Note 93 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 40.

Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his Essay on Liberty, has the following remarks, illustrating Plato’s Dialogues of Search. I should have been glad if I could have transcribed here many other pages of that admirable Essay: which stands almost alone as an unreserved vindication of the rights of the searching individual intelligence, against the compression and repression of King Nomos (pp. 79-80-81):—

“The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to or defending it against opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefits of its universal recognition. Where this advantage cannot be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavouring to provide a substitute for it: some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion eager for his conversion.

“But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Sokratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a discussion of the great questions of life and philosophy, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one, who had merely adopted the common-places of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject — that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed: in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school-disputations of the middle ages had a similar object. They were intended to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it — and could enforce the grounds of the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests had indeed the incurable defect, that the premisses appealed to were taken from authority, not from reason; and as a discipline to the mind they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which formed the intellects of the ‘Socratici viri’. But the modern mind owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit; and the present modes of instruction contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other.… It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic — that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result, but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one’s opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents.”