Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

On looking through the collection of works enumerated in the Thrasyllean Canon, the first impression made upon us respecting the author is, that which is expressed in the epithets applied to him by Cicero — “varius et multiplex et copiosus”. Such epithets bring before us the variety in Plato’s points of view and methods of handling — the multiplicity of the topics discussed — the abundance of the premisses and illustrations suggested:1 comparison being taken with other literary productions of the same age. It is scarcely possible to find any one predicate truly applicable to all of Plato’s works. Every predicate is probably true in regard to some:—none in regard to all.

Several critics of antiquity considered Plato as essentially a sceptic — that is, a Searcher or Enquirer, not reaching any assured or proved result. They denied to him the character of a dogmatist: they maintained that he neither established nor enforced any affirmative doctrines.2 This latter statement is carried too far. Plato is sceptical in some dialogues, dogmatical in others. And the catalogue of Thrasyllus shows that the sceptical dialogues (Dialogues of Search or Investigation) are more numerous than the dogmatical (Dialogues of Exposition) — as they are also, speaking generally, more animated and interesting.

Again, Aristotle declared the writing of Plato to be something between poetry and prose, and even the philosophical doctrine of Plato respecting Ideas, to derive all its apparent plausibility from poetic metaphors. The affirmation is true, up to a certain point. Many of the dialogues display an exuberant vein of poetry, which was declared — not by Aristotle alone, but by many other critics contemporary with Plato — to be often misplaced and excessive — and which appeared the more striking because the dialogues composed by the other Sokratic companions were all of them plain and unadorned.3 The various mythes, in the Phædrus and elsewhere, are announced expressly as soaring above the conditions of truth and logical appreciation. Moreover, we find occasionally an amount of dramatic vivacity, and of artistic antithesis between the speakers introduced, which might have enabled Plato, had he composed for the drama as a profession, to contend with success for the prizes at the Dionysiac festivals. But here again, though this is true of several dialogues, it is not true of others. In the Parmenidês, Timæus, and the Leges, such elements will be looked for in vain. In the Timæus, they are exchanged for a professed cosmical system, including much mystic and oracular affirmation, without proof to support it, and without opponents to test it: in the Leges, for ethical sermons, and religious fulminations, proclaimed by a dictatorial authority.

One feature there is, which is declared by Schleiermacher and others to be essential to all the works of Plato — the form of dialogue. Here Schleiermacher’s assertion, literally taken, is incontestable. Plato always puts his thoughts into the mouth of some spokesman: he never speaks in his own name. All the works of Plato which we possess (excepting the Epistles, and the Apology, which last I consider to be a report of what Sokrates himself said) are dialogues. But under this same name, many different realities are found to be contained. In the Timæus and Kritias the dialogue is simply introductory to a continuous exposition — in the Menexenus, to a rhetorical discourse: while in the Leges, and even in Sophistês, Politikus, and others, it includes no antithesis nor interchange between two independent minds, but is simply a didactic lecture, put into interrogatory form, and broken into fragments small enough for the listener to swallow at once: he by his answer acknowledging the receipt. If therefore the affirmation of Schleiermacher is intended to apply to all the Platonic compositions, we must confine it to the form, without including the spirit, of dialogue.

It is in truth scarcely possible to resolve all the diverse manifestations of the Platonic mind into one higher unity; or to predicate, about Plato as an intellectual person, anything which shall be applicable at once to the Protagoras, Gorgias, Parmenidês, Phædrus, Symposion, Philêbus, Phædon, Republic, Timæus, and Leges. Plato was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and inquisitor, mathematician, philosopher, poet (erotic as well as satirical), rhetor, artist — all in one:4 or at least, all in succession, throughout the fifty years of his philosophical life. At one time his exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, manifesting itself in a string of ingenious doubts and unsolved contradictions: at another time, he is full of theological antipathy against those who libel Helios and Selênê, or who deny the universal providence of the Gods: here, we have unqualified confessions of ignorance, and protestations against the false persuasion of knowledge, as alike widespread and deplorable — there, we find a description of the process of building up the Kosmos from the beginning, as if the author had been privy to the inmost purposes of the Demiurgus. In one dialogue the erotic fever is in the ascendant, distributed between beautiful youths and philosophical concepts, and confounded with a religious inspiration and furor which supersedes and transcends human sobriety (Phædrus): in another, all vehement impulses of the soul are stigmatised and repudiated, no honourable scope being left for anything but the calm and passionless Nous (Philêbus, Phædon).

Satire is exchanged for dithyramb, and mythe, and one ethical point of view for another (Protagoras, Gorgias). The all-sufficient dramatising power of the master gives full effect to each of these multifarious tendencies. On the whole — to use a comparison of Plato himself5 — the Platonic sum total somewhat resembles those fanciful combinations of animals imagined in the Hellenic mythology — an aggregate of distinct and disparate individualities, which look like one because they are packed in the same external wrapper.

Furthermore, if we intend to affirm anything about Plato as a whole, there is another fact which ought to be taken into account.6 We know him only from his dialogues, and from a few scraps of information. But Plato was not merely a composer of dialogues. He was lecturer, and chief of a school, besides. The presidency of that school, commencing about 386 B.C., and continued by him with great celebrity for the last half (nearly forty years) of his life, was his most important function. Among his contemporaries he must have exercised greater influence through his school than through his writings.7 Yet in this character of school-teacher and lecturer, he is almost unknown to us: for the few incidental allusions which have descended to us, through the Aristotelian commentators, only raise curiosity without satisfying it. The little information which we possess respecting Plato’s lectures, relates altogether to those which he delivered upon the Ipsum Bonum or Summum Bonum at some time after Aristotle became his pupil — that is, during the last eighteen years of Plato’s life. Aristotle and other hearers took notes of these lectures: Aristotle even composed an express work now lost (De Bono or De Philosophiâ), reporting with comments of his own these oral doctrines of Plato, together with the analogous doctrines of the Pythagoreans.

We learn that Plato gave continuous lectures, dealing with the highest and most transcendental concepts (with the constituent elements or factors of the Platonic Ideas or Ideal Numbers: the first of these factors being The One — the second, The Indeterminate Dyad, or The Great and Little, the essentially indefinite), and that they were mystic and enigmatical, difficult to understand.8

One remarkable observation, made upon them by Aristotle, has been transmitted to us.9 There were lectures announced to be, On the Supreme Good. Most of those who came to hear, expected that Plato would enumerate and compare the various matters usually considered good — i.e. health, strength, beauty, genius, wealth, power, &c. But these hearers were altogether astonished at what they really heard: for Plato omitting the topics expected, descanted only upon arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and told them that The Good was identical with The One (as contrasted with the Infinite or Indeterminate which was Evil).

We see farther from this remark:—First, that Plato’s lectures were often above what his auditors could appreciate — a fact which we learn from other allusions also: Next, that they were not confined to a select body of advanced pupils, who had been worked up by special training into a state fit for comprehending them.10 Had such been the case, the surprise which Aristotle mentions could never have been felt. And we see farther, that the transcendental doctrine delivered in the lectures De Bono (though we find partial analogies to it in Philêbus, Epinomis, and parts of Republic) coincides more with what Aristotle states and comments upon as Platonic doctrine, than with any reasonings which we find in the Platonic dialogues. It represents the latest phase of Platonism: when the Ideas originally conceived by him as Entities in themselves, had become merged or identified in his mind with the Pythagorean numbers or symbols.