goodness of the Creator; (3) from the fact that it is the very principle of life, and a transition from being into nonbeing is impossible. The immortality of the intelligent soul is also proved by the philosopher's desire to be freed from the body and its fetters, and to come into direct communion with the intelligible world; by the fact that life invariably and universally produces death, and death, a new life; by the pre-existence of the soul, which is demonstrated by the doctrine of ȧváμvnois (if the soul has existed before the body, why should it not exist after its decomposition?); by the relation existing between the soul and the Ideas (it conceives the intelligible, and must therefore be homogeneous with it and akin to it, that is, immortal, like its object); and finally, by the fact that it controls the body, which would be inconceivable if, as some Pythagoreans claim, it were but the resultant of the bodily functions. Immortality, however, is the prerogative of reason. The OvμηTIKóv cannot lay claim to it, and the will itself, in so far as it is bound to the organism, has no part in it.1 In so far as the problem of the soul borders upon physics, it cannot be solved with absolute certainty. There is no science of passing things. The only certain science is the science of Ideas; for Ideas alone are eternal and necessary. In the domain of physics we must content ourselves with probabilities; science (eπioτýμn) being impossible here, we are reduced to faith (OTS).2 3. THE HIGHEST GOOD Man is the end of nature, and the Idea the end of man. As a consistent idealist, Plato, like Antisthenes and the Cynics, finds the highest good, not in pleasure, but in man's most perfect likeness to God. Now, since God is 1 Phado, 61-107. 2 Timæus, 51, 52. the Good or absolute Justice, we can resemble him only in justice (dikaloσúvn). It is impossible, says Socrates-Plato,1 that evils should pass away (for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good). Having no place among the gods in heaven (èv Oeoîs), of necessity they hover around the mortal nature and this earthly sphere (τόνδε τὸν τόπον περιπολεῖ ἐξ ἀνάγκης). Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can (χρὴ ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν ὅτι τάχιστα), and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible (pvyǹ dè ὁμοίωσις τῷ θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν). Now God is never in any way unrighteous; he is perfect righteousness; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him.2 Justice. is the fundamental virtue, the mother of the virtues belonging to each of the three souls. For the intelligence it consists in the correctness of thought (σοφία, φιλοσοφία); for the will, in courage (avdpía); for the sensibility, in temperance (owopooúvn). Wisdom is the justice of the mind; courage, the justice of the heart; temperance, the justice of the senses. Piety (oolóτns) is justice in our relation with the Deity; it is synonymous with justice in general. Man must be educated in order to attain justice and through it to become like God. He can never realize this virtue in isolation. Justice, or the final goal of things, is realized only in the collective man or in the State (Tóns). Plato's ideal State, like the individual, embraces three parts or separate classes: (1) the philosophers, who constitute the legislative and executive power, the intelligence and the head of the State, or the ruling class; (2) the warriors, who are the heart of the State, or the militant class; (3) the merchants, artisans, agriculturists, and slaves, or the servant class, who correspond to the sensual soul, which is restricted to the lower parts of the human body. Wisdom belongs to the ruling class; courage to 1 Theatetus, 176. 2 Republic, X., 613. the military class; obedience to the two higher classes, who think and fight for them, belongs to the laboring, commercial, and serving classes. In order that the collective man or the State may form a real unity or an individual on the large scale, particular interests must be merged in the general interest, the family must be absorbed in the State, the individual must cease to be a proprietor. Henceforth the children belong to the State only, which forms one large family. The State is the father of the children; the State also educates them. Up to the age of three, the education of the child consists solely in caring for the body. From three to six, its moral education is anticipated by the narration of myths. From seven to ten, gymnastics. From eleven to thirteen, reading and writing. From fourteen to sixteen, poetry and music. From sixteen to eighteen, mathematics. From eighteen to twenty, military exercises. When the twentieth year is reached, the State makes its first selection among the young, people, choosing such as are fitted for the military career, and such as are qualified for the government. The latter make a thorough study of the different sciences until they are thirty years old. At the age of thirty, a second selection is made. The least distinguished enter upon the secondary positions of the administration; the others continue the study of dialectics for a number of years, and crown their education with ethics. After they have been introduced to the knowledge of the highest Good, they are capable of assuming the most exalted duties of the State. The latter is essentially a pedagogical institution, whose mission is to realize Goodness and Justice on our earth, and will not, therefore, tolerate art itself, except in so far as art is a 1 This arrangement might seem strange to us, did we not remember that the Greek State simply consisted of the city. Furthermore, the communistic teachings of the Republic are not repeated in the Laws. means of education, and is employed in the service of the Good.1 These deductions, which are idealistic in the extreme, bring us back to the ontology of Plato. Reality, it must be remembered, does not, according to him, belong to senseobjects (or phenomena), but to the Ideas or types which these objects reproduce and which are perceived (conceived) by reason (the noumena). The phenomenon is real, only in so far as it partakes of the ideal type of which it is a copy. Now, the highest Idea, which is to the world of invisible realities what the sun is to the phenomenal universe, is the Good or absolute Goodness, the first and fina cause of all being, and consequently superior and anterior to being itself, which it creates by natural radiation, This ontology may be defined as the monism of the good. It is, undoubtedly, the sublimest and purest product of philosophical genius. Others may have advanced beyond it; no one has ever excelled it. Kant himself, who denies real existence to the phenomenon, making it conditional on sensibility and the intellect, and then proclaims practical reason as the judge of theory, and goodness as the judge of truth, is in reality but a reproduction of Plato minus the poetical element. Modern science is nominalistic; nevertheless it regards realism as relatively true. The real object of science is the general, the universal, or the typical law of the particular facts. Thus, when the anthropologist occupies himself with Peter and Paul, his object is to know what man is; and the physicist's interest in the apple that falls from the tree, or in the snow-flake that floats in the air, or in the sinking avalanche, is occasioned by the fact that these particular phenomena serve to exemplify his theory of weight. The modern scientist, 1 Hence the theatre is not permitted in Plato's commonwealth; for it sets before us a world in which good and evil are necessarily intermingled. (Repub., III., 394-402.) A like Plato, regards the phenomenon as changing, the law as stable and therefore more real than the particulars (7 Övтws Ŏv). The mistake does not lie in exalting the universal over the particular; it consists in separating the former from the latter metaphysically, and in making a transcendent entity of the genus or type; it does not consist in exalting νοῦς over αἴσθησις, but in making two separate and even incompatible principles of voûs and αἴσθησις. In themselves, the type and the individual which realizes it, the law and the phenomenon which is its application, are but one and the same reality considered from different points of view; observation and reasoning. are merely two stages of one and the same method. physic, a physiology, or an anatomy that is the creation of pure reason is inconceivable. The universal must be derived from the particular, because it cannot be found anywhere else. Plato's failure to escape the illusion that the Idea is something separate, real, and transcendent, is in part due to the imperfect state of the philosophical terminology of his time. If, in place of eidos (aspect, form, type), he had used the word vóμos, or law, the term with which modern science has become so familiar, he would not easily have fallen into the error of the separatistic conception. But it is not merely the terminology that misleads him; it is the poet in Plato that impels the philosopher to realize the Idea. Aristotle, in a spirit of controversy, and a few sin cere but unintelligent disciples of Plato, exaggerated the realism of the master, but the realism is there none the less, and its consequences are only too apparent. Idea is real in itself, and does not need to be realized. Then the cosmic process loses its raison d'étre; it no longer consists in the realization of an Idea; it is the fall of a god. Creation would be the overflowing of the Idea, as it were, and the generation of being, that is, according to Plato, 1 See especially Repub., VI, 509. The |