Note 73 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

Plato, Phædrus, 265 A. See Sir Will. Hamilton’s Lectures on Logic, Lect. 29, pp. 88-90. In the Timæus (p. 40 E) Plato interrupts the thread of his own speculations on cosmogony, to take in all the current theogony on the authority of King Nomos. ἀδύνατον οὖν θεῶν παισὶν ἀπιστεῖν, καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων καὶ ἀναγκαίων ἀποδείξεων λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς οἰκεῖα φάσκουσιν ἀπαγγέλλειν ἑπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον.

Hegel adverts to this severance of the individual consciousness from the common consciousness of the community, as the point of departure for philosophical theory:—“On one hand we are now called upon to find some specific matter for the general form of Good; such closer determination of The Good is the criterion required. On the other hand, the exigencies of the individual subject come prominently forward: this is the consequence of the revolution which Sokrates operated in the Greek mind. So long as the religion, the laws, the political constitution, of any people, are in full force — so long as each individual citizen is in complete harmony with them all — no one raises the question, What has the Individual to do for himself? In a moralised and religious social harmony, each individual finds his destination prescribed by the established routine; while this positive morality, religion, laws, form also the routine of his own mind. On the contrary, if the Individual no longer stands on the custom of his nation, nor feels himself in full agreement with the religion and laws — he then no longer finds what he desires, nor obtains satisfaction in the medium around him. When once such discord has become confirmed, the Individual must fall back on his own reflections, and seek his destination there. This is what gives rise to the question — What is the essential scheme for the Individual? To what ought he to conform — what shall he aim at? An ideal is thus set up for the Individual. This is, the Wise Man, or the Ideal of the Wise Man, which is, in truth, the separate working of individual self-consciousness, conceived as an universal or typical character.” (Hegel, Geschichte der Philosophie, Part ii. pp. 132, 133.)