Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

The Phædon is affirmative and expository.

The Phædon is characterised by Proklus as a dialogue wherein Sokrates unfolds fully his own mental history, and communicates to his admirers the complete range of philosophical cognition.1 This criticism is partly well founded. The dialogue generally is among the most affirmative and expository in the Platonic list. Sokrates undertakes to prove the immortality of the soul, delivers the various reasons which establish the doctrine to his satisfaction, and confutes some dissentient opinions entertained by others. In regard to the exposition, however, we must consider ourselves as listening to Plato under the name of Sokrates: and we find it so conducted as to specify both certain stages through which the mind of Plato had passed, and the logical process which (at that time) appeared to him to carry conviction.

Situation and circumstances assumed in the Phædon. Pathetic interest which they inspire.

The interest felt by most readers in the Phædon, however, depends, not so much on the argumentative exposition (which Wyttenbach2 justly pronounces to be obscure and difficult as well as unsatisfactory) as on the personality of the expounding speaker, and the irresistible pathos of the situation. Sokrates had been condemned to death by the Dikastery on the day after the sacred ship, memorable in connection with the legendary voyage of Theseus to Krete, had been dispatched on her annual mission of religious sacrifice at the island of Delos. The Athenian magistrates considered themselves as precluded from putting any one to death by public authority, during the absence of the ship on this mission. Thirty days elapsed between her departure and her return: during all which interval, Sokrates remained in the prison, yet with full permission to his friends to visit him. They passed most of every day in the enjoyment of his conversation.3 In the Phædon, we read the last of these conversations, after the sacred vessel had returned, and after the Eleven magistrates had announced to Sokrates that the draught of hemlock would be administered to him before sunset. On communicating this intelligence, the magistrates released Sokrates from the fetters with which he had hitherto been bound. It is shortly after such release that the friends enter the prison to see him for the last time. One of the number, Phædon, recounts to Echekratês not only the conduct and discourse of Sokrates during the closing hours of his life, but also the swallowing of the poison, and the manner of his death.

Simmias and Kebês, the two collocutors with Sokrates. Their feelings and those of Sokrates.

More than fifteen friends of the philosopher are noted as present at this last scene: but the only two who take an active part in the debate, are, two young Thebans named Kebês and Simmias.4 These friends, though deeply attached to Sokrates, and full of sorrow at the irreparable loss impending over them, are represented as overawed and fascinated by his perfect fearlessness, serenity and dignity.5 They are ashamed to give vent to their grief, when their master is seen to maintain his ordinary frame of mind, neither disquieted nor dissatisfied. The fundamental conception of the dialogue is, to represent Sokrates as the same man that he was before his trial; unmoved by the situation — not feeling that any misfortune is about to happen to him — equally delighting in intellectual debate — equally fertile in dialectic invention. So much does he care for debate, and so little for the impending catastrophe, that he persists in a great argumentative effort, notwithstanding the intimation conveyed by Kriton from the gaoler, that if he heated himself with talking, the poison might perhaps be languid in its operation, so that two or three draughts of it would be necessary instead of one.6 Sokrates even advances the position that death appears to him as a benefit rather than a misfortune, and that every true philosopher ought to prefer death to life, assuming it to supervene without his own act — suicide being forbidden by the Gods. He is represented as “placidus ore, intrepidus verbis; intempestivas suorum lacrimas coercens” — to borrow a phrase from Tacitus’s striking picture of the last hours of the Emperor Otho.7 To see him thus undisturbed, and even welcoming his approaching end, somewhat hurts the feelings of his assembled friends, who are in the deepest affliction at the certainty of so soon losing him. Sokrates undertakes to defend himself before them as he had done before the Dikasts; and to show good grounds for his belief, that death is not a misfortune, but a benefit, to the philosopher.8 Simmias and Kebês, though at first not satisfied with the reasonings, are nevertheless reluctant to produce their doubts, from fear of mortifying him in his last moments: but Sokrates protests against such reluctance as founded on a misconception of his existing frame of mind.9 He is now the same man as he was before, and he calls upon them to keep up the freedom of debate unimpaired.

Emphasis of Sokrates in insisting on freedom of debate, active exercise of reason, and independent judgment for each reasoner.

Indeed this freedom of debate and fulness of search — the paramount value of “reasoned truth” — the necessity of keeping up the force of individual reason by constant argumentative exercise — and the right of independent judgment for hearer as well as speaker — stand emphatically proclaimed in these last words of the dying philosopher. He does not announce the immortality of the soul as a dogma of imperative orthodoxy; which men, whether satisfied with the proofs or not, must believe, or must make profession of believing, on pain of being shunned as a moral pestilence, and disqualified from giving testimony in a court of justice. He sets forth his own conviction, with the grounds on which he adopts it. But he expressly recognises the existence of dissentient opinions: he invites his companions to bring forward every objection: he disclaims all special purpose of impressing his own conclusions upon their minds: nay, he expressly warns them not to be biassed by their personal sympathies, then wound up to the highest pitch, towards himself. He entreats them to preserve themselves from becoming tinged with misology, or the hatred of free argumentative discussion: and he ascribes this mental vice to the early habit of easy, uninquiring, implicit, belief: since a man thus ready of faith, embracing opinions without any discriminative test, presently finds himself driven to abandon one opinion after another, until at last he mistrusts all opinions, and hates the process of discussing them, laying the blame upon philosophy instead of upon his own intellect.10

Anxiety of Sokrates that his friends shall be on their guard against being influenced by his authority — that they shall follow only the convictions of their own reason.

“For myself” (says Sokrates) “I fear that in these my last hours I depart from the true spirit of philosophy — like unschooled men, who, when in debate, think scarcely at all how the real question stands, but care only to make their own views triumphant in the minds of the auditors. Between them and me there is only thus much of difference. I regard it as a matter of secondary consequence, whether my conclusions appear true to my hearers; but I shall do my best to make them appear as much as possible true to myself.11 My calculation is as follows: mark how selfish it is. If my conclusion as to the immortality of the soul is true, I am better off by believing it: if I am in error, and death be the end of me, even then I shall avoid importuning my friends with grief, during these few remaining hours: moreover my error will not continue with me — which would have been a real misfortune — but will be extinguished very shortly. Such is the frame of mind, Simmias and Kebês, with which I approach the debate. Do you follow my advice: take little thought of Sokrates, but take much more thought of the truth. If I appear to you to affirm any thing truly, assent to me: but if not, oppose me with all your powers of reasoning: Be on your guard lest, through earnest zeal, I should deceive alike myself and you, and should leave the sting in you, like a bee, at this hour of departure.”

Remarkable manifestation of earnest interest for reasoned truth and the liberty of individual dissent.

This is a remarkable passage, as illustrating the spirit and purpose of Platonic dialogues. In my preceding Chapters, I have already shown, that it is no part of the aim of Sokrates to thrust dogmas of his own into other men’s minds as articles of faith. But then, most of these Chapters have dwelt upon Dialogues of Search, in which Sokrates has appeared as an interrogator, or enquirer jointly with others: scrutinising their opinions, but disclaiming knowledge or opinions of his own. Here, however, in the Phædon, the case is altogether different. Sokrates is depicted as having not only an affirmative opinion, but even strong conviction, on a subject of great moment: which conviction, moreover, he is especially desirous of preserving unimpaired, during his few remaining hours of life. Yet even here, he manifests no anxiety to get that conviction into the minds of his friends, except as a result of their own independent scrutiny and self-working reason. Not only he does not attempt to terrify them into believing, by menace of evil consequences if they do not — but he repudiates pointedly even the gentler machinery of conversion, which might work upon their minds through attachment to himself and reverence for his authority. His devotion is to “reasoned truth”: he challenges his friends to the fullest scrutiny by their own independent reason: he recognises the sentence which they pronounce afterwards as valid for them, whether concurrent with himself or adverse. Their reason is for them, what his reason is for him: requiring, both alike (as Sokrates here proclaims), to be stimulated as well as controlled by all-searching debate — but postulating equal liberty of final decision for each one of the debaters. The stress laid by Plato upon the full liberty of dissenting reason, essential to philosophical debate — is one of the most memorable characteristics of the Phædon. When we come to the treatise De Legibus (where Sokrates does not appear), we shall find a totally opposite view of sentiment. In the tenth book of that treatise Plato enforces the rigid censorship of an orthodox persecutor, who makes his own reason binding and compulsory on all.

Phædon and Symposion — points of analogy and contrast.

The natural counterpart and antithesis to the Phædon, is found in the Symposion.12 In both, the personality of Sokrates stands out with peculiar force: in the one, he is in the fulness of life and enjoyment, along with festive comrades — in the other, he is on the verge of approaching death, surrounded by companions in deep affliction. The point common to both, is, the perfect self-command of Sokrates under a diversity of trying circumstances. In the Symposion, we read of him as triumphing over heat, cold, fatigue, danger, amorous temptation, unmeasured potations of wine, &c.:13 in the Phædon, we discover him rising superior to the fear of death, and to the contagion of an afflicted company around him. Still, his resolute volition is occasionally overpowered by fits of absorbing meditation, which seize him at moments sudden and unaccountable, and chain him to the spot for a long time. There is moreover, in both dialogues, a streak of eccentricity in his character, which belongs to what Plato calls the philosophical inspiration and madness, rising above the measure of human temperance and prudence.14 The Phædon depicts in Sokrates the same intense love of philosophy and dialectic debate, as the Symposion and Phædrus: but it makes no allusion to that personal attachment, and passionate admiration of youthful beauty, with which, according to those two dialogues, the mental fermentation of the philosophical aspirant is asserted to begin.15 Sokrates in the Phædon describes the initial steps whereby he had been led to philosophical study:16 but the process is one purely intellectual, without reference to personal converse with beloved companions, as a necessity of the case. His discourse is that of a man on the point of death — “abruptis vitæ blandimentis”17 — and he already looks upon his body, not as furnishing the means of action and as requiring only to be trained by gymnastic discipline (as it appears in the Republic), but as an importunate and depraving companion, of which he is glad to get rid: so that the ethereal substance of the soul may be left to its free expansion and fellowship with the intelligible world, apart from sense and its solicitations.

Phædon — compared with Republic and Timæus. No recognition of the triple or lower souls. Antithesis between soul and body.

We have here one peculiarity of the Phædon, whereby it stands distinguished both from the Republic and the Timæus. The antithesis on which it dwells is that of the soul or mind, on one hand — the body on the other. The soul or mind is spoken of as one and indivisible: as if it were an inmate unworthily lodged or imprisoned in the body. It is not distributed into distinct parts, kinds, or varieties: no mention is made of that tripartite distribution which is so much insisted on in the Republic and Timæus:— the rational or intellectual (encephalic) soul, located in the head — the courageous or passionate (thoracic), between the neck and the diaphragm — the appetitive (abdominal), between the diaphragm and the navel. In the Phædon, the soul is noted as the seat of reason, intellect, the love of wisdom or knowledge, exclusively: all that belongs to passion and appetite, is put to account of the body:18 this is distinctly contrary to the Philêbus, in which dialogue Sokrates affirms that desire or appetite cannot belong to the body, but belongs only to the soul. In Phædon, nothing is said about the location of the rational soul, in the head, — nor about the analogy between its rotations in the cranium and the celestial rotations (a doctrine which we read both in the Timæus and in the Republic): on the contrary, the soul is affirmed to have lost, through its conjunction with the body, that wisdom or knowledge which it possessed during its state of pre-existence, while completely apart from the body, and while in commerce with those invisible Ideas to which its own separate nature was cognate.19 That controul which in the Republic is exercised by the rational soul over the passionate and appetitive souls, is in the Phædon exercised (though imperfectly) by the one and only soul over the body.20 In the Republic and Timæus, the soul is a tripartite aggregate, a community of parts, a compound: in the Phædon, Sokrates asserts it to be uncompounded, making this fact a point in his argument.21 Again, in the Phædon, the soul is pronounced to be essentially uniform and incapable of change: as such, it is placed in antithesis with the body, which is perpetually changing: while we read, on the contrary, in the Symposion, that soul and body alike are in a constant and unremitting variation, neither one nor the other ever continuing in the same condition.22

Different doctrines of Plato about the soul. Whether all the three souls are immortal, or the rational soul alone.

The difference which I have here noted shows how Plato modified his doctrine to suit the purpose of each dialogue. The tripartite soul would have been found inconvenient in the Phædon, where the argument required that soul and body should be as sharply distinguished as possible. Assuming passion and appetite to be attributes belonging to the soul, as well as reason — Sokrates will not shake them off when he becomes divorced from the body. He believes and expects that the post-existence of the soul will be, as its pre-existence has been, a rational existence — a life of intellectual contemplation and commerce with the eternal Ideas: in this there is no place for passion and appetite, which grow out of its conjunction with the body. The soul here represents Reason and Intellect, in commerce with their correlates, the objective Entia Rationis: the body represents passion and appetite as well as sense, in implication with their correlates, the objects of sensible perception.23 Such is the doctrine of the Phædon; but Plato is not always consistent with himself on the point. His ancient as well as his modern commentators are not agreed, whether, when he vindicated the immortality of the soul, he meant to speak of the rational soul only, or of the aggregate soul with its three parts as above described. There are passages which countenance both suppositions.24 Plato seems to have leaned sometimes to the one view, sometimes to the other: besides which, the view taken in the Phædon is a third, different from both — viz.: That the two non-rational souls, the passionate and appetitive, are not recognised as existing.

The life and character of a philosopher is a constant struggle to emancipate his soul from his body. Death alone enables him to do this completely.

The philosopher (contends Sokrates) ought to rejoice when death comes to sever his soul altogether from his body: because he is, throughout all his life, struggling to sever himself from the passions, appetites, impulses and aspirations, which grow out of the body; and to withdraw himself from the perceptions of the corporeal senses, which teach no truth, and lead only to deceit or confusion: He is constantly attempting to do what the body hinders him from doing completely — to prosecute pure mental contemplation, as the only way of arriving at truth: to look at essences or things in themselves, by means of his mind or soul in itself apart from the body.25 Until his mind be purified from all association with the body, it cannot be brought into contact with pure essence, nor can his aspirations for knowledge be satisfied.26 Hence his whole life is really a training or approximative practice for death, which alone will enable him to realise such aspirations.27 Knowledge or wisdom is the only money in which he computes, and which he seeks to receive in payment.28 He is not courageous or temperate in the ordinary sense: for the courageous man, while holding death to be a great evil, braves it from fear of greater evils — and the temperate man abstains from various pleasures, because they either shut him out from greater pleasures, or entail upon him disease and poverty. The philosopher is courageous and temperate, but from a different motive: his philosophy purifies him from all these sensibilities, and makes him indifferent to all the pleasures and pains arising from the body: each of which, in proportion to its intensity, corrupts his perception of truth and falsehood, and misguides him in the search for wisdom or knowledge.29 While in the body, he feels imprisoned, unable to look for knowledge except through a narrow grating and by the deceptive media of sense. From this durance philosophy partially liberates him, — purifying his mind, like the Orphic or Dionysiac religious mysteries, from the contagion of body30 and sense: disengaging it, as far as may be during life, from sympathy with the body: and translating it out of the world of sense, uncertainty, and mere opinion, into the invisible region of truth and knowledge. If such purification has been fully achieved, the mind of the philosopher is at the moment of death thoroughly severed from the body, and passes clean away by itself, into commerce with the intelligible Entities or realities.

Souls of the ordinary or unphilosophical men pass after death into the bodies of different animals. The philosopher alone is relieved from all communion with body.

On the contrary, the soul or mind of the ordinary man, which has undergone no purification and remains in close implication with the body, cannot get completely separated even at the moment of death, but remains encrusted and weighed down by bodily accompaniments, so as to be unfit for those regions to which mind itself naturally belongs. Such impure minds or souls are the ghosts or shadows which haunt tombs; and which become visible, because they cling to the visible world, and hate the invisible.31 Not being fit for separate existence, they return in process of time into conjunction with fresh bodies, of different species of men or animals, according to the particular temperament which they carry away with them.32 The souls of despots, or of violent and rapacious men, will pass into the bodies of wolves or kites: those of the gluttonous and drunkards, into asses and such-like animals. A better fate will be reserved for the just and temperate men, who have been socially and politically virtuous, but simply by habit and disposition, without any philosophy or pure intellect: for their souls will pass into the bodies of other gentle and social animals, such as bees, ants, wasps,33 &c., or perhaps they may again return into the human form, and may become moderate men. It is the privilege only of him who has undergone the purifying influence of philosophy, and who has spent his life in trying to detach himself as much as possible from communion with the body — to be relieved after death from the obligation of fresh embodiment, that his soul may dwell by itself in a region akin to its own separate nature: passing out of the world of sense, of transient phenomena, and of mere opinion, into a distinct world where it will be in full presence of the eternal Ideas, essences, and truth; in companionship with the Gods, and far away from the miseries of humanity.34

Special privilege claimed for philosophers in the Phædon apart from the virtuous men who are not philosophers.

Such is the creed which Sokrates announces to his friends in the Phædon, as supplying good reason for the readiness and satisfaction with which he welcomes death. It is upon the antithesis between soul (or mind) and body, that the main stress is laid. The partnership between the two is represented as the radical cause of mischief: and the only true relief to the soul consists in breaking up the partnership altogether, so as to attain a distinct, disembodied, existence. Conformably to this doctrine, the line is chiefly drawn between the philosopher, and the multitude who are not philosophers — not between good and bad agents, when the good agents are not philosophers. This last distinction is indeed noticed, but is kept subordinate. The unphilosophical man of social goodness is allowed to pass after death into the body of a bee, or an ant, instead of that of a kite or ass;35 but he does not attain the privilege of dissolving connection altogether with body. Moreover the distinction is one not easily traceable: since Sokrates36 expressly remarks that the large majority of mankind are middling persons, neither good nor bad in any marked degree. Philosophers stand in a category by themselves: apart from the virtuous citizens, as well as from the middling and the vicious. Their appetites and ambition are indeed deadened, so that they agree with the virtuous in abstaining from injustice: but this is not their characteristic feature. Philosophy is asserted to impart to them a special purification, like that of the Orphic mysteries to the initiated: detaching the soul from both the body and the world of sense, except in so far as is indispensable for purposes of life: replunging the soul, as much as possible, in the other world of intelligible essences, real forms or Ideas, which are its own natural kindred and antecedent companions. The process whereby this is accomplished is intellectual rather than ethical. It is the process of learning, or (in the sense of Sokrates) the revival in the mind of those essences or Ideas with which it had been familiar during its anterior and separate life: accompanied by the total abstinence from all other pleasures and temptations.37 Only by such love of learning, which is identical with philosophy (φιλόσοφον, φιλομαθὲς), is the mind rescued from the ignorance and illusions unavoidable in the world of sense.

Simmias and Kebês do not admit readily the immortality of the soul, but are unwilling to trouble Sokrates by asking for proof. Unabated interest of Sokrates in rational debate.

In thus explaining his own creed, Sokrates announces a full conviction that the soul or mind is immortal, but he has not yet offered any proof of it: and Simmias as well as Kebês declare themselves to stand in need of proof. Both of them however are reluctant to obtrude upon him any doubts. An opportunity is thus provided, that Sokrates may exhibit his undisturbed equanimity — his unimpaired argumentative readiness — his keen anxiety not to relax the grasp of a subject until he has brought it to a satisfactory close — without the least reference to his speedily approaching death. This last-mentioned anxiety is made manifest in a turn of the dialogue, remarkable both for dramatic pathos and for originality.38 We are thus brought to the more explicit statement of those reasons upon which Sokrates relies.

Simmias and Kebês believe fully in the pre-existence of the soul, but not in its post-existence. Doctrine — That the soul is a sort of harmony — refuted by Sokrates.

If the arguments whereby Sokrates proves the immortality of the soul are neither forcible nor conclusive, not fully satisfying even Simmias39 to whom they are addressed — the adverse arguments, upon the faith of which the doctrine was denied (as we know it to have been by many philosophers of antiquity), cannot be said to be produced at all. Simmias and Kebês are represented as Sokratic companions, partly Pythagoreans; desirous to find the doctrine true, yet ignorant of the proofs. Both of them are earnest believers in the pre-existence of the soul, and in the objective reality of Ideas or intelligible essences. Simmias however adopts in part the opinion, not very clearly explained, “That the soul is a harmony or mixture”: which opinion Sokrates refutes, partly by some other arguments, partly by pointing out that it is inconsistent with the supposition of the soul as pre-existent to the body, and that Simmias must make his election between the two. Simmias elects without hesitation, in favour of the pre-existence: which he affirms to be demonstrable upon premisses or assumptions perfectly worthy of trust: while the alleged harmony is at best only a probable analogy, not certified by conclusive reasons.40 Kebês again, while admitting that the soul existed before its conjunction with the present body, and that it is sufficiently durable to last through conjunction with many different bodies — still expresses his apprehension that though durable, it is not eternal. Accordingly, no man can be sure that his present body is not the last with which his soul is destined to be linked; so that immediately on his death, it will pass away into nothing. The opinion of Kebês is remarkable, inasmuch as it shows how constantly the metempsychosis, or transition of the soul from one body to another, was included in all the varieties of ancient speculation on this subject.41

Sokrates unfolds the intellectual changes or wanderings through which his mind had passed.

Before replying to Simmias and Kebês, Sokrates is described as hesitating and reflecting for a long time. He then enters into a sketch of42 his own intellectual history. How far the sketch as it stands depicts the real Sokrates, or Plato himself, or a supposed mind not exactly coincident with either — we cannot be certain: the final stage however must belong to Plato himself.

First doctrine of Sokrates as to cause. Reasons why he rejected it.

“You compel me (says Sokrates) to discuss thoroughly the cause of generation and destruction.43 I will tell you, if you like, my own successive impressions on these subjects. When young, I was amazingly eager for that kind of knowledge which people call the investigation of Nature. I thought it matter of pride to know the causes of every thing — through what every thing is either generated, or destroyed, or continues to exist. I puzzled myself much to discover first of all such matters as these — Is it a certain putrefaction of the Hot and the Cold in the system (as some say), which brings about the nourishment of animals? Is it the blood through which we think — or air, or fire? Or is it neither one nor the other, but the brain, which affords to us sensations of sight, hearing, and smell, out of which memory and opinion are generated: then, by a like process, knowledge is generated out of opinion and memory when permanently fixed?44 I tried to understand destructions as well as generations, celestial as well as terrestrial phenomena. But I accomplished nothing, and ended by fancying myself utterly unfit for the enquiry. Nay — I even lost all the knowledge of that which I had before believed myself to understand. For example — From what cause does a man grow? At first, I had looked upon this as evident — that it was through eating and drinking: flesh being thereby added to his flesh, bone to his bone, &c. So too, when a tall and a short man were standing together, it appeared to me that the former was taller than the latter by the head — that ten were more than eight because two were added to them45 — that a rod of two cubits was greater than a rod of one cubit, because it projected beyond it by a half. Now — I am satisfied that I do not know the cause of any of these matters. I cannot explain why, when one is added to one, such addition makes them two; since in their separated state each was one. In this case, it is approximation or conjunction which is said to make the two: in another case, the opposite cause, disjunction, is said also to make two — when one body is bisected.46 How two opposite causes can produce the same effect — and how either conjunction or disjunction can produce two, where there were not two before — I do not understand. In fact, I could not explain to myself, by this method of research, the generation, or destruction, or existence, of any thing; and I looked out for some other method.

Second doctrine. Hopes raised by the treatise of Anaxagoras.

“It was at this time that I heard a man reading out of a book, which he told me was the work of Anaxagoras, the affirmation that Nous (Reason, Intelligence) was the regulator and cause of all things. I felt great satisfaction in this cause; and I was convinced, that if such were the fact, Reason would ordain every thing for the best: so that if I wanted to find out the cause of any generation, or destruction, or existence, I had only to enquire in what manner it was best that such generation or destruction should take place. Thus a man was only required to know, both respecting himself and respecting other things, what was the best: which knowledge, however, implied that he must also know what was worse — the knowledge of the one and of the other going together.47 I thought I had thus found a master quite to my taste, who would tell me, first whether the earth was a disk or a sphere, and would proceed to explain the cause and the necessity why it must be so, by showing me how such arrangement was the best: next, if he said that the earth was in the centre, would proceed to show that it was best that the earth should be in the centre. Respecting the Sun, Moon, and Stars, I expected to hear the like explanation of their movements, rotations, and other phenomena: that is, how it was better that each should do and suffer exactly what the facts show. I never imagined that Anaxagoras, while affirming that they were regulated by Reason, would put upon them any other cause than this — that it was best for them to be exactly as they are. I presumed that, when giving account of the cause, both of each severally and all collectively, he would do it by setting forth what was best for each severally and for all in common. Such was my hope, and I would not have sold it for a large price.48 I took up eagerly the book of Anaxagoras, and read it as quickly as I could, that I might at once come to the knowledge of the better and worse.

Disappointment because Anaxagoras did not follow out the optimistic principle into detail. Distinction between causes efficient and causes co-efficient.

“Great indeed was my disappointment when, as I proceeded with the perusal, I discovered that the author never employed Reason at all, nor assigned any causes calculated to regulate things generally: that the causes which he indicated were, air, æther, water, and many other strange agencies. The case seemed to me the same as if any one, while announcing that Sokrates acts in all circumstances by reason, should next attempt to assign the causes of each of my proceedings severally:49 As if he affirmed, for example, that the cause why I am now sitting here is, that my body is composed of bones and ligaments — that my bones are hard, and are held apart by commissures, and my ligaments such as to contract and relax, clothing the bones along with the flesh and the skin which keeps them together — that when the bones are lifted up at their points of junction, the contraction and relaxation of the ligaments makes me able to bend my limbs — and that this is the reason why I am now seated here in my present crumpled attitude: or again — as if, concerning the fact of my present conversation with you, he were to point to other causes of a like character — varieties of speech, air, and hearing, with numerous other similar facts — omitting all the while to notice the true causes, viz.50 — That inasmuch as the Athenians have deemed it best to condemn me, for that reason I too have deemed it best and most righteous to remain sitting here and to undergo the sentence which they impose. For, by the Dog, these bones and ligaments would have been long ago carried away to Thebes or Megara, by my judgment of what is best — if I had not deemed it more righteous and honourable to stay and affront my imposed sentence, rather than to run away. It is altogether absurd to call such agencies by the name of causes. Certainly, if a man affirms that unless I possessed such joints and ligaments and other members as now belong to me, I should not be able to execute what I have determined on, he will state no more than the truth. But to say that these are the causes why I, a rational agent, do what I am now doing, instead of saying that I do it from my choice of what is best — this would be great carelessness of speech: implying that a man cannot see the distinction between that which is the cause in reality, and that without which the cause can never be a cause.51 It is this last which most men, groping as it were in the dark, call by a wrong name, as if it were itself the cause. Thus one man affirms that the earth is kept stationary in its place by the rotation of the heaven around it: another contends that the air underneath supports the earth, like a pedestal sustaining a broad kneading-trough: but none of them ever look out for a force such as this — That all these things now occupy that position which it is best that they should occupy. These enquirers set no great value upon this last-mentioned force, believing that they can find some other Atlas stronger, more everlasting, and more capable of holding all things together: they think that the Good and the Becoming have no power of binding or holding together any thing.

Sokrates could neither trace out the optimistic principle for himself, nor find any teacher thereof. He renounced it, and embraced a third doctrine about cause.

“Now, it is this sort of cause which I would gladly put myself under any one’s teaching to learn. But I could neither find any teacher, nor make any way by myself. Having failed in this quarter, I took the second best course, and struck into a new path in search of causes.52 Fatigued with studying objects through my eyes and perceptions of sense, I looked out for images or reflections of them, and turned my attention to words or discourses.53 This comparison is indeed not altogether suitable: for I do not admit that he who investigates things through general words, has recourse to images, more than he who investigates sensible facts: but such, at all events, was the turn which my mind took. Laying down such general assumption or hypothesis as I considered to be the strongest, I accepted as truth whatever squared with it, respecting cause as well as all other matters. In this way I came upon the investigation of another sort of cause.54

He now assumes the separate existence of ideas. These ideas are the causes why particular objects manifest certain attributes.

“I now assumed the separate and real existence of Ideas by themselves — The Good in itself or the Self-Good, Self-Beautiful, Great, and all such others. Look what follows next upon this assumption. If any thing else be beautiful, besides the Self-Beautiful, that other thing can only be beautiful because it partakes of the Self-Beautiful: and the same with regard to other similar Ideas. This is the only cause that I can accept: I do not understand those other ingenious causes which I hear mentioned.55 When any one tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a showy colour or figure, I pay no attention to him, but adhere simply to my own affirmation, that nothing else causes it to be beautiful, except the presence or participation of the Self-Beautiful. In what way such participation may take place, I cannot positively determine. But I feel confident in affirming that it does take place: that things which are beautiful, become so by partaking in the Self-Beautiful; things which are great or little, by partaking in Greatness or Littleness. If I am told that one man is taller than another by the head, and that this other is shorter than the first by the very same (by the head), I should not admit the proposition, but should repeat emphatically my own creed, — That whatever is greater than another is greater by nothing else except by Greatness and through Greatness — whatever is less than another is less only by Littleness and through Littleness. For I should fear to be entangled in a contradiction, if I affirmed that the greater man was greater and the lesser man less by the head — First, in saying that the greater was greater and that the lesser was less, by the very same — Next, in saying that the greater man was greater by the head, which is itself small: it being absurd to maintain that a man is great by something small.56 Again, I should not say that ten is more than eight by two, and that this was the cause of its excess;57 my doctrine is, that ten is more than eight by Multitude and through Multitude: so the rod of two cubits is greater than that of one, not by half, but by Greatness. Again, when One is placed alongside of One, — or when one is bisected — I should take care not to affirm, that in the first case the juxtaposition, in the last case the bisection, was the cause why it became two.58 I proclaim loudly that I know no other cause for its becoming two except participation in the essence of the Dyad. What is to become two, must partake of the Dyad: what is to become one, of the Monad. I leave to wiser men than me these juxtapositions and bisections and other such refinements: I remain entrenched within the safe ground of my own assumption or hypothesis (the reality of these intelligible and eternal Ideas).

Procedure of Sokrates if his hypothesis were impugned. He insists upon keeping apart the discussion of the hypothesis and the discussion of its consequences.

“Suppose however that any one impugned this hypothesis itself? I should make no reply to him until I had followed out fully the consequences of it: in order to ascertain whether they were consistent with, or contradictory to, each other. I should, when the proper time came, defend the hypothesis by itself, assuming some other hypothesis yet more universal, such as appeared to me best, until I came to some thing fully sufficient. But I would not permit myself to confound together the discussion of the hypothesis itself, and the discussion of its consequences.59 This is a method which cannot lead to truth: though it is much practised by litigious disputants, who care little about truth, and pride themselves upon their ingenuity when they throw all things into confusion.” —

Exposition of Sokrates welcomed by the hearers. Remarks upon it.

The exposition here given by Sokrates of successive intellectual tentatives (whether of Sokrates or Plato, or partly one, partly the other), and the reasoning embodied therein, is represented as welcomed with emphatic assent and approbation by all his fellow-dialogists.60 It deserves attention on many grounds. It illustrates instructively some of the speculative points of view, and speculative transitions, suggesting themselves to an inquisitive intellect of that day.

The philosophical changes in Sokrates all turned upon different views as to a true cause.

If we are to take that which precedes as a description of the philosophical changes of Plato himself, it differs materially from Aristotle: for no allusion is here made to the intercourse of Plato with Kratylus and other advocates of the doctrines of Herakleitus: which intercourse is mentioned by Aristotle61 as having greatly influenced the early speculations of Plato. Sokrates describes three different phases of his (or Plato’s) speculative point of view: all turning upon different conceptions of what constituted a true Cause. His first belief on the subject was, that which he entertained before he entered on physical and physiological investigations. It seemed natural to him that eating and drinking should be the cause why a young man grew taller: new bone and new flesh was added out of the food. So again, when a tall man appeared standing near to a short man, the former was tall by the head, or because of the head: ten were more than eight, because two were added on: the measure of two cubits was greater than that of one cubit, because it stretched beyond by one half. When one object was added on to another, the addition was the cause why they became two: when one object was bisected, this bisection was the cause why the one became two.

This was his first conception of a true Cause, which for the time thoroughly satisfied him. But when he came to investigate physiology, he could not follow out the same conception of Cause, so as to apply it to more novel and complicated problems; and he became dissatisfied with it altogether, even in regard to questions on which he had before been convinced. New difficulties suggested themselves to him. How can the two objects, which when separate were each one, be made two, by the fact that they are brought together? What alteration has happened in their nature? Then again, how can the very same fact, the change from one to two, be produced by two causes perfectly contrary to each other — in the first case, by juxtaposition — in the last case, by bisection?62

Problems and difficulties of which Sokrates first sought solution.

That which is interesting here to note, is the sort of Cause which first gave satisfaction to the speculative mind of Sokrates. In the instance of the growing youth, he notes two distinct facts, the earliest of which is (assuming certain other facts as accompanying conditions) the cause of the latest. But in most of the other instances, the fact is one which does not admit of explanation. Comparisons of eight men with ten men, of a yard with half a yard, of a tall man with a short man, are mental appreciations, beliefs, affirmations, not capable of being farther explained or accounted for: if any one disputes your affirmation, you prove it to him, by placing him in a situation to make the comparison for himself, or to go through the computation which establishes the truth of what you affirm. It is not the juxtaposition of eight men which makes them to be eight (they were so just as much when separated by ever so wide an interval): though it may dispose or enable the spectator to count them as eight. We may count the yard measure (whether actually bisected or not), either as one yard, or as two half yards, or as three feet, or thirty-six inches. Whether it be one, or two, or three, depends upon the substantive which we choose to attach to the numeral, or upon the comparison which we make (the unit which we select) on the particular occasion.

Expectations entertained by Sokrates from the treatise of Anaxagoras. His disappointment. His distinction between causes and co-efficients.

With this description of Cause Sokrates grew dissatisfied when he extended his enquiries into physical and physiological problems. Is it the blood, or air, or fire, whereby we think? and such like questions. Such enquiries — into the physical conditions of mental phenomena — did really admit of some answer, affirmative, or negative. But Sokrates does not tell us how he proceeded in seeking for an answer: he only says that he failed so completely, as even to be disabused of his supposed antecedent knowledge. He was in this perplexity when he first heard of the doctrine of Anaxagoras. “Nous or Reason is the regulator and the cause of all things.” Sokrates interpreted this to mean (what it does not appear that Anaxagoras intended to assert)63 that the Kosmos was an animal or person64 having mind or Reason analogous to his own: that this Reason was an agent invested with full power and perpetually operative, so as to regulate in the best manner all the phenomena of the Kosmos; and that the general cause to be assigned for every thing was one and the same — “It is best thus”; requiring that in each particular case you should show how it was for the best. Sokrates took the type of Reason from his own volition and movements; supposing that all the agencies in the Kosmos were stimulated or checked by cosmical Reason for her purposes, as he himself put in motion his own bodily members. This conception of Cause, borrowed from the analogy of his own rational volition, appeared to Sokrates very captivating, though it had not been his own first conception. But he found that Anaxagoras, though proclaiming the doctrine as a principium or initiatory influence, did not make applications of it in detail; but assigned as causes, in most of the particular cases, those agencies which Sokrates considered to be subordinate and instrumental, as his own muscles were to his own volition. Sokrates will not allow such agencies to be called Causes: he says that they are only co-efficients indispensable to the efficacy of the single and exclusive Cause — Reason. But he tells us himself that most enquirers considered them as Causes; and that Anaxagoras himself produced them as such. Moreover we shall see Plato himself in the Timæus, while he repeats this same distinction between Causes Efficient and Causes Co-efficient — yet treats these latter as Causes also, though inferior in regularity and precision to the Demiurgic Nous.65

Sokrates imputes to Anaxagoras the mistake of substituting physical agencies in place of mental. This is the same which Aristophanes and others imputed to Sokrates.

In truth, the complaint which Sokrates here raises against Anaxagoras — that he assigned celestial Rotation as the cause of phenomena, in place of a quasi-human Reason — is just the same as that which Aristophanes in the Clouds advances against Sokrates himself.66 The comic poet accuses Sokrates of displacing Zeus to make room for Dinos or Rotation. According to the popular religious belief, all or most of the agencies in Nature were personified, or supposed to be carried on by persons — Gods, Goddesses, Dæmons, Nymphs, &c., which army of independent agents were conceived, by some thinkers, as more or less systematised and consolidated under the central authority of the Kosmos itself. The causes of natural phenomena, especially of the grand and terrible phenomena, were supposed agents, conceived after the model of man, and assumed to be endowed with volition, force, affections, antipathies, &c.: some of them visible, such as Helios, Selênê, the Stars; others generally invisible, though showing themselves whenever it specially pleased them.67 Sokrates, as we see by the Platonic Apology, was believed by his countrymen to deny these animated agencies, and to substitute instead of them inanimate forces, not put in motion by the quasi-human attributes of reason, feeling and volition. The Sokrates in the Platonic Phædon, taken at this second stage of his speculative wanderings, not only disclaims such a doctrine, but protests against it. He recognises no cause except a Nous or Reason borrowed by analogy from that of which he was conscious within himself, choosing what was best for himself in every special situation.68 He tells us however that most of the contemporary philosophers dissented from this point of view. To them, such inanimate agencies were the sole and real causes, in one or other of which they found what they thought a satisfactory explanation.

The supposed theory of Anaxagoras cannot be carried out, either by Sokrates himself or any one else. Sokrates turns to general words, and adopts the theory of ideas.

It is however singular, that Sokrates, after he has extolled Anaxagoras for enunciating a grand general cause, and has blamed him only for not making application of it in detail, proceeds to state that neither he himself, nor any one else within his knowledge, could find the way of applying it, any more than Anaxagoras had done. If Anaxagoras had failed, no one else could do better. The facts before Sokrates could not be reconciled, by any way that he could devise, with his assumed principle of rational directing force, or constant optimistic purpose, inherent in the Kosmos. Accordingly he abandoned this track, and entered upon another: seeking a different sort of cause (τῆς αἰτίας τὸ εἶδος), not by contemplation of things, but by propositions and ratiocinative discourse. He now assumed as a principle an universal axiom or proposition, from which he proceeds to deduce consequences. The principle thus laid down is, That there exist substantial Ideas — universal Entia. Each of these Ideas communicates or imparts its own nature to the particulars which bear the same name: and such communion or participation is the cause why they are what they are. The cause why various objects are beautiful or great, is, because they partake of the Self-Beautiful or the Self-Great: the cause why they are two or three is, because they partake of the Dyad or the Triad.

Vague and dissentient meanings attached to the word Cause. That is a cause, to each man, which gives satisfaction to his inquisitive feelings.

Here then we have a third stage or variety of belief, in the speculative mind of Sokrates, respecting Causes. The self-existent Ideas (”propria Platonis supellex,” to use the words of Seneca69) are postulated as Causes: and in this belief Sokrates at last finds satisfaction. But these Causative Ideas, or Ideal Causes, though satisfactory to Plato, were accepted by scarcely any one else. They were transformed — seemingly even by Plato himself before his death, into Ideal Numbers, products of the One implicated with Great and Little or the undefined Dyad — and still farther transformed by his successors Speusippus and Xenokrates: they were impugned in every way, and emphatically rejected, by Aristotle.

The foregoing picture given by Sokrates of the wanderings of his mind (τὰς ἐμὰς πλάνας) in search of Causes, is interesting, not only in reference to the Platonic age, but also to the process of speculation generally. Almost every one talks of a Cause as a word of the clearest meaning, familiar and understood by all hearers. There are many who represent the Idea of Cause as simple, intuitive, self-originated, universal; one and the same in all minds. These philosophers consider the maxim that every phenomenon must have a Cause — as self-evident, known à priori apart from experience: as something which no one can help believing as soon as it is stated to him.70 The gropings of Sokrates are among the numerous facts which go to refute such a theory: or at least to show in what sense alone it can be partially admitted. There is no fixed, positive, universal Idea, corresponding to the word Cause. There is a wide divergence, as to the question what a Cause really is, between different ages of the same man (exemplified in the case of Sokrates): much more between different philosophers at one time and another. Plato complains of Anaxagoras and other philosophers for assigning as Causes that which did not truly deserve the name: Aristotle also blames the defective conceptions of his predecessors (Plato included) on the same subject. If there be an intuitive idea corresponding to the word Cause, it must be a different intuition in Plato and Aristotle — in Plato himself at one age and at another age: in other philosophers, different from both and from each other. The word is equivocal — πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον, in Aristotelian phrase — men use it familiarly, but vary much in the thing signified. That is a Cause, to each man, which gives satisfaction to the inquisitive feelings — curiosity, anxious perplexity, speculative embarrassment of his own mind. Now doubtless these inquisitive feelings are natural and widespread: they are emotions of our nature, which men seek (in some cases) to appease by some satisfactory hypothesis. That answer which affords satisfaction, looked at in one of its aspects, is called Cause; Beginning or Principle — Element — represent other aspects of the same Quæsitum:—

“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile Fatum Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari,”

is the exclamation of that sentiment of wonder and uneasiness out of which, according to Plato and Aristotle, philosophy springs.71 But though the appetite or craving is common, in greater or less degree, to most persons — the nourishment calculated to allay it is by no means the same to all. Good (says Aristotle) is that which all men desire:72 but all men do not agree in their judgment, what Good is. The point of communion between mankind is here emotional rather than intellectual: in the painful feeling of difficulty to be solved, not in the manner of conceiving what the difficulty is, nor in the direction where solution is to be sought, nor in the solution itself when suggested.73

Dissension and perplexity on the question. — What is a cause? revealed by the picture of Sokrates — no intuition to guide him.

When Sokrates here tells us that as a young man he felt anxious curiosity to know what the cause of every phenomenon was, it is plain that at this time he did not know what he was looking for: that he proceeded only by successive steps of trial, doubt, discovered error, rejection: and that each trial was adapted to the then existing state of his own mind. The views of Anaxagoras he affirms to have presented themselves to him as a new revelation: he then came to believe that the only true Cause was, a cosmical reason and volition like to that of which he was conscious in himself. Yet he farther tells us, that others did not admit this Cause, but found other causes to satisfy them: that even Anaxagoras did not follow out his own general conception, but recognised Causes quite unconnected with it: lastly, that neither could he (Sokrates) trace out the conception for himself.74 He was driven to renounce it, and to turn to another sort of Cause — the hypothesis of self-existent Ideas, in which he then acquiesced. And this last hypothesis, again, was ultimately much modified in the mind of Plato himself, as we know from Aristotle. All this shows that the Idea of Cause — far from being one and the same to all, like the feeling of uneasiness which prompts the search for it — is complicated, diverse, relative, and modifiable.

Different notions of Plato and Aristotle about causation, causes regular and irregular. Inductive theory of causation, elaborated in modern times.

The last among the various revolutions which Sokrates represents himself to have undergone — the transition from designing and volitional agency of the Kosmos conceived as an animated system, to the sovereignty of universal Ideas — is analogous to that transition which Auguste Comte considers to be the natural progress of the human mind: to explain phenomena at first by reference to some personal agency, and to pass from this mode of explanation to that by metaphysical abstractions. It is true that these are two distinct modes of conceiving Causation; and that in each of them the human mind, under different states of social and individual instruction, finds satisfaction. But each of the two theories admits of much diversity in the mode of conception. Plato seems to have first given prominence to these metaphysical causes; and Aristotle in this respect follows his example: though he greatly censures the incomplete and erroneous theories of Plato. It is remarkable that both these two philosophers recognised Causes irregular and unpredictable, as well as Causes regular and predictable. Neither of them included even the idea of regularity, as an essential part of the meaning of Cause.75 Lastly, there has been elaborated in modern times, owing to the great extension of inductive science, another theory of Causation, in which unconditional regularity is the essential constituent: recognising no true Causes except the phenomenal causes certified by experience, as interpreted inductively and deductively — the assemblage of phenomenal antecedents, uniform and unconditional, so far as they can be discovered and verified. Certain it is that these are the only causes obtainable by induction and experience: though many persons are not satisfied without looking elsewhere for transcendental or ontological causes of a totally different nature. All these theories imply — what Sokrates announces in the passage just cited — the deep-seated influence of speculative curiosity, or the thirst for finding the Why of things and events, as a feeling of the human mind: but all of them indicate the discrepant answers with which, in different enquirers, this feeling is satisfied, though under the same equivocal name Cause. And it would have been a proceeding worthy of Plato’s dialectic, if he had applied to the word Cause the same cross-examining analysis which we have seen him applying to the equally familiar words — Virtue — Courage — Temperance — Friendship, &c. “First, let us settle what a Cause really is: then, and not till then, can we succeed in ulterior enquiries respecting it.”76

Last transition of the mind of Sokrates from things to words — to the adoption of the theory of ideas. Great multitude of ideas assumed, each fitting a certain number of particulars.

There is yet another point which deserves attention in this history given by Sokrates of the transitions of his own mind. His last transition is represented as one from things to words, that is, to general propositions:77 to the assumption in each case of an universal proposition or hypothesis calculated to fit that case. He does not seem to consider the optimistic doctrine, which he had before vainly endeavoured to follow out, as having been an hypothesis, or universal proposition assumed as true and as a principle from which to deduce consequences. Even if it were so, however, it was one and the same assumption intended to suit all cases: whereas the new doctrine to which he passed included many distinct assumptions, each adapted to a certain number of cases and not to the rest.78 He assumed an untold multitude of self-existent Ideas — The Self-Beautiful, Self-Just, Self-Great, Self-Equal, Self-Unequal, &c. — each of them adapted to a certain number of particular cases: the Self-Beautiful was assumed as the cause why all particular things were beautiful — as that, of which all and each of them partakes — and so of the rest.79 Plato then explains his procedure. He first deduced various consequences from this assumed hypothesis, and examined whether all of them were consistent or inconsistent with each other. If he detected inconsistencies (as e.g. in the last half of the Parmenidês), we must suppose (though Plato does not expressly say so) that he would reject or modify his fundamental assumption: if he found none, he would retain it. The point would have to be tried by dialectic debate with an opponent: the logical process of inference and counter-inference is here assumed to be trustworthy. But during this debate Plato would require his opponent to admit the truth of the fundamental hypothesis provisionally. If the opponent chose to impugn the latter, he must open a distinct debate on that express subject. Plato insists that the discussion of the consequences flowing from the hypothesis, shall be kept quite apart from the discussion on the credibility of the hypothesis itself. From the language employed, he seems to have had in view certain disputants known to him, by whom the two were so blended together as to produce much confusion in the reasoning.

Ultimate appeal to hypothesis of extreme generality.

But if your opponent impugns the hypothesis itself, how are you to defend it? Plato here tells us: by means of some other hypothesis or assumption, yet more universal than itself. You must ascend upwards in the scale of generality, until you find an assumption suitable and sufficient.80

We here see where it was that Plato looked for full, indisputable, self-recommending and self-assuring, certainty and truth. Among the most universal propositions. He states the matter here as if we were to provide defence for an hypothesis less universal by ascending to another hypothesis more universal. This is illustrated by what he says in the Timæus — Propositions are cognate with the matter which they affirm: those whose affirmation is purely intellectual, comprising only matter of the intelligible world, or of genuine Essence, are solid and inexpugnable: those which take in more or less of the sensible world, which is a mere copy of the intelligible exemplar, become less and less trustworthy — mere probabilities. Here we have the Platonic worship of the most universal propositions, as the only primary and evident truths.81 But in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, he delivers a precept somewhat different, requiring the philosopher not to rest in any hypothesis as an ultimatum, but to consider them all as stepping-stones for enabling him to ascend into a higher region, above all hypothesis — to the first principle of every thing: and he considers geometrical reasoning as defective because it takes its departure from hypothesis or assumptions of which no account is rendered.82 In the Republic he thus contemplates an intuition by the mind of some primary, clear, self-evident truth, above all hypotheses or assumptions even the most universal, and transmitting its own certainty to every thing which could be logically deduced from it: while in the Phædon, he does not recognise any thing higher or more certain than the most universal hypothesis — and he even presents the theory of self-existent Ideas as nothing more than an hypothesis, though a very satisfactory one. In the Republic, Plato has come to imagine the Idea of Good as distinguished from and illuminating all the other Ideas: in the Timæus, it seems personified in the Demiurgus; in the Phædon, that Idea of Good appears to be represented by the Nous or Reason of Anaxagoras. But Sokrates is unable to follow it out, so that it becomes included, without any pre-eminence, among the Ideas generally: all of them transcendental, co-ordinate, and primary sources of truth to the intelligent mind — yet each of them exercising a causative influence in its own department, and bestowing its own special character on various particulars.

Plato’s demonstration of the immortality of the soul rests upon the assumption of the Platonic ideas. Reasoning to prove this.

It is from the assumption of these Ideas as eternal Essences, that Plato undertakes to demonstrate the immortality of the soul. One Idea or Form will not admit, but peremptorily excludes, the approach of that other Form which is opposite to it. Greatness will not receive the form of littleness: nor will the greatness which is in any particular subject receive the form of littleness. If the form of littleness be brought to bear, greatness will not stay to receive it, but will either retire or be destroyed. The same is true likewise respecting that which essentially has the form: thus fire has essentially the form of heat, and snow has essentially the form of cold. Accordingly fire, as it will not receive the form of cold, so neither will it receive snow: and snow, as it will not receive the form of heat, so neither will it receive fire. If fire comes, snow will either retire or will be destroyed. The Triad has always the Form of Oddness, and will never receive that of Evenness: the Dyad has always the Form of Evenness, and will never receive that of Oddness — upon the approach of this latter it will either disappear or will be destroyed: moreover the Dyad, while refusing to receive the Form of Oddness, will refuse also to receive that of the Triad, which always embodies that Form — although three is not in direct contrariety with two. If then we are asked, What is that, the presence of which makes a body hot? we need not confine ourselves to the answer — It is the Form of Heat — which, though correct, gives no new information: but we may farther say — It is Fire, which involves the Form of Heat. If we are asked, What is that, the presence of which makes a number odd, we shall not say — It is Oddness: but we shall say — It is the Triad or the Pentad — both of which involve Oddness.

The soul always brings life, and is essentially living. It cannot receive death: in other words, it is immortal.

In like manner, the question being asked, What is that, which, being in the body, will give it life? we must answer — It is the soul. The soul, when it lays hold of any body, always arrives bringing with it life. Now death is the contrary of life. Accordingly the soul, which always brings with it life, will never receive the contrary of life. In other words, it is deathless or immortal.83

The proof of immortality includes pre-existence as well as post-existence — animals as well as man — also the metempsychosis or translation of the soul from one body to another.

Such is the ground upon which Sokrates rests his belief in the immortality of the soul. The doctrine reposes, in Plato’s view, upon the assumption of eternal, self-existent, unchangeable, Ideas or Forms:84 upon the congeniality of nature, and inherent correlation, between these Ideas and the Soul: upon the fact, that the soul knows these Ideas, which knowledge must have been acquired in a prior state of existence: and upon the essential participation of the soul in the Idea of life, so that it cannot be conceived as without life, or as dead.85 The immortality of the soul is conceived as necessary and entire, including not merely post-existence, but also pre-existence. In fact the reference to an anterior time is more essential to Plato’s theory than that to a posterior time; because it is employed to explain the cognitions of the mind, and the identity of learning with reminiscence: while Simmias, who even at the close is not without reserve on the subject of the post-existence, proclaims an emphatic adhesion on that of the pre-existence.86 The proof, moreover, being founded in great part on the Idea of Life, embraces every thing living, and is common to animals87 (if not to plants) as well as to men: and the metempsychosis — or transition of souls not merely from one human body to another, but also from the human to the animal body, and vice versâ — is a portion of the Platonic creed.

After finishing his proof that the soul is immortal, Sokrates enters into a description, what will become of it after the death of the body. He describes a Νεκυία.

Having completed his demonstration of the immortality of the soul, Sokrates proceeds to give a sketch of the condition and treatment which it experiences after death. The Νεκυία here following is analogous, in general doctrinal scope, to those others which we read in the Republic and in the Gorgias: but all of them are different in particular incidents, illustrative circumstances, and scenery. The sentiment of belief in Plato’s mind attaches itself to general doctrines, which appear to him to possess an evidence independent of particulars. When he applies these doctrines to particulars, he makes little distinction between such as are true, or problematical, or fictitious: he varies his mythes at pleasure, provided that they serve the purpose of illustrating his general view. The mythe which we read in the Phædon includes a description of the Earth which to us appears altogether imaginative and poetical: yet it is hardly more so than several other current theories, proposed by various philosophers antecedent and contemporary, respecting Earth and Sea. Aristotle criticises the views expressed in the Phædon, as he criticises those of Demokritus and Empedokles.88 Each soul of a deceased person is conducted by his Genius to the proper place, and there receives sentence of condemnation to suffering, greater or less according to his conduct in life, in the deep chasm called Tartarus, and in the rivers of mud and fire, Styx, Kokytus, Pyriphlegethon.89 To those who have passed their lives in learning, and who have detached themselves as much as they possibly could from all pleasures and all pursuits connected with the body — in order to pursue wisdom and virtue — a full reward is given. They are emancipated from the obligation of entering another body, and are allowed to live ever afterwards disembodied in the pure regions of Ideas.90

Sokrates expects that his soul is going to the islands of the blest. Reply to Kriton about burying his body.

Such, or something like it, Sokrates confidently expects will be the fate awaiting himself.91 When asked by Kriton, among other questions, how he desired to be buried, he replies with a smile — “You may bury me as you choose, if you can only catch me. But you will not understand me when I tell you, that I, Sokrates, who am now speaking, shall not remain with you after having drunk the poison, but shall depart to some of the enjoyments of the blest. You must not talk about burying or burning Sokrates, as if I were suffering some terrible operation. Such language is inauspicious and depressing to our minds. Keep up your courage, and talk only of burying the body of Sokrates: conduct the burial as you think best and most decent.”92

Preparations for administering the hemlock. Sympathy of the gaoler. Equanimity of Sokrates.

Sokrates then retires with Kriton into an interior chamber to bathe, desiring that the women may be spared the task of washing his body after his decease. Having taken final leave of his wife and children, he returns to his friends as sunset is approaching. We are here made to see the contrast between him and other prisoners under like circumstances. The attendant of the Eleven Magistrates comes to warn him that the hour has come for swallowing the poison; expressing sympathy and regret for the necessity of delivering so painful a message, together with admiration for the equanimity and rational judgment of Sokrates, which he contrasts forcibly with the discontent and wrath of other prisoners under similar circumstances. As he turned away with tears in his eyes, Sokrates exclaimed — “How courteous the man is to me and has been from the beginning! how generously he now weeps for me! Let us obey him, and let the poison be brought forthwith, if it be prepared: if not, let him prepare it.” “Do not hurry” (interposed Kriton): “there is still time, for the sun is not quite set. I have known others who, even after receiving the order, deferred drinking the poison until they had had a good supper and other enjoyments.” “It is natural that they should do so” (replied Sokrates). “They think that they are gainers by it: for me, it is natural that I should not do so — for I shall gain nothing but contempt in my own eyes, by thus clinging to life, and saving up when there is nothing left.”93

Sokrates swallows the poison. Conversation with the gaoler.

Kriton accordingly gave orders, and the poison, after a certain interval, was brought in. Sokrates, on asking for directions, was informed, that after having swallowed it, he must walk about until his legs felt heavy: he must then lie down and cover himself up: the poison would do its work. He took the cup without any symptom of alarm or change of countenance: then looking at the attendant with his usual full and fixed gaze, he asked whether there was enough to allow of a libation. “We prepare as much as is sufficient” (was the answer), “but no more.” “I understand” (said Sokrates): “but at least I may pray, and I must pray, to the Gods, that my change of abode from here to there may be fortunate.” He then put the cup to his lips, and drank it off with perfect ease and tranquillity.94

Ungovernable sorrow of the friends present. Self-command of Sokrates. Last words to Kriton, and death.

His friends, who had hitherto maintained their self-control, were overpowered by emotion on seeing the cup swallowed, and broke out into violent tears and lamentation. No one was unmoved, except Sokrates himself: who gently remonstrated with them, and exhorted them to tranquil resignation: reminding them that nothing but good words was admissible at the hour of death. The friends, ashamed of themselves, found means to repress their tears. Sokrates walked about until he felt heavy in the legs, and then lay down in bed. After some interval, the attendant of the prison came to examine his feet and legs, pinched his foot with force, and enquired whether he felt it. Sokrates replied in the negative. Presently the man pinched his legs with similar result, and showed to the friends in that way that his body was gradually becoming chill and benumbed: adding that as soon as this should get to the heart, he would die.95 The chill had already reached his belly, when Sokrates uncovered his face, which had been hitherto concealed by the bed-clothes, and spoke his last words:96 “Kriton, we owe a cock to Æsculapius: pay the debt without fail.” “It shall be done“ (answered Kriton); “have you any other injunctions?” Sokrates made no reply, but again covered himself up.97 After a short interval, he made some movement: the attendant presently uncovered him, and found him dead, with his eyes stiff and fixed. Kriton performed the last duty of closing both his eyes and his mouth.

Extreme pathos, and probable trustworthiness of these personal details.

The pathetic details of this scene — arranged with so much dramatic beauty, and lending imperishable interest to the Phædon of Plato — may be regarded as real facts, described from the recollection of an eye-witness, though many years after their occurrence. They present to us the personality of Sokrates in full harmony with that which we read in the Platonic Apology. The tranquil ascendancy of resolute and rational conviction, satisfied with the past, and welcoming instead of fearing the close of life — is exhibited as triumphing in the one case over adverse accusers and judges, in the other case over the unnerving manifestations of afflicted friends.

Contrast between the Platonic Apology and the Phædon.

But though the personal incidents of this dialogue are truly Sokratic — the dogmatic emphasis, and the apparatus of argument and hypothesis, are essentially Platonic. In these respects, the dialogue contrasts remarkably with the Apology. When addressing the Dikasts, Sokrates not only makes no profession of dogmatic certainty, but expressly disclaims it. Nay more — he considers that the false persuasion of such dogmatic certainty, universally prevalent among his countrymen, is as pernicious as it is illusory: and that his own superiority over others consists merely in consciousness of his own ignorance, while they are unconscious of theirs.98 To dissipate such false persuasion of knowledge, by perpetual cross-examination of every one around, is the special mission imposed upon him by the Gods: in which mission, indeed, he has the firmest belief — but it is a belief, like that in his Dæmon or divine sign, depending upon oracles, dreams, and other revelations peculiar to himself, which he does not expect that the Dikasts will admit as genuine evidence.99 One peculiar example, whereby Sokrates exemplifies the false persuasion of knowledge where men have no real knowledge, is borrowed from the fear of death. No man knows (he says) what death is, not even whether it may not be a signal benefit: yet every man fears it as if he well knew that it was the greatest evil.100 Death must be one of two things: either a final extinction — a perpetual and dreamless sleep — or else a transference of the soul to some other place. Sokrates is persuaded that it will be in either case a benefit to him, and that the Gods will take care that he, a good man, shall suffer no evil, either living or dead: the proof of which is, to him, that the divine sign has never interposed any obstruction in regard to his trial and sentence. If (says he) I am transferred to some other abode, among those who have died before me, how delightful will it be to see Homer and Hesiod, Orpheus and Musæus, Agamemnon, Ajax or Palamêdes — and to pass my time in cross-examining each as to his true or false knowledge!101 Lastly, so far as he professes to aim at any positive end, it is the diffusion of political, social, human virtue, as distinguished from acquisitions above the measure of humanity. He tells men that it is not wealth which produces virtue, but virtue which produces wealth and other advantages, both public and private.102

Abundant dogmatic and poetical invention of the Phædon compared with the profession of ignorance which we read in the Apology.

If from the Apology we turn to the Phædon, we seem to pass, not merely to the same speaker after the interval of one month (the ostensible interval indicated) but to a different speaker and over a long period. We have Plato speaking through the mouth of Sokrates, and Plato too at a much later time.103 Though the moral character (ἦθος) of Sokrates is fully maintained and even strikingly dramatised — the intellectual personality is altogether transformed. Instead of a speaker who avows his own ignorance, and blames others only for believing themselves to know when they are equally ignorant — we have one who indulges in the widest range of theory and the boldest employment of hypothesis. Plato introduces his own dogmatical and mystical views, leaning in part on the Orphic and Pythagorean creeds.104 He declares the distinctness of nature, the incompatibility, the forced temporary union and active conflict, between the soul and the body. He includes this in the still wider and more general declaration, which recognises antithesis between the two worlds: the world of Ideas, Forms, Essences, not perceivable but only cogitable, eternal, and unchangeable, with which the soul or mind was in kindred and communion — the world of sense, or of transient and ever-changing appearances or phenomena, never arriving at permanent existence, but always coming and going, with which the body was in commerce and harmony. The philosopher, who thirsts only after knowledge and desires to look at things105 as they are in themselves, with his mind by itself — is represented as desiring, throughout all his life, to loosen as much as possible the implication of his soul with his body, and as rejoicing when the hour of death arrives to divorce them altogether.

Total renunciation and discredit of the body in the Phædon. Different feeling about the body in other Platonic dialogues.

Such total renunciation of the body is put, with dramatic propriety, into the mouth of Sokrates during the last hour of his life. But it would not have been in harmony with the character of Sokrates as other Platonic dialogues present him — in the plenitude of life — manifesting distinguished bodily strength and soldierly efficiency, proclaiming gymnastic training for the body to be co-ordinate with musical training for the mind, and impressed with the most intense admiration for the personal beauty of youth. The human body, which in the Phædon is discredited as a morbid incumbrance corrupting the purity of the soul, is presented to us by Sokrates in the Phædrus as the only sensible object which serves as a mirror and reflection of the beauty of the ideal world:106 while the Platonic Timæus proclaims (in language not unsuitable to Locke) that sight, hearing, and speech are the sources of our abstract Ideas, and the generating causes of speculative intellect and philosophy.107 Of these, and of the world of sense generally, an opposite view was appropriate in the Phædon; where the purpose of Sokrates is to console his distressed friends by showing that death was no misfortune, but relief from a burthen. And Plato has availed himself of this impressive situation,108 to recommend, with every charm of poetical expression, various characteristic dogmas respecting the essential distinction between Ideas and the intelligible world on one side — Perceptions and the sensible world on the other: respecting the soul, its nature akin to the intelligible world, its pre-existence anterior to its present body, and its continued existence after the death of the latter: respecting the condition of the soul before birth and after death, its transition, in the case of most men, into other bodies, either human or animal, with the condition of suffering penalties commensurate to the wrongs committed in this life: finally, respecting the privilege accorded to the souls of such as have passed their lives in intellectual and philosophical occupation, that they shall after death remain for ever disembodied, in direct communion with the world of Ideas.

Plato’s argument does not prove the immortality of the soul. Even if it did prove that, yet the mode of pre-existence and the mode of post-existence, of the soul, would be quite undetermined.

The main part of Plato’s argumentation, drawn from the general assumptions of his philosophy, is directed to prove the separate and perpetual existence of the soul, before as well as after the body. These arguments, interesting as specimens of the reasoning which satisfied Plato, do not prove his conclusion.109 But even if that conclusion were admitted to be proved, the condition of the soul, during such anterior and posterior existence, would be altogether undetermined, and would be left to the free play of sentiment and imagination. There is no subject upon which the poetical genius of Plato has been more abundantly exercised.110 He has given us two different descriptions of the state of the soul before its junction with the body (Timæus, and Phædrus), and three different descriptions of its destiny after separation from the body (Republic, Gorgias, Phædon). In all the three, he supposes an adjudication and classification of the departed souls, and a better or worse fate allotted to each according to the estimate which he forms of their merits or demerits during life: but in each of the three, this general idea is carried out by a different machinery. The Hades of Plato is not announced even by himself as anything more than approximation to the truth: but it embodies his own ethical and judicial sentence on the classes of men around him — as the Divina Commedia embodies that of Dante on antecedent individual persons. Plato distributes rewards and penalties in the measure which he conceives to be deserved: he erects his own approbation and disapprobation, his own sympathy and antipathy, into laws of the unknown future state: the Gods, whom he postulates, are imaginary agents introduced to execute the sentences which he dictates. While others, in their conceptions of posthumous existence, assured the happiest fate, sometimes even divinity itself, to great warriors and law-givers — to devoted friends and patriots like Harmodius and Aristogeiton — to the exquisite beauty of Helen — or to favourites of the Gods like Ganymêdes or Pelops111 — Plato claims that supreme distinction for the departed philosopher.

The philosopher will enjoy an existence of pure soul unattached to any body.

The Philosopher, as a recompense for having detached himself during life as much as possible from the body and all its functions, will be admitted after death to existence as a soul pure and simple, unattached to any body. The souls of all other persons, dying with more or less of the taint of the body attached to each of them,112 and for that reason haunting the tombs in which the bodies are buried, so as to become visible there as ghosts — are made subject, in the Platonic Hades, to penalty and purification suitable to the respective condition of each; after which they become attached to new bodies, sometimes of men, sometimes of other animals. Of this distributive scheme it is not possible to frame any clear idea, nor is Plato consistent with himself except in a few material features. But one feature there is in it which stands conspicuous — the belief in the metempsychosis, or transfer of the same soul from one animal body to another: a belief very widely diffused throughout the ancient world, associated with the immortality of the soul, pervading the Orphic and Pythagorean creeds, and having its root in the Egyptian and Oriental religions.113

Plato’s demonstration of the immortality of the soul did not appear satisfactory to subsequent philosophers. The question remained debated and problematical.

We are told that one vehement admirer of Plato — the Ambrakiot Kleombrotus — was so profoundly affected and convinced by reading the Phædon, that he immediately terminated his existence by leaping from a high wall; though in other respects well satisfied with life. But the number of persons who derived from it such settled conviction, was certainly not considerable. Neither the doctrine nor the reasonings of Plato were adopted even by the immediate successors in his school: still less by Aristotle and the Peripatetics — or by the Stoics — or by the Epikureans. The Epikureans denied altogether the survivorship of soul over body: Aristotle gives a definition of the soul which involves this same negation, though he admits as credible the separate existence of the rational soul, without individuality or personality. The Stoics, while affirming the soul to be material as well as the body, considered it as a detached fragment of the all-pervading cosmical or mundane soul, which was re-absorbed after the death of the individual into the great whole to which it belonged. None of these philosophers were persuaded by the arguments of Plato. The popular orthodoxy, which he often censures harshly, recognised some sort of posthumous existence as a part of its creed; and the uninquiring multitude continued in the teaching and traditions of their youth. But literary and philosophical men, who sought to form some opinion for themselves without altogether rejecting (as the Epikureans rejected) the basis of the current traditions — were in no better condition for deciding the question with the assistance of Plato, than they would have been without him. While the knowledge of the bodily organism, and of mind or soul as embodied therein, received important additions, from Aristotle down to Galen — no new facts either were known or could become known, respecting soul per se, considered as pre-existent or post-existent to body. Galen expressly records his dissatisfaction with Plato on this point, though generally among his warmest admirers. Questions of this kind remained always problematical, standing themes for rhetoric or dialectic.114 Every man could do, though not with the same exuberant eloquence, what Plato had done — and no man could do more. Every man could coin his own hopes and fears, his own æsthetical preferences and repugnances, his own ethical aspiration to distribute rewards and punishments among the characters around him — into affirmative prophecies respecting an unknowable future, where neither verification nor Elenchus were accessible. The state of this discussion throughout the Pagan world bears out the following remark of Lord Macaulay, with which I conclude the present chapter:—

“There are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress.… But with theology, the case is very different. As respects natural religion — revelation being for the present altogether left out of the question — it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is more favourably situated than Thales or Simonides.… As to the other great question — the question, what becomes of man after death — we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man — from Plato down to Franklin — appear to us to have failed deplorably. Then again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just emerging from barbarism, is quite sufficient to propound them. The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them.… Natural Theology, then, is not a progressive science.”115

END OF VOL. II.

Transcriber’s Note