departed hence before him, and still more sure that he shall go to those blessed beings whom (with his usual acquiescence in the popular mythology) he calls ἀγαθοὶ δεσπόται. The doctrine of Resurrection is not really distinct from that of Metempsychosis, both being in fact held by Orphic or Pythagorean teachers (ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος, p. 70, C.), as was that of a final judgment, often insisted on by Plato, as by Pindar and Æschylus before him. The fixed notion with the ancient physicists was, that soul (ψυχὴ, or vitality) was air (πνεῦμα, spiritus, animus, ἄνεμος),—for all turn upon this notion. When a person died, his last gasp was supposed to be the vital air or soul leaving the body, and departing into its kindred and eternal ether. The air, in fact, was thought to be full of souls; and each nascent form, whether of man or animal, in drawing its first breath, might inhale a life, i.e., the actual ψυχὴ that had animated some former body. Hence arose the notion of cycles of existence, of more or less duration, and of triple lives of probation on earth (Pind. ol. ii. 68). This doctrine of a return to earth after some period of residence in Hades is plainly affirmed, Phæd., p. 107, E., and 113, A., and Phædr., p. 249. One of the penalties of a misspent life was thought to be a detention on earth in an inferior and grovelling state of existence. 'If we tell the wicked' (says Socrates in Theætetus, p. 177, A.) 'that if they do not get rid of that cleverness of theirs, that place which is pure and free from evil will never receive them after they are dead, but that here on earth they will have to pass an existence like to themselves—bad associating with bad; all this they will hear as the language of fools addressed to men of cunning and genius.'

The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (Phæd., p. 70, A.), 'the moment it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a puff of wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical value attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous force and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no idea. In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, B.), 'the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην).' Life, then, according to Plato, should be a constant process of assimilation to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, Theæt., p. 176, B.), a discipline and a learning how to die (Phæd., p. 67, D.), because God is the type and fount as it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth. 'The release from evil,' ἀποφυγὴ, was a favourite topic with Plato, whose mind had received a strongly cynical impression from the prevalent selfishness and injustice of the Athenians, and especially from the crowning act of fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in putting Socrates to death. That, in his view, was simply to extinguish truth, to banish justice, to ignore intellectuality, reason, and philosophy as the guides of life. His speculations on the origin of evil, and the permission of its existence on earth, are very interesting. In the grand passage (Theætet., p. 176, A.), he thinks that its existence, as a correlative of good, is a necessary law, i.e., there would be no such thing as good if it were not in contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of cold only by the opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted state of life. But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit—the Semitic doctrine of a Satan—as the personal author of evil. In Republ., ii. p. 379, C., he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is more of evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all things that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for some other causes' (ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan mind did not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan nations had no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235). Of penal abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea; in truth, the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, Phædr., p. 249, A.; τὸ τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, Gorg., p. 523, B.), as well as of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into the other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners respectively go. (Gorg., p. 526, B.) So Phædo, p. 113, D.:—

'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally conveys them, first of all, they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out.' (Jowett, p. 464.)

The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of the Republic.

Thinkers will not be deterred from asking themselves, with all solemnity and in all love of truth, How far is this doctrine of a hell really a revealed truth, or a Platonic speculation, or both? If it is both one and the other, either Plato anticipated Christian Revelation, or Revelation confirmed Plato. Plato, without doubt, did not invent a doctrine which was familiar to the Semitic theology long before him. Still, it may be true that the Platonic theories are totally independent of Jewish traditions, and that the belief in a penal state of existence after death (so clearly developed in the well-known passage of Virgil, Æn., vi. 735, seq.), like that of a last Judgment, had its origin rather in the speculation of mystics, and passed into the popular theology of Christian teachers. The doctrine of retribution for sin (τίσις) may be clearly traced to the Pythagorean dogma δράσαντι παθεῖν, so often insisted upon by Æschylus,—'the doer must suffer.' It was manifest to all, that such suffering was no rule upon earth, since many villains escaped scot-free; and therefore a filling up of the measure hereafter was thought a necessary condition for the sinner. The beneficence of Christianity consisted primarily in this, that it held out a hope that such a debt of suffering could be paid vicariously; whereas the only hope of release held out by Plato (p. 114, A.) was the forgiveness of the persons who had been wronged on earth. This ancient idea of a stern law of reciprocity, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' is distinctly attributed by Aristotle, who calls it τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς, to Pythagoras, Eth. N.V. ch. 8. Be this as it may, it is a very interesting fact that Plato, the first writer of pagan antiquity who describes a bright, supernal heaven, the abode of gods and blessed men who hold converse with them, and a dismal, infernal abode of fire (Phædo, p. 110–113,) derives all his imagery in describing the latter from the effects of volcanic outbreaks, to which he even definitely compares it (p. 111, D.) His description of heaven, which in the Phædrus (p. 247, C.) he places far above the sky, the ὑπερουράνιος τόπος, with some reference to the Hesiodic doctrine of a supernal firmament or floor, in the Phædo is a singular compound of the Homeric Olympus and the Elysium and Isles of the Blest in the legends of the earlier poets. Those legends placed Elysium below, and the Isles of the Blest on the earth. Plato's heaven is on the earth indeed, but on a part of it elevated far above the Mediterranean basin, where, he says, men live in a comparatively dim and misty atmosphere. His account suggests the idea that he had heard some tradition of the healthy and prosperous life of the natives on the sunny slopes of the giant Himalaya mountains. But Plato's heaven is also, to a considerable extent, the heaven of the Revelation. Both are described in very materialistic terms. To this day, the popular notion of heaven is undoubtedly associated with saints in white garments, crowns and thrones of gold and gems, music, brightness, and eternal hallelujahs. One little coincidence between the Platonic and the Apocalyptic account is too remarkable to be omitted. In Plato (p. 110, D.) we are told that, besides silver and gold, heaven is spangled with gems of which earthly gems are but fragments, σάρδια τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας καὶ σμαράγδους. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation (ver. 3) we read, ἰδοῦ θρόνος ἔκειτο ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καθήμενος· καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἦν ὅμοιος ὁπάσει (al. σαρδίῳ) · καὶ ἶρις κυκλόθεν τοῦ θρόνου ὅμοιος ὅράσει σμαραγδίνῳ.

Scarcely less remarkable is the coincidence of the four rivers that surround the abode of shades in the under world (Phædo, p. 112, E.), and the four rivers that encompassed the 'Garden of Eden' (Genesis ii. 10–14). As for the river Acheron and the Acherusian lake, not only does the word contain, like Achelöus, the root aq, water, but the involved notion of ἄχος, 'grief,' suggested its fitness as an infernal river, not less than the Κώκυτος, named from groans. The disappearance of a river in a chasm or 'swallow,' like the Styx in Arcadia and the Erasinus in Argolis, also gave credibility to the existence of infernal rivers, as much as volcanic ebullitions seemed to be proofs of subterranean fire lakes. But it is rather curious that a geographical identity in name should exist between the Acherusian lake and river in Thesprotia (Thucyd., i. 46), and the semi-mythical lake and river in the above passages of the Phædo. The tendency to localize adits to the regions below was very strong; so the lake Avernus, and the promontory of Tænarus, and the καταῤῥάκτης ὀδὸς at Colonus (Soph. Œd. Col. 1590) were all regarded with awe as places giving direct communication with the shades below.

The simple but very touching narrative of the death of Socrates at the conclusion of the dialogue, sets forth in golden words the calm resignation, the perfect faith and happiness of the death of a truly good man. The brevity and want of detail in the last scene is very remarkable. Mr. Jowett gives it thus:—

'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel, and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said, When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)—he said, Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question: but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.'

We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it bears the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That Plato himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us at the beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, B.) The narrative, to say nothing of the improbability of the execution of a distinguished criminal taking place before a company of friends at a social meeting, seems to us framed in ignorance of the medical nature of either narcotic or alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit the popular notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word means 'hemlock' or some other compound drug). The idea was, as is clear from the verse in the Frogs of Aristophanes—

εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια

that death by this poison was caused by a gradual freezing up, or suspension of vital power, beginning at the lower extremities, and creeping up to the heart. Whether a vigorous old man would die in this easy, gradual, and painless way by any known poison, is a medical question we should like to see answered. It may be observed, too, that if the poison were a narcotic, like laudanum, the 'walking about' was precisely the wrong course to take. That is the method specially adopted to prevent and counteract the numbness caused by an overdose of morphia or laudanum. That Socrates was really poisoned, there can be no doubt; but the deed was probably done, as we think, in the darkness of a prison, and the Platonic scene was invented to give a vivid picture of the grand old man's calmness and dignity to the last.

Be this as it may, it may be fairly assumed that the deep injustice of the Athenian republic in thus removing from a scene of usefulness, and of harmless, if somewhat unpopular banter, this great teacher, rankled very deeply in the heart of Plato. It is the real source of that most favourite of all topics, that theme on which all his disquisitions on moral worth turn—ἀδικία, or injustice. This may be called the key-note of the Republic, as it is, in fact, of the Gorgias and the Protagoras, not to mention the very numerous passages in other dialogues. Plato is ever fond of putting in the mouth either of Socrates or his friends passages which he could hardly have uttered, for they have a clear reference to the want of success in his 'Apologia' at the trial, through the non-use of clap-trap, δημηγορία, and ῥητορική. (See Gorgias, p. 486, A.; Theætet., p. 172, C., 174, C.) Modern writers on morals or casuistry do not, directly, at least, take injustice as the basis of all their teaching, even though, in a sense, all vice is a form of injustice, either to oneself or one's neighbour. The fate of Socrates, and the reasons of it, bear some analogy to the unpopularity and harsh treatment which great moral reformers have received in almost every country and under every form of government. The alleged interference both in public and private affairs, the resistance to popular indulgences and vicious pleasures, and the persistent lecturing men of deadened conscience, are more than human nature is prepared to stand, if pressed beyond a certain point. In the Theætetus (p. 149, A.), Socrates sums up the popular odium against himself in these words: 'They say of me that I am an exceedingly strange being, who drives men to their wits' end;' and in the Apology he distinctly traces the διαβολὴ, or misrepresentation of his motives and practices, to the ridicule brought upon him (some twenty years before) by the Clouds of Aristophanes. But the real cause of his unpopularity was the fearless way in which he told unpalatable truths: as that men should care for their souls more than for their money, and that a life without self-examination was not worth the living, ὁ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἄνθρώπῳ (Apol., p. 29, E., 36, C., 38, A.) This was stronger doctrine, at least so far as concerns the preference of money to all religious cares, than could safely be preached now-a-days from a pulpit in London. We remember the case of a clergyman being quite recently bemobbed and rather roughly treated because he attempted to do so. No! the sophist and the Christian moralist alike must give way when resistance to the career of human feeling is pressed too far, just as a river will surmount or wash away altogether the dam constructed to check its course.

Before parting with the Phædo, we must be allowed to cite one passage, describing the earlier career of Socrates as a philosopher, because it has always seemed to us the true key to the understanding of the widely different views taken by Aristophanes and Plato of the real character of Socrates. The passage occurs in p. 96, A., and is rendered by Mr. Jowett thus:

'When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that department of philosophy which is called Natural Science; this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being the science which has to do with the causes of things, and which teaches why a thing is, and is created and destroyed; and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of such questions as these: Is the growth of animals the result of some decay which the hot and cold principle [principles] contract, as some have said? Is the blood the element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or perhaps nothing of this sort—but the brain may be the originating power of the perceptions of hearing, and sight, and smell, and memory, and opinion may come from them, and science may be based on memory and opinion when no longer in motion, but at rest.... Then I heard (p. 97, B.) some one who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself, If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to find out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of anything, he must find out what state of being or suffering or doing was best for that thing, and therefore a man had only to consider the best for himself and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that the same science comprised both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or round; and then he would further explain the cause and the necessity of this, and would teach me the nature of the best, and show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in the centre, he would explain that this position was the best, and I should be satisfied if this were shown to me, and not want any other sort of cause.'

Now this avowal on the part of Socrates, that in his earlier career he was a follower of the physical philosophers, goes far to explain several important points. In the first place, it explains to us the propriety, and in some sense the justice, of Aristophanes' sketch of Socrates, some twenty years earlier than we know of the philosopher's mind from Plato, viz., as a speculator on meteorics after the fashion of Anaxagoras himself, a star-gazer, a lecturer on clouds and thunder and circling motions, rain and mist, and phenomena celestial and subterranean. We know, indeed, from Diogenes Laertius, ii. 4, that Socrates had been a hearer of Archelaus, himself a pupil of Anaxagoras. And thus we understand why Socrates was identified with the other sophists or schoolmen of the day, who taught 'wisdom' generally, ethics not less than physics. As subverters of the established traditions about the gods, and exponents of truth to the best of their knowledge, they met with the same opposition and the same obloquy, in their day, that the Huxleys and the Darwins, and other conspicuous men of our own times, are not wholly exempt from. Their teaching was thought to be 'latitudinarian,' and so they were credited with many views from which they would have recoiled with horror. In the Nubes (902), Socrates is charged with denying the existence of justice, and defending the proposition by the example of the gods, who themselves set it at nought, as when Zeus maltreated and imprisoned his own father, Cronus; and in the same play (1415), the lawfulness of a son beating his father is maintained as a part of the new-fangled Socratic creed. Now in the second book of the Republic (p. 377, fin.), this case of Cronus is expressly repudiated by Socrates as monstrous and unnatural; as also the doctrine that a son may lawfully beat his own father for wrong-doing. In a very curious passage of the 'Wasps' (1037), Aristophanes bitterly blames the Athenians for not having supported him in putting down the nuisance of the philosophers, whom he calls ἠπίαλοι and πυρετοὶ, 'agues' and 'fevers,' teachers of parricide, and base informers. By not giving the prize, he says, to his play of the 'Clouds,' only the year before, they had frustrated all his hopes of crushing and extinguishing the philosophers. Now, these philosophers are represented as headed by Socrates, and Socrates was the very worst of them. That he was at that period (about twenty years before his death) essentially a sophist, and incurring with the rest of them the odium of the popular opinion, seems undeniable. The precise views that he held on ethics, and consequently the exact nature of his teaching at that period, we have no other means of knowing. But it seems inconceivable that Aristophanes should have so grossly misrepresented his character with the slightest chance of success; and we know that it was his ardent desire that his play of the 'Clouds' should succeed. On the whole, we should say, there is a greater chance that Aristophanes truly represented the feeling of his age about Socrates than Plato, who, at best, gives us the Socrates as endeared to his private friends—the man of matured thought, and possibly of much altered and more chastened views. Nor ought we to forget that Plato is as severe against the Sophists generally as Aristophanes is against Socrates in particular. All high teaching at Athens—all that we include in the idea of a college education—was done by the Sophists. The art of ῥητορικὴ was one of the most important: we can see the effect of the training incidentally in the style and the speeches of Euripides and Thucydides. Socrates saw that the ethical principles of the Sophists were wrong, and he engaged in the dangerous task of trying to reform them.

But secondly, the Platonic passage gives us a clue to that sympathy which Socrates, or at least Plato, always shows for the Eleatic school of philosophy as represented by Zeno and Parmenides. 'Of all the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato speaks of the Eleatic with the greatest respect,' says Mr. Jowett (Preface to Philebus, p. 227). That school was a reaction from the teaching of the Ionic physicists, Thales, Anaximenes, and others, who were speculators on natural phenomena without any true system of induction. Anaxagoras' doctrine of Νοῦς, or pervading intelligence, though purely a pantheistic one, stood half-way between the two schools. Xenocrates, the founder of the Eleatics, taught that Creation emanated from a One Being, and not from a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, from water or air, or states of repose, or flux, or any other mere physical reason. In the Philebus (p. 28, C., and p. 30, D.) we find an express eulogy and sympathy with Anaxagoras, whose views were in truth much more adapted to the doctrine of ἰδέαι and abstractions than the materialistic views of the Ionic school. And in the Parmenides, one of the most obscure of the Platonic dialogues, the discussions on τὸ ἓν, The One, and the relations of the real to the phenomenal, though a great advance over the Eleatic doctrines, which, as Mr. Jowett says, 'had not gone beyond the contradictions of matter, motion, space, and the like' (Introd. Parmen., p. 234), still are based on the views of Zeno in the main. Parmenides, indeed, was 'the founder of idealism, and also of dialectic, or, in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and logic.' (Ibid.)

We proceed now to the Theætetus, one of the most important, as well as difficult, of the Platonic dialogues. To this Mr. Jowett has written a rather long but excellent Introduction, replete with large views of the Platonic philosophy, and containing many original and striking remarks, e.g. (p. 329): 'The Greeks, in the fourth century before Christ, had no words for "subject" and "object," and no distinct conception of them; yet they were always hovering about the question involved in them.' (We should be inclined to say, that the familiar distinction between τὰ νοητὰ and τὰ αἰσθητὰ, to a considerable extent represented our terms 'subjective' and 'objective.') Again (p. 328): 'The writings of Plato belong to an age in which the power of analysis had outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use of dialectic, the distinctions which had been already "won from the void and formless infinite," seemed to be rapidly returning to their original chaos.' And (p. 353), 'The relativity of knowledge' (viz., to the individual mind) 'is a truism to us, but was a great psychological discovery in the fifth century before Christ.' In p. 360 the remark is a shrewd one: 'The ancient philosophers in the age of Plato thought of science' (i.e., ἐπιστήμη, exact knowledge) 'only as pure abstraction, and to this opinion (δόξα) stood in no relation.' The subject of Theætetus, 'What is knowledge?' involving, as it doubtless does, some satire on Sophists, who professed to teach what they were themselves unable to explain, has been well called 'A critical history of Greek psychology as it existed down to the fourth century.' In this treatise, the views of the earlier philosophers, that there is no test of existence or reality except perception, αἴσθησις, are impugned. Plato did not, perhaps, himself hold the opinion that objective truth existed, independently of opinion; but his favourite theory of ἰδέαι, or abstracts, implied the existence of some typical, eternal, absolute standard of goodness and justice, as well as of the beautiful. If this were not the case, then all moral as well as all physical οὐσίαι would depend on our sense of them. There would be no φύσει δίκαιον, but only νόμῳ δίκαιον. That would be right in every state which the laws enacted; and thus in two neighbouring states one course of acting (say, lying or stealing, or promiscuous intercourse) would be right, because it is legalised; in another it would be wrong, because punishable by the law. Nor is this difficulty wholly imaginary, as Aristotle felt. (Eth. Nic. V. ch. 7.) The old law, for instance, sanctioned polygamy, as modern usage does in some parts of the East; while the law of Europe condemns it. So in the case of murder: a Greek thought it a solemn and absolute duty to slay the slayer of his father; while we should regard it as one murder added to another. There was a good deal of sense therefore in what Protagoras taught, that 'man is the measure,' μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. If I feel it hot, it is hot to me; if cold, then it is cold: or if wine tastes sour, or bitter, because my digestion is in an abnormal state, then to me it is sour or bitter; and it is no use to argue with me that it is not, but you must set right my disordered stomach, and then the wine will taste as it should. Apply this doctrine to the diversities of religious belief; the Christian says the Buddhist and the Mahommedan are wrong; and each of these retort the same on the Christian and on each other. A thing cannot be absolutely true merely because this or that party asserts it, which is but a 'petitio principii.' Protagoras would have said, had he lived much later, and not altogether absurdly, 'If this form of religion is one that you embrace from conviction, and with entire faith in it, then to you it is true.' And after saying this to the Christian, he would have turned to the Buddhist and the Mahommedan, and have repeated the same formula to each.

Now Plato, to make the victory over Protagoras more complete, first shows, in the Theætetus, that he, Protagoras, by his doctrine of μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, virtually holds the same opinion as those (1) who make αἴσθησις the sole test of truth; (2) who, like Heraclitus, allow of no fixed existence, but hold that πάντα γίγνεται, states of things are always coming into being, because everything is in a state of perpetual flux. For it is evident that each of these views denies any permanent, stable, or objective existence of anything. Even a momentary perception is a fleeting sensation, not a true and real sense. While I say this paper is 'white,' some discoloration of it occurred while the monosyllable was being pronounced, and therefore it was not true that the paper was absolutely white. It appears to us that the question which Mr. Jowett moots as a difficulty in his Introduction (p. 326) is not really very important: 'Would Protagoras have identified his own thesis, "Man is the measure of all things," with the other, "All knowledge is sensible perception?" Secondly, would he have based the relativity of knowledge on the Heraclitean flux?' The latter, we think, Protagoras clearly does, when he says (p. 168, B.) ἥιλεῳ τῇ διανοίᾳ ξυγκαθεὶς ὡς ἀληθῶς σκέψει, τί ποτε λέγομεν κινεῖσθαί τε ἀποφαινόμενοι τὰ πάντα τό τε δοκοῦν ἑκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ εἶναι ἰδιώτῃ τε καὶ πόλει. To us it appears that Plato classed them together, simply because they are logically coherent and inseparable. He insists that all sensations imply a patient and an agent. Fire does not burn if there is nothing for it to consume. Colour is non-existent (being a mere effect of light), unless there is an eye to behold it. That indeed is true, and Epicurus and Lucretius also perceived (Lucr., ii. 795) that three conditions are wanted to produce colour—viz., light, an object to be seen, and an eye to see it. It is quite true, that a person sees a red or a blue cloth on a table while he looks at it, but that when he turns his back upon it, it has no colour, because one of the three conditions, the sight, has been withdrawn. Mr. Jowett seems, however (with the disciples of a modern school), to press this doctrine of relativity too far in asserting (Introd., p. 332), 'There would be no world, if there neither were, nor never had been, any one to perceive the world.' For we cannot escape from the conclusion that the world must have existed (in the sense in which we know of existence) prior to life, i.e., any perceptive faculty, being placed upon it.