A. Plato. (continued 2)

Now if we go from knowledge to its content, in which the Idea becomes sundered, and thereby organizes itself more completely into a scientific system, this content, according to Plato, begins to fall into three parts which we distinguish as the logical, natural, and mental philosophy. The logical Philosophy the ancients called dialectic, and its addition to philosophy is by the ancient writers on the subject ascribed to Plato (Vol. I. p. 387). This is not a dialectic such as we met with in the Sophists, which merely brings one’s ideas altogether into confusion, for this first branch of Platonic philosophy is the dialectic which moves in pure Notions—the movement of the speculatively logical, with which several dialogues, and particularly that of Parmenides, occupy themselves. The second, according to Plato, is a kind of natural philosophy, the principles of which are more especially propounded in the Timæus. The third is the philosophy of the mind—an ethical philosophy—and its representation is essentially that of a perfect state in the Republic. The Critias should be taken in connection with the Timæus and the Republic, but we need not make further reference to it, for it is only a fragment. Plato makes these three dialogues one connected conversation. In the Critias and the Timæus the subject is so divided that while the Timæus dealt with the speculative origin of man and of nature, the Critias was intended to represent the ideal history of human culture, and to be a philosophical history of the human race, forming the ancient history of the Athenians as preserved by the Egyptians. Of this, however, only the beginning has come down to us.[29] Hence if the Parmenides be taken along with the Republic and the Timæus, the three together constitute the whole Platonic system of philosophy divided into its three parts or sections. We now wish to consider the philosophy of Plato more in detail in accordance with these three different points of view.

1. Dialectic.

We have already remarked by way of preparation that the Notion of true dialectic is to show forth the necessary movement of pure Notions, without thereby resolving these into nothing; for the result, simply expressed, is that they are this movement, and the universal is just the unity of these opposite Notions. We certainly do not find in Plato a full consciousness that this is the nature of dialectic, but we find dialectic itself present; that is, we find absolute existence thus recognized in pure Notions, and the representation of the movement of these Notions. What makes the study of the Platonic dialectic difficult is the development and the manifestation of the universal out of ordinary conceptions. This beginning, which appears to make knowledge easier, really makes the difficulty greater, since it introduces us into a field in which there is quite a different standard from what we have in reason, and makes this field present to us; when, on the contrary, progression and motion take place in pure Notions alone, the other is not remembered at all. But in that very way the Notions attain greater truth. For otherwise pure logical movement might easily appear to us to exist on its own account, like a private territory, which has another region alongside of it, also having its own particular place. But since both are there brought together, the speculative element begins to appear as it is in truth; that is, as being the only truth, and that, indeed, through the transformation of sensuous opinion into thought. For in our consciousness we first of all find the immediate individual, the sensuous real; or there are also categories of the understanding which are held by us to be ultimate and true. But contrasted with merely external reality, it is rather the ideal that is the most real, and it was Plato who perceived that it was the only real, for he characterized the universal or thought as the true, in opposition to what is sensuous.

Thus the aim of many of Plato’s Dialogues, which conclude without any positive affirmation (Vol. I. p. 406; II. p. 13), is to show that the immediately existent, the many things that appear to us, although we may have quite true conceptions of them, are still not in themselves, in an objective sense, the true, because they alter and are determined through their relation to something else and not through themselves; thus we must even in the sensuous individuals consider the universal, or what Plato has called the Idea (p. 29). The sensuous, limited, and finite is, in fact, both itself and the other, which is also considered as existent; and thus there is an unsolved contradiction, for the other has dominion in the first. We have been before reminded (Vol. I. p. 404; II. p. 33) that the aim of the Platonic dialectic is to confuse and to resolve the finite ideas of men, in order to bring about in their consciousness what science demands, the consideration of that which is. By being thus directed against the form of the finite, dialectic has in the first place the effect of confounding the particular, and this is brought about by the negation therein present being shown forth, so that, in fact, it is proved that it is not what it is, but that it passes into its opposite, into the limitations which are essential to it. But if this dialectic is laid hold of, the particular passes away and becomes another than that which it is taken to be. Formal philosophy cannot look at dialectic in any other way than as being the art of confusing ordinary conceptions or even Notions, and demonstrating their nullity, thus making their result to be merely negative. For this reason, Plato in his Republic (VII. pp. 538, 539, Steph.; pp. 370, 371, Bekk.) advised the citizens not to allow dialectic to be studied before the thirtieth year, because by its means anyone might transform the beautiful, as he had received it from his masters, into that which is hateful. We find this dialectic a great deal in Plato, both in the more Socratic and moralizing dialogues, and in the many dialogues which relate to the conceptions of the Sophists in regard to science.

In connection with this, the second part of dialectic makes its first aim the bringing of the universal in men to consciousness, which, as we formerly remarked when speaking of Socrates (Vol. I. p. 398), was the main interest of Socratic culture. From this time on, we may look at such an aim as having been discarded, and simply remark that a number of Plato’s Dialogues merely aim at bringing to consciousness a general conception, such as we have without taking any trouble at all (Vol. I. pp. 403, 404); hence this prolixity on Plato’s part often wearies us. This dialectic is, indeed, also a movement of thought, but it is really only necessary in an external way and for reflecting consciousness, in order to allow the universal, what is in and for itself, unalterable and immortal, to come forth. Hence these first two sides of the dialectic, directed as they are towards the dissolution of the particular and thus to the production of the universal, are not yet dialectic in its true form: it is a dialectic which Plato has in common with the Sophists, who understood very well how to disintegrate the particular. A subject which Plato very often treats of with this end in view, is virtue, which he proves to be only one (Vol. I. pp. 405, 411), and thereby he makes the universal good emerge from the particular virtues.

Now because the universal which has emerged from the confusion of the particular, i.e. the true, beautiful and good, that which taken by itself is species, was at first undetermined and abstract, it is, in the third place, a principal part of Plato’s endeavours further to determine this universal in itself. This determination is the relation which the dialectic movement in thought bears to the universal, for through this movement the Idea comes to these thoughts which contain the opposites of the finite within themselves. For the Idea, as the self-determining, is the unity of these differences, and thus the determinate Idea. The universal is hence determined as that which resolves and has resolved the contradictions in itself, and hence it is the concrete in itself; thus this sublation of contradiction is the affirmative. Dialectic in this higher sense is the really Platonic; as speculative it does not conclude with a negative result, for it demonstrates the union of opposites which have annulled themselves. Here begins what is difficult for the understanding to grasp. The form of Plato’s methods being not yet, however, developed purely on its own account, this is the reason that his dialectic is still often merely reasoning, and that it proceeds from individual points of view and frequently remains without result. On the other hand, Plato’s own teaching is directed against this merely reasoning dialectic; yet we see that it gives him trouble properly to show forth the difference. The speculative dialectic which commences with him, is thus the most interesting but also the most difficult part of his work; hence acquaintance is not usually made with it when the Platonic writings are studied. Tennemann, for example, did not at all comprehend what was most important in the Platonic philosophy, and only gathered some of it together in the form of dry ontological determinations—for that was what he could comprehend. But it shows the greatest lack of intellect in a historian of Philosophy only to see in a great philosophic form whether there is anything yielding profit to himself or not.

What we have thus to deal with in the dialectic of Plato is the pure thought of reason, from which he very clearly distinguishes the understanding (διάνοια), (supra, p. 47). We may have thoughts about many things—if indeed, we do have thought at all—but this is not what Plato means. Plato’s true speculative greatness, and that through which he forms an epoch in the history of Philosophy, and hence in the history of the world, lies in the fuller determination of the Idea; this extension of knowledge is one which some centuries later constituted the main element in the ferment which took place in universal history, and in the transformation which the human mind passed through. This fuller determination may, from what has gone before, be understood thus: Plato first comprehended the Absolute as the Being of Parmenides, but as the Universal which, as species, is also end, i.e. which rules, penetrates, and produces the particular and manifold. Plato, however, had not yet developed this self-producing activity, and hence often stumbled into an external teleology. As the union of the preceding principles, Plato further led this Being into determinateness and into difference, as the latter is contained in the triad of Pythagorean number-determinations, and expressed the same in thought. That is, he grasped the Absolute as the unity of Being and non-being—in Becoming, as Heraclitus says—or of the one and the many,[30] &c. He further now took into the objective dialectic of Heraclitus the Eleatic dialectic, which is the external endeavour of the subject to show forth contradiction, so that in place of an external changing of things, their inward transition in themselves, i.e. in their Ideas, or, as they are here, in their categories, has come to pass out of and through themselves. Plato finally set forth the belief of Socrates, which the latter put forward in regard to the moral self-reflection of the subject only, as objective, as the Idea, which is both universal thought and the existent. The previous philosophies thus do not disappear because refuted by Plato, being absorbed in him.

In addition to Being and non-being, one and many, the unlimited and limiting are, for instance, likewise pure thoughts such as these, in whose absolute contemplation, from an all-embracing point of view, the Platonic investigation occupies itself. The purely logical and quite abstruse consideration of such objects certainly contrasts strongly with our conception of the beautiful, pleasing, and attractive content of Plato. Such consideration to him signifies all that is best in Philosophy, and it is that which he everywhere calls the true method of Philosophy, and the knowledge of the truth; in it he places the distinction between philosophers and Sophists. The Sophists on their part look at appearances, and these they obtain in opinion; this, indeed, implies thought, but not pure thought, or what is in and for itself. This is one reason why many turn from the study of Plato’s works unsatisfied. When we commence a Dialogue, we find, in the free Platonic method of composition, beautiful scenes in nature, a superb introduction (p. 14) that promises to lead us through flowery fields into Philosophy—and that the highest Philosophy, the Platonic. We meet with elevated thoughts, which are responded to more specially by youth, but these soon disappear. If at first we have allowed ourselves to be carried away by these bright scenes, they must now be all renounced, and as we have come to the real dialectic, and truly speculative, we must keep to the wearisome path, and allow ourselves to be pricked by the thorns and thistles of metaphysics. For behold, we then come to what is best and highest, to investigations respecting the one and many, Being and nothing; this was not what was anticipated, and men go quietly away, only wondering that Plato should seek knowledge here. From the most profound dialectic investigation, Plato then again proceeds to representations and images, to the description of dialogues amongst intelligent men. Thus in the Phædo, for example, which Mendelssohn has modernized and transformed into Wolffian metaphysics, the beginning and end are elevating and beautiful, and the middle deals with dialectic. Hence in making one’s way through Plato’s Dialogues very many mental qualities are called into play, and in their study we consequently ought to keep our minds open and free as regards the very various points of interest. If we read with interest what is speculative, we are apt to overlook what is most beautiful; if our interest lies in the elevation and culture of the mind, we forget the speculative element and find that it does not appeal to us. With some it is like the young man in the Bible, who had fulfilled his various duties, and who asked Christ what good thing he still had to do to become His follower. But when the Lord commanded him to sell what he had and give to the poor, the young man went away sorrowful; this was not what he had anticipated. Just in the same way many mean well as regards Philosophy; they study Fries, and heaven knows whom else. Their hearts are full of the true, good and beautiful; they would know and see what they ought to do, but their breasts swell with goodwill alone.

While Socrates remained at the good and universal, at implicitly concrete thoughts, without having developed them or having revealed them through development, Plato certainly goes on to the Idea as determined. His defect, however, is that this determinateness and that universality are still outside one another. We should certainly obtain the determinate Idea by reducing the dialectic movement to its result, and that forms an important element in knowledge. Yet when Plato speaks of justice, beauty, goodness, truth, their origin is not revealed; they are not shown as being results, but merely as hypotheses accepted in their immediacy. Consciousness certainly has an innate conviction that they form the highest end, but this their determination is not discovered. Since Plato’s dogmatic expositions of Ideas are lost (supra, p. 11), the dialectic of pure thought is only placed before us by the Dialogues dealing with the subject, and these, just because they deal with pure thought, are amongst the most difficult, viz.: the Sophist, the Philebus, and, more especially, the Parmenides. We here pass over the Dialogues which contain only negative dialectic and Socratic dialogue, because they treat only of concrete ideas and not of dialectic in its higher signification; they leave us unsatisfied, because their ultimate end is only to confuse one’s opinions, or awaken a sense of the necessity for knowledge. But those three express the abstract speculative Idea in its pure Notion. The embracing of the opposites in one, and the expression of this unity, is chiefly lacking in the Parmenides, which has hence, like some other Dialogues, only a negative result. But both in the Sophist and the Philebus Plato expresses the unity also.

a. The fully worked-out and genuine dialectic is, however, contained in the Parmenides—that most famous masterpiece of Platonic dialectic. Parmenides and Zeno are there represented as meeting Socrates in Athens; but the most important part of it is the dialectic which is put in the mouths of Parmenides and Zeno. At the very beginning the nature of this dialectic is given in detail as follows: Plato makes Parmenides praise Socrates thus: “I notice that in conversing with Aristoteles,” (one of those present; it might quite well have been the philosopher, but that he was born sixteen years after Socrates’ death) “you were trying to define in what the nature of the beautiful, just and good, and all such ideas lay. This your endeavour is noble and divine. But train and exercise yourself even more in what the multitude call idle chatter, and look on as useless, as long as you are young, for otherwise the truth will escape you.—In what, Socrates asks, does this exercise consist?—I was much pleased because you said before that we must not be content with contemplating the sensuous and its illusions, but must consider that which thought alone can grasp, and that which alone exists.” I have before[31] remarked that men at all times have believed that the truth could be found through reflection only, for in reflection thought is found, and that which we have before us in the guise of ordinary conception and of belief is transformed into thought. Socrates now replies to Parmenides: “I believed that I should in that way best discern the like and unlike, and the other general determinations in things.” Parmenides replies, “Certainly. But if you begin from a point of view such as that, you must not only consider what follows from such an hypothesis, but also what follows from the opposite of that hypothesis. For example, in the case of the hypothesis ‘the many is,’ you have to consider what will be the consequences of the relation of the many to itself and to the one, and likewise what the consequences of the relation of the one to itself and to the many.” The marvellous fact that meets us in thought when we take determinations such as these by themselves, is that each one is turned round into the opposite of itself. “But again we must consider, if the many is not, as to what will be the result as regards the one and the many, both to themselves and to one another. The same consideration must be employed in respect of identity and non-identity, rest and motion, origination and passing away, and likewise in regard to Being and non-being. We must ask what is each of these in relation to itself, and what is their relation in event of the one or the other being accepted? In exercising yourself fully in this, you will learn to know real truth.”[32] Plato thus lays great stress on the dialectical point of view, which is not the point of view of the merely external, but is a living point of view whose content is formed of pure thoughts only, whose movement consists in their making themselves the other of themselves, and thus showing that only their unity is what is truly justified.

Plato makes Socrates say, as regards the meaning of the unity of the one and many, “If anyone proved to me that I am one and many, it would not surprise me. For since he shows me that I am a many, and points out in me the right and left side, an upper and lower half, a front and back, I partake of the manifold; and again I partake of unity because I am one of us seven. The case is the same with stone, wood, &c. But if anyone, after determining the simple ideas of similarity and dissimilarity, multiplicity, and unity, rest and movement, and so on, were to show that these in their abstract form admit of admixture and separation, I should be very much surprised.”[33] The dialectic of Plato is, however, not to be regarded as complete in every regard. Though his main endeavour is to show that in every determination the opposite is contained, it can still not be said that this is strictly carried out in all his dialectic movements, for there are often external considerations which exercise an influence in his dialectic. For example, Parmenides says: “Are either of the two parts of the one which is—I mean the One and Being—ever wanting to one another? Is the One ever set free from being a part (τοῦ εἶναι μόριον) and Being set free from the one part (τοῦ ἑνὸς μόριου)? Once more, each part thus possesses both the one and Being, and the smallest part still always consists of these two parts.”[34] In other words: “The one is; from this it follows that the one is not synonymous with ‘is,’ and thus the one and ‘is’ are distinguished. There hence is in the proposition ‘the one is’ a distinction; the many is therefore contained in it, and thus even with the one I express the many.” This dialectic is certainly correct, but it is not quite pure, because it begins from this union of two determinations.

The result of the whole investigation in the Parmenides is summarized at the close by saying “that whether the one is or is not, it, as also the many (τἆλλα), in relation to themselves and in relation to one another—all of them both are and are not, appear and do not appear.”[35] This result may seem strange. We are far from accepting, in our ordinary conception of things, quite abstract determinations such as the one, Being, non-being, appearance, rest, movement, &c., as Ideas; but these universals are taken by Plato as Ideas, and this Dialogue thus really contains the pure Platonic doctrine of Ideas. He shows of the one that when it is as well as when it is not, whether like itself or not like itself, both in movement and rest, origination and decay, it both is and is not; or the unity as well as all these pure Ideas, both are and are not, the one is one as much as it is many. In the proposition “the one is,” it is also implied that “the one is not one but many;” and, conversely, “the many is” also indicates that “the many is not many, but one.” They show themselves dialectically and are really the identity with their ‘other’; and this is the truth. An example is given in Becoming: in Becoming Being and non-being are in inseparable unity, and yet they are also present there as distinguished; for Becoming only exists because the one passes into the other.

In this respect, perhaps, the result arrived at in the Parmenides may not satisfy us, since it seems to be negative in character, and not, as the negation of the negation, expressive of true affirmation. Nevertheless, the Neo-platonists, and more especially Proclus, regard the result arrived at in the Parmenides as the true theology, as the true revelation of all the mysteries of the divine essence. And it cannot be regarded as anything else, however little this may at first appear, and though Tiedemann (Platon. Argumenta, p. 340) speaks of these assertions as merely the wild extravagances of the Neo-platonists. In fact, however, we understand by God the absolute essence of things, which even in its simple Notion is the unity and movement of these pure realities, the Ideas of the one and many, &c. The divine essence is the Idea in general, as it is either for sensuous consciousness or for thought. In as far as the divine Idea is the absolute self-reflection, dialectic is nothing more than this activity of self-reflection in itself; the Neo-Platonists regarded this connection as metaphysical only, and have recognized in it their theology, the unfolding of the secrets of the divine essence. But here there appears the double interpretation already remarked upon (p. 19), which has now to be more clearly expounded. It is that God and the essential reality of things may be understood in two different ways. For, on the one hand, when it is said that the essential reality of things is the unity of opposites, it would seem as though only the immediate essence of these immediately objective things were indicated, and as if this doctrine of real essence or ontology were distinguished from the knowledge of God, or theology. These simple realities and their relation and movement seem only to express moments of the objective and not mind, because there is lacking in them one element—that is to say, reflection into themselves—which we demand for the existence of the divine essence. For mind, the truly absolute essence, is not only the simple and immediate, but that which reflects itself into itself, for which in its opposition the unity of itself and of that which is opposed is; but these moments and their movement do not present it as such, for they make their appearance as simple abstractions. On the other hand, they may also be taken to be pure Notions, which pertain purely to reflection into itself. In this case Being is wanting to them, or what we likewise demand for reflection into itself as essential to the divine essence; and then their movement is esteemed an empty round of empty abstractions, which belong only to reflection and have no reality. For the solution of this contradiction we must know the nature of apprehension and knowledge, in order to obtain in the Notion everything there present. Thus shall we have the consciousness that the Notion is in truth neither the immediate only, although it is the simple, nor merely that which reflects itself into itself, the thing of consciousness; for it is of spiritual simplicity, thus really existent—as it is thought turned back on itself, so it is also Being in itself, i.e. objective Being, and consequently all reality. Plato did not state this knowledge of the nature of the Notion so expressly, nor did he say that this essential Being of things is the same as the divine essence. But really it is simply not put into words, for the fact is undoubtedly present, and the only distinction is one of speech as between the mode of the ordinary conception and that of the Notion. On the one hand, this reflection into itself, the spiritual, the Notion, is present in the speculation of Plato; for the unity of the one and many, &c., is just this individuality in difference, this being-turned-back-within-itself in its opposite, this opposite which is implicit; the essential reality of the world is really this movement returning into itself of that which is turned back within itself. But, on the other hand, for this very reason, this being reflected into self—like the God of ordinary conception—still remains with Plato something separated; and in his representation of the Becoming of Nature in the Timæus, God, and the essential reality of things, appear as distinguished.

b. In the Sophist Plato investigated the pure Notions or Ideas of movement and rest, self-identity and other-being, Being and non-being. He here proves, as against Parmenides, that non-being is, and likewise that the simple self-identical partakes of other-being, and unity of multiplicity. He says of the Sophists that they never get beyond non-being, and he also refutes their whole ground-principle, which is non-being, feeling, and the many. Plato has thus so determined the true universal, that he makes it the unity of, for example, the one and many, Being and non-being; but at the same time he has avoided, or it was his endeavour to avoid, the double meaning which lies in our talk of the unity of Being and nothing, &c. For in this expression we emphasize the unity, and then the difference disappears, just as if we merely abstracted from it. Plato tried, however, to preserve the difference likewise. The Sophist is a further development of Being and non-being, both of which are applicable to all things; for because things are different, the one being the other of the other, the determination of the negative is present. First of all, however, Plato expresses in the Sophist a clearer consciousness of Ideas as abstract universalities, and his conviction that this point of view could not endure, because it was opposed to the unity of the Idea with itself. Plato thus first refutes what is sensuous, and then even the Ideas themselves. The first of these points of view is what is later on called materialism, which makes the corporeal alone to be the substantial, admitting nothing to have reality excepting what can be laid hold of by the hand, such as rocks and oaks. “Let us,” says Plato, in the second place, “proceed to the other, to the friends of Ideas.” Their belief is that the substantial is incorporeal, intellectual, and they separate from it the region of Becoming, of change, into which the sensuous falls, while the universal is for itself. These represent Ideas as immovable, and neither active nor passive. Plato asserts, as against this, that movement, life, soul, and thought, cannot be denied to true Being (παντελῶς ὄντι), and that the holy reason (ἄγιον νοῦν) can be nowhere, and in nothing that is unmoved.[36] Plato thus has a clear consciousness of having got further than Parmenides when he says:—

“Keep your mind from this way of inquiry, For never will you show that non-being is.”

Plato says that Being in anyone partakes both of Being and non-being; but what thus participates is different both from Being and non-being as such.[37]

This dialectic combats two things in particular; and in the first place it is antagonistic to the common dialectic in the ordinary sense, of which we have already spoken. Examples of this false dialectic to which Plato often comes back, are specially frequent amongst the Sophists; yet he did not show sufficiently clearly how they are distinguished from the purely dialectical knowledge which is in the Notion. For example, Plato expressed his dissent when Protagoras and others said that no determination is absolutely certain—that bitter is not objective, for what to one person is bitter, to another is sweet. Similarly, large and small, more and less, &c., are relative, because the large will be, in other circumstances, small, and the small will be great. That is to say, the unity of opposites is present to us in everything we know, but the common way of looking at things, in which the rational does not come to consciousness, always holds the opposites asunder, as though they were simply opposed in a determinate way. As in each thing we demonstrate unity, so do we also show its multiplicity, for it has many parts and qualities. In the Parmenides, Plato, as we saw above (p. 58), objected to this unity of opposites, because it must thereby be said that something is one in quite another respect from that in which it is many. We thus do not here bring these thoughts together, for the conception and the words merely go backwards and forwards from the one to the other; if this passing to and fro is performed with consciousness, it is the empty dialectic which does not really unite the opposites. Of this Plato says, “If anyone thinks he has made a wonderful discovery in ascertaining that he can drag thoughts this way and that, from one determination to another, he may be told that he has done nothing worthy of praise; for in so doing there is nothing excellent or difficult.” The dialectic that annuls a determination because it reveals in it some defect, and then goes on to establish another, is thus wrong. “The point of difficulty, and what we ought to aim at, is to show that what is the other is the same, and what is the same, is another, and likewise in the same regard and from the same point of view to show that the one has in them come into existence if the other determination is revealed within them. But to show that somehow the same is another, and the other also the same, that the great is also small” (e.g. Protagoras’s die), “and the like also unlike, and to delight in thus always proving opposites, is no true inquiry (ἔλενχος), but simply proves that he who uses such arguments is a neophyte,” in thought, “who has just begun to investigate truth. To separate all existences from one another is the crude attempt of an uncultured and unphilosophical mind. To cause everything to fall asunder means the perfect annihilation of all thought, for thought is the union of ideas.”[38] Thus Plato expressly speaks against the dialectic of showing how anything may be refuted from some point of view or another. We see that Plato, in respect of content, expresses nothing excepting what is called indifference in difference, the difference of absolute opposites and their unity. To this speculative knowledge he opposes the ordinary way of thinking, which is positive as well as negative; the former, not bringing the thoughts together, allows first one and then the other to have value in their separation; the latter is, indeed, conscious of a unity, though it is of a superficial, differentiating unity in which the two moments are separate, as standing in different aspects.

The second point against which Plato argues is the dialectic of the Eleatics, and their assertion, which in its nature resembles that of the Sophists, that only Being is, and non-being is not. To the Sophists this means, as Plato puts it: Since the negative is not, but only Being is, there is nothing false; everything existent, everything which is for us, is thus necessarily true, and what is not, we do not know or feel. Plato reproaches the Sophists for thus doing away with the difference between true and false.[39] Having arrived at this stage in the knowledge of the dialectic (and the whole matter is merely a difference of stages) the Sophists could allow what they promise—that everything that the individual, according to his belief, makes his end and interest, is affirmative and right. Hence it cannot be said that such and such an act is wrong, wicked, a crime; for this would be to say that the maxim of the action is wrong. No more can it be said that such and such opinion is deceptive, for in the opinion of the Sophists the proposition implies that what I feel or represent to myself, in as far as it is mine, is an affirmative content, and thus true and right. The proposition in itself seems quite abstract and innocent, but we first notice what is involved in such abstractions when we see them in concrete form. According to this innocent proposition there would be no wickedness and no crime. The Platonic dialectic is essentially different from this kind of dialectic.

What is further present to the mind of Plato is that the Idea, the absolute universal, good, true, and beautiful, is to be taken for itself. The myth, which I have already quoted (p. 27 et seq.), indeed goes to prove that we must not consider a good action, a noble man—not the subject of which these determinations are predicated. For that which appears in such conceptions or perceptions as predicate, must be taken for itself, and this is the absolute truth. This tallies with the nature of the dialectic which has been described. An action, taken in accordance with the empirical conception, may be called right; in another aspect, quite opposite determinations may be shown to be in it. But the good and true must be taken on their own account without such individualities, without this empirical and concrete character; and the good and true thus taken alone, constitute that which is. The soul which, according to the divine drama, is found in matter, rejoices in a beautiful and just object; but the only actual truth is in absolute virtue, justice, and beauty. It is thus the universal for itself which is further determined in the Platonic dialectic; of this several forms appear, but these forms are themselves still very general and abstract. Plato’s highest form is the identity of Being and non-being. The true is that which is, but this Being is not without negation. Plato’s object is thus to show that non-being is an essential determination in Being, and that the simple, self-identical, partakes of other-being. This unity of Being and non-being is also found in the Sophists; but this alone is not the end of the matter. For in further investigation Plato comes to the conclusion that non-being, further determined, is the essence of the ‘other’: “Ideas mingle, and Being and the other (θάτερον) go through everything and through one another; the other, because it participates (μετασχόν) in Being, certainly is through this indwelling Being, but it is not identical with that of which it partakes, being something different, and being other than Being, it is clearly non-being. But since Being likewise partakes of other-being, it also is different from other Ideas, and is not any one of them; so that there are thousands of ways in which it is not, and as regards all else, whether looked at individually or collectively, it in many respects is, and in many respects is not.”[40] Plato thus maintains that the other, as the negative, non-identical, is likewise in one and the same respect the self-identical; there are not different sides which are in mutual opposition.

These are the principal points in Plato’s peculiar dialectic. The fact that the Idea of the divine, eternal, beautiful, is absolute existence, is the beginning of the elevation of consciousness into the spiritual, and into the consciousness that the universal is true. It may be enough for the ordinary idea to be animated and satisfied by the conception of the beautiful and good, but thinking knowledge demands the determination of this eternal and divine. And this determination is really only free determination which certainly does not prevent universality—a limitation (for every determination is limitation) which likewise leaves the universal in its infinitude free and independent. Freedom exists only in a return into itself; the undistinguished is the lifeless; the active, living, concrete universal is hence what inwardly distinguishes itself, but yet remains free in so doing. Now this determinateness consists in the one being identical with itself in the other, in the many, in what is distinguished. This constitutes the only truth, and the only interest for knowledge in what is called Platonic philosophy, and if this is not known, the main point of it is not known. While in the example already often quoted (pp. 58, 64),[41] in which Socrates is both one and many, the two thoughts are made to fall asunder, it is left to speculative thought alone to bring the thoughts together, and this union of what is different, of Being and non-being, of one and many, &c., which takes place without a mere transition from one to another, constitutes the inmost reality and true greatness of Platonic philosophy. This determination is the esoteric element in Platonic philosophy, and the other is the exoteric; the distinction is doubtless an unwarranted one, indicating, as it seems to do, that Plato could have two such philosophies—one for the world, for the people, and the other, the inward, reserved for the initiated. But the esoteric is the speculative, which, even though written and printed, is yet, without being any secret, hidden from those who have not sufficient interest in it to exert themselves. To this esoteric portion pertain the two dialogues hitherto considered, along with which the Philebus may in the third place be taken.

c. In the Philebus Plato investigates the nature of pleasure; and the opposition of the infinite and finite, or of the unlimited (ἄπειρον) and limiting (πέρας), is there more especially dealt with. In keeping this before us, it would scarcely occur to us that through the metaphysical knowledge of the nature of the infinite and undetermined, what concerns enjoyment is likewise determined; but these pure thoughts are the substantial through which everything, however concrete or seemingly remote, is decided. When Plato treats of pleasure and wisdom as contrasted, it is the opposition of finite and infinite. By pleasure we certainly represent to ourselves the immediately individual, the sensuous; but pleasure is the indeterminate in respect that it is the merely elementary, like fire and water, and not the self-determining. Only the Idea is the self-determinate, or self-identity. To our reflection the infinite appears to be what is best and highest, limitation being inferior to it; and ancient philosophers so determined it. By Plato, however, it is, on the other hand, shown that the limited is the true, as the self-determining, while the unlimited is still abstract; it certainly can be determined in many different ways, but when thus determined it is only the individual. The infinite is the formless; free form as activity is the finite, which finds in the infinite the material for self-realization. Plato thus characterizes enjoyment dependent on the senses as the unlimited which does not determine itself; reason alone is the active determination. But the infinite is what in itself passes over to the finite; thus the perfect good, according to Plato, is neither to be sought for in happiness or reason, but in a life of both combined. But wisdom, as limit, is the true cause from which what is excellent arises.[42] As that which posits measure and end, it is what absolutely determines the end—the immanent determination with which and in which freedom likewise brings itself into existence.

Plato further considers the fact that the true is the identity of opposites, thus. The infinite, as the indeterminate, is capable of a more or less, it may be more intensive or not; thus colder and warmer, drier and moister, quicker and slower, &c., are all such. What is limited is the equal, the double, and every other measure; by this means the opposite ceases to be unlike and becomes uniform and harmonious. Through the unity of these opposites, such as cold and warm, dry and moist, health arises; similarly the harmony of music takes its origin from the limitation of high tones and deep, of quicker and slower movement, and, generally speaking, everything beautiful and perfect arises through the union of opposites. Health, happiness, beauty, &c., would thus appear to be begotten, in as far as the opposites are allied thereto, but they are likewise an intermingling of the same. The ancients make copious use of intermingling, participation, &c., instead of individuality; but for us these are indefinite and inadequate expressions. But Plato says that the third, which is thus begotten, pre-supposes the cause or that from which it is formed; this is more excellent than those through whose instrumentality that third arose. Hence Plato has four determinations; first the unlimited, the undetermined; secondly the limited, measure, proportion, to which pertains wisdom; the third is what is mingled from both, what has only arisen; the fourth is cause. This is in itself nothing else than the unity of differences, subjectivity, power and supremacy over opposites, that which is able to sustain the opposites in itself; but it is only the spiritual which has this power and which sustains opposition, the highest contradiction in itself. Weak corporeality passes away as soon as ‘another’ comes into it. The cause he speaks of is divine reason, which governs the world; the beauty of the world which is present in air, fire, water, and in all that lives, is produced thereby.[43] Thus the absolute is what in one unity is finite and infinite.

When Plato speaks thus of the beautiful and good, these are concrete ideas, or rather there is only one idea. But we are still far from these concrete ideas when we begin with such abstractions as Being, non-being, unity, and multiplicity. If Plato, however, has not succeeded in bringing these abstract thoughts through further development and concretion, to beauty, truth, and morality, there at least lies in the knowledge of those abstract determinations, the criterion by which the concrete is determined, as also its sources. This transition to the concrete is made in the Philebus, since the principle of feeling and of pleasure is there considered. The ancient philosophers knew very well what they had of concrete in those abstract thoughts. In the atomic principle of multiplicity we thus find the source of a construction of the state, for the ultimate thought-determination of such state-principles is the logical. The ancients in their pure Philosophy had not the same end in view as we—they had not the end of a metaphysical sequence placed before them like a problem. We, on the other hand, have something concrete before us, and desire to reduce it to settled order. With Plato Philosophy offers the path which the individual must follow in order to attain to any knowledge, but, generally speaking, Plato places absolute and explicit happiness, the blessed life itself, in the contemplation during life of the divine objects named above.[44] This contemplative life seems aimless, for the reason that all its interests have disappeared. But to live in freedom in the kingdom of thought had become the absolute end to the ancients, and they knew that freedom existed only in thought.

2. Philosophy of Nature.

With Plato Philosophy likewise commenced to devote more attention to the understanding of what is further determined, and in this way the matter of knowledge began to fall into divisions. In the Timæus the Idea thus makes its appearance as expressed in its concrete determinateness, and the Platonic Philosophy of Nature hence teaches us to have a better knowledge of the reality of the world; we cannot, however, enter into details, and if we did, they have little interest. It is more especially where Plato treats of physiology that his statements in no way correspond with what we now know, although we cannot fail to wonder at the brilliant glimpses of the truth there found, which have been only too much misconceived by the moderns. Plato derived a great deal from the Pythagoreans; how much is theirs, however, cannot be satisfactorily determined. We remarked before (p. 14) that the Timæus is really the fuller version of a Pythagorean treatise; other would-be wise persons have indeed said that the treatise is only an abstract made by a Pythagorean of the larger work of Plato, but the first theory is the more probable. The Timæus has in all times been esteemed the most difficult and obscure of the Platonic dialogues. This difficulty is due in part to the apparent mingling of conceiving knowledge and ordinary perception already mentioned (p. 20), just as we shall presently find an intermingling of Pythagorean numbers; and it is due still more to the philosophic nature of the matter in hand, of which Plato was as yet unconscious. The second difficulty lies in the arrangement of the whole, for what at once strikes one is that Plato repeatedly breaks off the thread of his argument, often appearing to turn back and begin again from the beginning.[45] This moved critics such as August Wolff and others, who could not understand it philosophically, to take the Timæus to be an accumulation of fragments put together, or else to be several works which had only been loosely strung together into one, or into the Platonic portion of which much that is foreign had been introduced. Wolff accordingly thought it was evident from this that the dialogue, like Homer’s poems, had been, in its first form, spoken and not written. But although the connection seems unmethodical, and Plato himself makes what maybe called copious excuses for the confusion, we shall find how the whole matter really falls into natural divisions, and we shall also find the deep inward reason which makes necessary the frequent return to what apparently is the beginning.

An exposition of the reality of nature or of the becoming of the world is introduced by Plato in the following way: “God is the Good,” this stands also at the head of the Platonic Ideas in the verbally delivered discourses (supra, p. 11); “goodness, however, has no jealousy of anything, and being free from jealousy, God desired to make all things like Himself.”[46] God here is still without determination, and a name which has no meaning for thought; nevertheless, where Plato in the Timæus again begins from the beginning, he is found to have a more definite idea of God. That God is devoid of envy undoubtedly is a great, beautiful, true, and childlike thought. With the ancients, on the contrary, we find in Nemesis, Dike, Fate, Jealousy, the one determination of the gods: moved by this they cast down the great and bring it low, and suffer not what is excellent and elevated to exist. The later high-minded philosophers controverted this doctrine. For in the mere idea of the Nemesis no moral determination is as yet implied, because punishment there is only the humiliation of what oversteps limits, but these limits are not yet presented as moral, and punishment is thus not yet a recognition of the moral as distinguished from the immoral. Plato’s thought is thus much higher than that of most of our moderns, who, in saying that God is a hidden God who has not revealed Himself to us and of whom we can know nothing, ascribe jealousy to God. For why should He not reveal Himself to us if we earnestly seek the knowledge of Him? A light loses nothing by another’s being kindled therefrom, and hence there was in Athens a punishment imposed on those who did not permit this to be done. If the knowledge of God were kept from us in order that we should know only the finite and not attain to the infinite, God would be a jealous God, or God would then become an empty name. Such talk means no more than that we wish to neglect what is higher and divine, and seek after our own petty interests and opinions. This humility is sin—the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Plato continues: “God found the visible” (παραλαβών)—a mythical expression proceeding from the necessity of beginning with an immediate, which, however, as it presents itself, cannot in any way be allowed—“not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly manner; and out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was far better than the other.” From this it appears as if Plato had considered that God was only the δημιοῦργος, i.e. the disposer of matter, and that this, being eternal and independent, was found by Him as chaos; but in view of what has been said, this is false. These are not the philosophic doctrines which Plato seriously held, for he speaks here only after the manner of the ordinary conception, and such expressions have hence no philosophic content. It is only the introduction of the subject, bringing us, as it does, to determinations such as matter. Plato then comes in course of his progress to further determinations, and in these we first have the Notion; we must hold to what is speculative in Plato, and not to the first-mentioned ordinary conception. Likewise, when he says that God esteemed order to be the best, the mode of expression is naïve. Nowadays we should ask that God should first be proved; and just as little should we allow the visible to be established without much further ado. What is proved by Plato from this more naïve method of expression is, in the first place, the true determination of the Idea, which only appears later on. It is further said: “God reflecting that of what is visible, the unintelligent (ἀνόητον) could not be fairer than the intelligent (νοῦς), and that intelligence could not exist in anything devoid of soul, for these reasons put intelligence in the soul, and the soul in the body, and so united them that the world became a living and intelligent system, an animal.” We have reality and intelligence, and the soul as the bond connecting the two extremes, without which intelligence could not have part in the visible body; we saw the true reality comprehended by Plato in a similar way in the Phædrus (supra, p. 39). “There is, however, only one such animal, for were there two or more, these would be only parts of the one, and only one.”[47]

Plato now first proceeds to the determination of the Idea of corporeal existence: “Because the world was to become corporeal, visible and tangible, and since without fire nothing can be seen, and without solidity, without earth, nothing can be touched, God in the beginning made fire and earth.” In this childlike way Plato introduces these extremes, solidity and life. “But two things cannot be united without a third, there must be a bond between them, uniting both”—one of Plato’s simple methods of expression. “The fairest bond, however, is that which most completely fuses itself and that which is bound by it.” That is a profound saying, in which the Notion is contained; the bond is the subjective and individual, the power which dominates the other, which makes itself identical with it. “Proportion” (ἀναλογία) is best adapted to effect such a fusion; that is, whenever of three numbers or magnitudes or powers, that which is the mean is to the last term what the first term is to the mean, and again when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean (a : b = b : c) “then the mean having become the first and last, and the first and last both having become means, all things will necessarily come to be the same; but having come to be the same, everything will be one.”[48] This is excellent, we have still preserved this in our Philosophy; it is the distinction which is no distinction. This diremption from which Plato proceeds, is the conclusion which we know from logic; it appears in the form of the ordinary syllogism, in which, however, the whole rationality of the Idea is, at least externally, contained. The distinctions are the extremes, and the mean is the identity which in a supreme degree makes them one; the conclusion is thus speculative, and in the extremes unites itself with itself, because all the terms pass through all the different positions. It is hence a mistake to disparage the conclusion and not to recognize it as the highest and absolute form; in respect of the conclusions arrived at by the understanding, on the contrary, we should be right in rejecting it. This last has no such mean; each of the differences is there recognized as different in its own independent form, as having a character different from that of the other. This, in the Platonic philosophy, is abrogated, and the speculative element in it constitutes the proper and true form of conclusion, in which the extremes neither remain in independence as regards themselves, nor as regards the mean. In the conclusion of the understanding, on the contrary, the unity which is constituted is only the unity of essentially different contents which remain such; for here a subject, a determination, is, through the mean, simply bound up with another, or “some conception is joined to some other conception.” In a rational conclusion, however, the main point of its speculative content is the identity of the extremes which are joined to one another; in this it is involved that the subject presented in the mean is a content which does not join itself with another, but only through the other and in the other with itself. In other words, this constitutes the essential nature of God, who, when made subject, is the fact that He begot His Son, the world; but in this reality which appears as another, He still remains identical with Himself, does away with the separation implied in the Fall, and, in the other, merely unites Himself to Himself and thus becomes Spirit. When the immediate is elevated over the mediate and it is then said that God’s actions are immediate, there is, indeed, good ground for the assertion; but the concrete fact is that God is a conclusion which, by differentiating itself, unites itself to itself, and, through the abrogation of the mediation, reinstates its own immediacy. In the Platonic philosophy we thus have what is best and highest; the thoughts are, indeed, merely pure thoughts, but they contain everything in themselves; for all concrete forms depend on thought-determinations alone. The Fathers thus found in Plato the Trinity which they wished to comprehend and prove in thought: with Plato the truth really has the same determination as the Trinity. But these forms have been neglected for two thousand years since Plato’s time, for they have not passed into the Christian religion as thoughts; indeed they were considered to be ideas which had entered in through error, until quite recent times, when men began to understand that the Notion is contained in these determinations, and that nature and spirit can thus be comprehended through their means.

Plato continues: “Since what is solid requires two means, because it not only has breadth but also depth, God has placed air and water between fire and earth; and indeed He gave to them the same proportion, so that fire is related to air as air to water, and as air is to water, so is water to earth.”[49] Thus we have, properly speaking, four methods of representing space, inasmuch as the point is, through line and surface, closely bound up with the solid body. The sundered mean here discovered, again indicates an important thought of logical profundity; and the number four which here appears, is in nature a fundamental number. For as being the different which is turned towards the two extremes, the mean must be separated in itself. In the conclusion in which God is the One, the second (the mediating), the Son; the third, the Spirit; the mean indeed is simple. But the cause why that which in the rational conclusion is merely three-fold, passes in nature to the four-fold, rests in what is natural, because what in thought is immediately the one, becomes separate in Nature. But in order that in Nature the opposition should exist as opposition, it must itself be a twofold, and thus, when we count, we have four. This also takes place in the conception of God, for when we apply it to the world, we have nature as mean and the existent spirit as the way of return for nature: when the return is made, this is the absolute Spirit. This living process, this separation and unifying of differences, is the living God.

Plato says further: “Through this unity the visible and tangible world has been made. And it comes to pass by God’s having given to it these elements entire and unseparated, that it is perfect, and unaffected by age and disease. For old age and disease only arise from a body’s being worked upon by a superabundance of such elements from without. But here this is not so, for the world contains those elements entirely in itself, and nothing can come to it from without. The world is spherical in form,” (as it was to Parmenides and the Pythagoreans) “as being most perfect, and as containing all others in itself; it is perfectly smooth, since for it there is nothing outside, and it requires no limbs.” Finitude consists in this, that a distinction as regards something else is an externality to some other object. In the Idea we certainly have determination, limitation, difference, other-being, but it is at the same time dissolved, contained, gathered together, in the one. Thus it is a difference through which no finitude arises, seeing that it likewise is sublated. Finitude is thus in the infinite itself, and this is, indeed, a great thought. “God gave the world the most appropriate motion of all the seven, being that which harmonizes best with mind and consciousness, motion in a circle; the other six He took away from it and liberated it from their variations”[50] (movements backwards and forwards). This is only a popular way of putting it.

We read further: “Since God wished to make the world a God, He gave it soul, and this was placed in the centre and diffused through the whole, which was also surrounded by it externally; and in this way He brought to pass the self-sufficing existence which required no other, and which needed no other friendship or acquaintance than itself. Through these means God created the world as a blessed God.” We may say that here, where the world is a totality through the world-soul, we first have the knowledge of the Idea; for the first time this newly-begotten God, as the mean and identity, is the true absolute. That first God which was only goodness, is, on the contrary, a mere hypothesis, and hence neither determined nor self-determining. “Now though we have spoken of the soul last,” Plato goes on, “it does not for that reason come last; for this is merely our manner of speech. The soul is the ruler, the king, and the body is its subject.” It is only Plato’s naïvety which ascribes the reversal of the order of the two to a manner of speech. What here appears as contingent is really necessary—that is, to begin with the immediate and then come to the concrete. We must likewise adopt this method, but with the consciousness that when we begin with determinations such as Being, or God, Space, Time, &c., we speak of them in an immediate manner, and this content, in accordance with its nature, is at first immediate, and consequently undetermined in itself. God, for example, with whom we begin as an immediate, is proved only at the last, and then, indeed, as the true first. Thus we can, as already remarked, (p. 72) show Plato’s confusion of mind in such presentations; but it depends entirely on what Plato’s standard of truth is.

Plato further shows us the nature of the Idea in one of the most famous and profound of passages, where in the essence of the soul he recognizes again the very same idea that he also expressed as the essence of the corporeal. For he says: “The soul is created in the following way: Of the indivisible and unchangeable and also of the divisible which is corporeal, God made a third kind of intermediate essence, which partook of the nature of the same and of the nature of the other or diverse.” (The divisible is to Plato likewise the other as such, or in itself, and not of anything else.) “And God in like manner made the soul a sort of intermediate between the indivisible and the divisible.” Here the abstract determinations of the one which is identity, of the many or non-identical, which is opposition and difference, once more appear. If we say: “God, the Absolute, is the identity of the identical and non-identical,” a cry is raised of barbarism and scholasticism. Those who speak of it so still hold Plato in high esteem, and yet it was thus that he determined the truth. “And taking these three elements as separate, God mingled them all into one Idea, because he forcibly compressed the incongruous nature of the other into the same.”[51] This is undoubtedly the power of the Notion, which posits the many, the separate, as the ideal, and that is also the force applied to the understanding when anything is placed before it.

Plato now describes how the self-identical, as itself a moment, and the other or matter, and the third, the apparently dissoluble union which has not returned into the first unity—which three were originally separated—have now, in simple reflection into self and resumption of that beginning, been degraded into moments. “Mingling the identical and the other with the essence (οὐσία),” the third moment, “and making them all one, God again divided this whole into as many parts was as fitting.”[52] Since this substance of the soul is identical with that of the visible world, the one whole is for the first time the now systematized substance, the true matter, the absolute element which is internally divided, an enduring and unseparable unity of the one and many; and no other essence must be demanded. The manner and mode of the division of this subjectivity contain the famous Platonic numbers, which doubtless originally pertain to the Pythagoreans, and respecting which both ancients and moderns, and even Kepler himself in his Harmonia mundi, have taken much pains, but which no one has properly understood. To understand would mean two things, and in the first place, the recognition of their speculative significance, their Notion. But, as already remarked of the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p. 224), these distinctions of number give only an indefinite conception of difference, and that only in the earlier numbers; where the relationships become more complicated, they are quite incapable of designating them more closely. In the second place, because of their being numbers, they express, as differences of magnitude, differences in what is sensuous only. The system of apparent magnitude—and it is in the heavenly system that magnitude appears most purely and freely, liberated from what is qualitative—must correspond to them. But these living number-spheres are themselves systems composed of many elements—both of the magnitude of distance and of velocity and mass. No one of these elements, taken as a succession of simple numbers, can be likened to the system of heavenly spheres, for the series corresponding to this system can, as to its members, contain nothing else than the system of all these moments. Now if the Platonic numbers were also the elements of each system such as this, it would not be only this element which would have to be taken into account, for the relationship of moments which become distinguished in movement has to be conceived of as a whole, and is the true object of interest and reason. What we have to do is to give briefly the main points as matter of history; we have the most thorough treatment of it given us by Böckh “On the Constitution of the World-Soul in the Timæus of Plato,” in the third volume of the Studies of Daub and Creuzer (p. 26 et seq.).

The fundamental series is very simple: “God first took one part out of the whole; then the second, the double of the first; the third is one and a half times as many as the second, or three times the first; the next is double the second; the fifth is three times the third; the sixth is eight times the first; the seventh is twenty-seven times greater than the first.” Hence the series is: 1; 2; 3; 4 = 2²; 9 = 3²; 8 = 2³; 27 = 3³. “Then God filled up the double and triple intervals” (the relations 1 : 2 and 1 : 3) “by again abstracting portions from the whole. These parts he placed in the intervals in such a way that in each interval there were two means, the one exceeding and exceeded by the extremes in the same ratio, the other being that kind of mean which by an equal number exceeds and is exceeded by the extremes.” That is, the first is a constant geometric relationship, and the other is an arithmetical. The first mean, brought about through the quadration, is thus in the relation 1 : 2, for example, the proportion 1 : √̅2 : 2; the other is in the same relation, the number 1½. Hereby new relations arise which are again in a specially given and more difficult method inserted into that first, but this is done in such a way that everywhere something has been left out, and the last relation of number to number is 256 : 243, or 2⁸ : 3⁵.

Much progress is not, however, made with these number-relations, for they do not present much to the speculative Notion. The relationships and laws of nature cannot be expressed by these barren numbers; they form an empirical relation which does not constitute the basis of the proportions of nature. Plato now says: “God divided this entire series lengthways into two parts which he set together crosswise like an X, and he bent their ends into a circular form and comprehended them in a uniform motion—forming an inner circle and an outer—and he called the motion of the outer circle the motion of the same, and that of the inner the motion of the diverse, giving supremacy to the former, and leaving it intact. But the inner motion he again split into seven orbits after the same relations; three of these he made to move with equal velocity, and four with unequal velocity to the three and to one another. This is the system of the soul within which all that is corporeal is formed; the soul is the centre, it penetrates the whole and envelopes it from without and moves in itself. Thus it has the divine beginning of a never-ceasing and rational life in itself.”[53] This is not quite devoid of confusion, and from it we can only grasp the general fact that as to Plato with the idea of the corporeal universe that of the soul enters in as the all-embracing and simple, to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is unity in difference. This double essence, posited in and for itself in difference, becomes systematized within the one in many moments, which are, however, movements; thus this reality and that essence both pertain to this whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and this again is one. Mind is what penetrates all, and to it the corporeal is opposed as truly as that it itself is mind.

This is a general description of the soul which is posited in the world and reigns over it; and in as far as the substantial, which is in matter, is similar to it, their inherent identity is asserted. The fact that in it the same moments which constitute its reality are contained, merely signifies that God, as absolute Substance, does not see anything other than Himself. Plato hence describes the relation of soul to objective reality thus: it, if it touches any of the moments, whether dispersed in parts or indivisible, is stirred in all its powers to declare the sameness and the difference of that or some other thing, and how, where, and when, the individual is related to the other and to the universal. “Now when the orbit of the sensuous, moving in its due course, imparts knowledge of itself to its whole soul” (where the different orbits of the world’s course show themselves to correspond with the inwardness of mind) “true opinions and beliefs arise. But when the soul applies itself to the rational and the orbit of the self-identical makes itself known, thought is perfected into knowledge.”[54] This is the essential reality of the world as of the inherently blessed God; here the Idea of the whole is for the first time perfected, and, in accordance with this Idea, the world first makes its appearance. What had hitherto appeared was the reality of the sensuous only and not the world as sensuous, for though Plato certainly spoke before of fire, &c. (p. 75), he there gave only the reality of the sensuous; he would hence have done better to have omitted these expressions. In them we have the reason for its appearing as if Plato had here begun to consider from the beginning that of which he has already treated (supra, p. 72). For since we must begin from the abstract in order to reach the true and the concrete, which first appears later on (supra, p. 79), this last, when it has been found, has the appearance and form of a new commencement, particularly in Plato’s loose style.

Plato now goes on further, for he calls this divine world the pattern which is in thought (νοητόν) alone, and always in self-identity; but he again places this whole in opposition to itself, so that there is a second, the copy of the first, the world, which has origination and is visible. This second is the system of the heavenly movement, the first is the eternally living. The second, which has origination and becoming within it, cannot be made perfectly like the first, the eternal Idea. But it is made a self-moving image of the eternal that remains in the unity; and this eternal image that moves rhythmically, after the manner of numbers, is what we call time. Plato says of it that we are in the habit of calling the ‘was’ and ‘will be’ parts of time, and we transfer these indications of change which operate in time, into absolute essence. But the true time is eternal, or the present. For the substance can neither become older nor younger, and time, as the immediate image of the eternal, has neither the future nor the present in its parts. Time is ideal, like space, not sensuous, but the immediate mode in which mind comes forth in objective form, the sensuous non-sensuous. The real moments of the principle of absolute movement in what is temporal, are those in which changes appear. “From the mind and will of God in the creation of time, there arose the sun, moon, and five other stars which are called the planets, and which serve to distinguish and preserve the relations of time.”[55] For in them the numbers of time are realized. Thus the heavenly movement, as the true time, is the image of the eternal which yet remains in unity, i.e. it is that in which the eternal retains the determination of the ‘same.’ For everything is in time, that is, in negative unity which does not allow anything to root itself freely in itself, and thus to move and to be moved according to chance.

But this eternal is also in the determinateness of the other reality, in the Idea of the self-changing and variable principle whose universal is matter. The eternal world has a likeness in the world which belongs to time, but opposed to this there is a second world where change really dwells. The ‘same’ and the ‘other’ are the most abstract opposes that we hitherto have had. The eternal world as posited in time has thus two forms—the form of similarity and the form of differentiality, of variability. The three moments as they appear in the last sphere, are, in the first place, simple essence which is begotten, which has arisen, or determinate matter; secondly the place in which it is begotten, and thirdly that in which what is begotten has its pattern. Plato gives them thus: “Essence (ὄν), place, and generation.” We thus have the conclusion in which space is the mean between individual generation and the universal. If we now oppose this principle to time in its negativity, the mean is this principle of the ‘other’ as the universal principle—“a receiving medium like a mother”—an essence which contains everything, gives to everything an independent subsistence and the power to do as is desired. This principle is destitute of form, yet capable of receiving all forms, the universal principle of all that appears different; it is the false passive matter that we understand when we speak of it—the relative substantial, existence generally, but external existence here, and only abstract Being-for-self. Form is in our reflection distinguished from it, and this, Plato tells us, first comes into existence through the mother. In this principle we have what we call the phenomenal, for matter is just this subsistence of individual generation, in which division is posited. But what appears herein is not to be posited as the individual of earthly existence, but is to be apprehended as the universal in such determinateness. Since matter, as the universal, is the principle of all that is individual, Plato in the first place reminds us that we cannot speak of these sensuous things—fire, water, earth, air, &c. (which thus once more come before us here); for hereby they are expressed as a fixed determination which remains as such—but what remains is only their universality, or they, as universal, are only the fiery, earthly, &c.[56]

Plato further expounds the determinate reality of these sensuous things, or their simple determinateness. In this world of change form is figure in space; for as in the world, which is the immediate image of the eternal, time is the absolute principle, here the absolute ideal principle is pure matter as such, i.e. the existence of space. Space is the ideal essence of this phenomenal world, the mean which unites positivity and negativity, but its determinations are figures. And, indeed, of the different dimensions of space, it is surface which must be taken as true reality, for it is the absolute mean between the line and point in space, and in its first real limitation it is three; similarly the triangle is first among the figures, while the circle has no limit as such within it. Here Plato comes to the deduction of configuration, in which the triangle forms the principle; thus triangles form the essence of sensuous things. Hence he says, in Pythagorean fashion, that the compounding and uniting together of these triangles, as their Idea pertaining to the mean, constitutes once more, according to the original number-relations, the sensuous elements. This is the principle, but how Plato determines the figures of the elements, and the union of the triangles, I refrain from considering.[57]

From this point Plato passes to a system of Physics and Physiology into which we have no intention of following him. It is to be regarded as a first, childlike endeavour to understand sensuous phenomena in their manifold character, but as yet it is superficial and confused. Sensuous manifestations, such as the parts and limbs of the body, are here taken into consideration, and an account of this is given intermingled with thoughts which resemble our formal explanations, and in which the Notion really vanishes. We have to remember the elevated nature of the Idea, as being the main point of excellence in his explanations, for, as far as the realization of the same is concerned, Plato merely felt and expressed it to be a necessity. Speculative thought is often recognizable, but, for the most part, consideration is directed to quite external modes of explanation, such as that of end. The method of treating Physics is a different one from ours, for while with Plato empirical knowledge is still deficient, in modern Physics, on the other hand, the deficiency is found in the Idea. Plato, although he does not seem to conform to our theory of Physics, ignoring as it does the theory of life, and though he proceeds to talk in a childlike way in external analogies, yet in certain cases gives utterance to very deep perceptions, which would be well worthy of our consideration if the contemplation of nature as living had any place with our physicists. His manner of relating the physiological to the physical would be as interesting. Certain portions of his system contain a general element, such as his representation of colours, and from this he goes on to more general considerations. For when Plato begins to talk on this subject, he says of the difficulty of distinguishing and recognizing the individual, that in the contemplation of nature there are “two causes to be distinguished, the one necessary and the other divine. The divine must be sought for in all things with the view of attaining to a blessed life” (this endeavour is an end in and for itself, and in it we find happiness) “in as far as our nature admits, but the necessary causes need be sought only for the sake of divine things, considering that without these necessary causes” (as conditions of knowledge) “we cannot know them.” Contemplation in accordance with necessity is the external contemplation of objects, their connection, relation, &c. “Of the divine, God Himself was the creator,” the divine belongs to that first eternal world—not as to one beyond, but to one now present. “But the creation and disposition of the mortal He committed to His offspring (γεννήμασι).” This is a simple way of passing from the divine to the finite and earthly. “Now they, imitating the divine, because they had received the immortal principle of a soul, fashioned a mortal body, and placed in this a soul of another nature, which was mortal. This mortal nature was subject to violent and irresistible affections—the first of these was pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil, and then pain which is the deterrent (φυγάς) from doing good; also rashness (θάῤῥος) and fear, two foolish counsellors; anger, hope, &c. These sensations all belong to the mortal soul. And that the divine might not be polluted more than necessary, the subordinate gods separated this mortal nature from the seat of the divine, and gave it a different habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck so as to be the isthmus and boundary between head and breast.” The sensations, affections, &c., dwell in the breast or in the heart (we place that which is immortal in the heart); the spiritual is in the head. But in order to make the former as perfect as might be, “they placed,” for instance, “as a supporter to the heart which was burnt with passion, the lung, soft and bloodless, and which had within it hollows like the pores of a sponge, in order that, receiving the breath and drink, it might cool the heart and allow of refreshment and an alleviation of the heat.”[58]

What Plato says of the liver is specially worthy of notice. “Since the irrational part of the soul which desires eating and drinking does not listen to reason, God made the liver so that the soul might be inspired with terror by the power of thought which originates from reason, and which descends upon the liver as on a mirror, receiving upon it figures and giving back images. But if this part of the soul is once more assuaged, in sleep it participates in visions. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father to make the human race as good as they could, thus ordered our inferior parts in order that they also might obtain a measure of truth, and placed the oracle in them.” Plato thus ascribes divination to the irrational, corporeal part of man, and although it is often thought that revelation, &c., is by Plato ascribed to reason, this is a false idea; he says that there is a reason, but in irrationality. “Herein we have a conclusive proof that God has given the art of divination to the irrationality of man, for no man when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration, but when he receives the inspiration either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep or he is demented by some distemper or possession.” Thus Plato makes divination of a lower grade than conscious knowledge. “And when he has recovered his senses he has to remember and explain what he has received, for while he is demented, he cannot judge of it. The ancient saying is therefore very true, that only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself or his own affairs.”[59] Plato is called the patron saint of mere possession, but, according to this, the assertion is entirely false. These are the principal points in Plato’s Philosophy of Nature.

3. Philosophy of Mind.

We have already dealt generally from the theoretical side with the speculative nature of mind as yet unrealized, as well as with the highly important differences with respect to the kinds of knowledge (pp. 28-48). It must also be considered that we find in Plato as yet no developed consciousness of the organization of the theoretic mind, though certainly sensation, memory, &c., are distinguished by him from reason; these moments of the mind are, however, neither accurately discriminated, nor exhibited in their connection, so as to show the necessary relations between them. The only point of interest for us then in Plato’s philosophy of mind is his view of man’s moral nature; and this real, practical side of consciousness is Plato’s greatest glory, and hence must now be specially dealt with by us. Its form certainly does not suggest that Plato gave himself much trouble to discover a supreme moral principle, as it is now called, which, for the very reason that it is supposed to be all-embracing, has in it a certain lack of content. Neither did he trouble himself about a natural right, which is but a trivial abstraction foisted on to the real practical existence, the right; but it is of man’s moral nature that he treats in the Republic. Man’s moral nature seems to us to have little to do with the State; to Plato, however, the reality of mind—that is, of mind as opposed to nature—appeared in its highest truth as the organization of a state which, as such, is essentially moral; and he recognized that the moral nature (free will in its rationality) comes to its right, to its reality, only in an actual nation.

We must further remark that in the Republic Plato introduces the investigation of his subject with the object of showing what justice (δικαιοσύνη) is. After much discussion has taken place, and several definitions of justice have been taken into consideration only to be rejected, Plato at last says in his simple way: “The present investigation is very like the case of a man who is required to read small handwriting at a distance; if it were observed that the same letters were to be seen at a shorter distance and of a larger size, he would certainly prefer to read first the letters where they were written larger, and then would be able to read more easily the small letters also. The same plan should be followed now with justice. Justice is not only in the individual, but also in the state, and the state is greater than the individual; justice is therefore imprinted on states in larger characters, and is more easily recognizable.” (This is different from what the Stoics say of the wise man.) “It is therefore preferable to consider justice as it is to be found in the state.”[60] By making this comparison Plato transforms the question anent justice into an investigation of the state; it is a very simple and graceful transition, though it seems arbitrary. It was great force of insight that really led the ancients to the truth; and what Plato brings forward as merely simplifying the difficulty, may, in fact, be said to exist in the nature of the thing. For it is not convenience which leads him to this position, but the fact that justice can be carried out only in so far as man is a member of a state, for in the state alone is justice present in reality and truth. Justice, not as the understanding, but as mind in its striving to realize itself, is the existence of freedom here and now, the actuality of the self-conscious, intelligent existence in and at home with itself and possessing activity—just as in property, for instance, I place my freedom in this particular thing. But the principle of the state again is the objective reality of justice, the reality in which the whole mind is present and not only the knowledge of myself as this individual. For as the free and reasonable will determines itself, there are laws of freedom; but these laws are nothing else than state-laws, for the Notion of the state implies the existence of a reasoning will. Thus laws have force in the state, and are there matter of practice and of custom; but because self-will is also there in its immediacy, they are not only matter of custom, but must also be a force operating against arbitrary self-will, and showing itself in the courts of justice and in governments. Thus Plato, in order to discern the features of justice, with the instinct of reason fixes his attention on their manner of representation in the state.

Justice in itself is ordinarily represented by us in the form of a natural right, right in a condition of nature; such a condition of nature is, however, a direct moral impossibility. That which is in itself is, by those who do not attain to the universal, held to be something natural, as the necessary moments of the mind are held to be innate ideas. The natural is rather what should be sublated by the mind, and the justice of the condition of nature can only emerge as the absolute injustice of the mind. In contrast with the state, which is the real spirit, the spirit in its simple and as yet unrealized Notion is the abstract implicitude; this Notion must of course precede the construction of its reality; it is this which is conceived of as a condition of nature. We are accustomed to take our start from the fiction of a condition of nature, which is truly no condition of mind, of reasonable will, but of animals among themselves: wherefore Hobbes has justly remarked that the true state of nature is a war of every man against his neighbour. This implicitude of the mind is at the same time the individual man, for in the ordinary conception the universal separates itself from the particular, as if the particular were absolutely and in and for itself what it certainly is, and the Universal did not make it that which it is in truth—as if this were not its essence, but as if the individual element were the most important. The fiction of a state of nature starts from the individuality of the person, his free will, and his relation to other persons according to this free will. Natural justice has thus been a term applied to that which is justice in the individual and for the individual; and the condition of society and of the state has been recognized only as a medium for the individual person, who is the chief end and object. Plato, in direct contrast with this, lays as his foundation the substantial, the universal, and he does this in such a way that the individual as such has this very universal as his end, and the subject has his will, activity, life and enjoyment in the state, so that it may be called his second nature, his habits and his customs. This moral substance which constitutes the spirit, life and Being of individuality, and which is its foundation, systematizes itself into a living, organic whole, and at the same time it differentiates itself into its members, whose activity signifies the production of the whole.

This relation of the Notion to its reality certainly did not come into consciousness with Plato, and thus we do not find in him a philosophic method of construction, which shows first the absolute Idea, then the necessity, inherently existent, for its realization, and this realization itself. The judgment that has been delivered respecting Plato’s Republic therefore is that Plato has therein given a so-called ideal for the constitution of a state; this has become proverbial as a sobriquet, in the sense that this conception is a chimera, which may be mentally conceived of—and in itself, as Plato describes it, it is doubtless excellent and true—that it is also capable of being carried out, but only on the condition that men should be of an excellence such as may possibly be present among the dwellers in the moon, but that it is not realizable for men like those on the earth. But since men most be taken as they are, this ideal cannot be realized by reason of men’s wickedness; and to frame such an ideal is therefore altogether idle.

As to this, the first remark to be made is that in the Christian world in general there passes current an ideal of a perfect man which certainly cannot be carried out in the great body of a nation. We may, perhaps, see it realized in monks or Quakers, or other similar pious folk, but a set of melancholy specimens such as these could never form a nation, any more than lice or parasitic plants could exist for themselves, or otherwise than on an organic body. If such men were to constitute a nation, there would have to be an end of this lamb-like gentleness, this vanity which occupies itself exclusively with its own individual self, which pets and pampers itself, and ever has the image and consciousness of its own excellence before its eyes. For life in the universal and for the universal demands, not that lame and cowardly gentleness, but gentleness combined with a like measure of energy, and which is not occupied with itself and its own sins, but with the universal and what is to be done for it. They before whose eyes that false ideal floats of course find men to be always compassed with weakness and depravity, and never find that ideal realized. For they raise into importance the veriest trifles, which no reasonable man would give heed to; and they think such weaknesses and defects are present even when they overlook them. But we need not esteem this forbearance to be generosity; for it rather implies a perception on their part that from what they call weakness and defect proceeds their own destruction, which comes to pass from their making such defects of importance. The man who has them is immediately through himself absolved from them, in so far as he makes nothing of them. The crime is a crime only when they are real to him, and his destruction is in holding them to be something real. Such an ideal must therefore not stand in our way, whatever be the fairness of its form, and this even when it does not appear exactly as it does to monks and Quakers, but, for instance, when it is the principle of renouncing sensuous things, and abandoning energy of action, which principle must bring to nought much that would otherwise be held of value. It is contradictory to try to keep intact all our relationships, for in those that otherwise hold good there always is a side where opposition is encountered. Moreover, what I have already said regarding the relation between philosophy and the state (p. 23 et seq.) shows that the Platonic ideal is not to be taken in this sense. When an ideal has truth in itself through the Notion, it is no chimera, just because it is true, for the truth is no chimera. Such an idea is therefore nothing idle and powerless, but the real. It is certainly permissible to form wishes, but when pious wishes are all that a man has in regard to the great and true, he may be said to be godless. It is just as if we could do nothing, because everything was so holy and inviolable, or as if we refused to be anything definite, because all that is definite has its defects. The true ideal is not what ought to be real, but what is real, and the only real; if an ideal is held to be too good to exist, there must be some fault in the ideal itself, for which reality is too good. The Platonic Republic would thus be a chimera, not because excellence such as it depicts is lacking to mankind, but because it, this excellence, falls short of man’s requirements. For what is real, is rational. The point to know, however, is what exactly is real; in common life all is real, but there is a difference between the phenomenal world and reality. The real has also an external existence, which displays arbitrariness and contingency, like a tree, a house, a plant, which in nature come into existence. What is on the surface in the moral sphere, men’s action, involves much that is evil, and might in many ways be better; men will ever be wicked and depraved, but this is not the Idea. If the reality of the substance is recognized, the surface where the passions battle must be penetrated. The temporal and transitory certainly exists, and may cause us trouble enough, but in spite of that it is no true reality, any more than the particularity of the subject, his wishes and inclinations, are so.