A Critical History of Greek Philosophy Part 12

Since the end of the State is the virtue of the citizens, this involves the destruction of whatever is evil and the encouragement of whatever is good. To compa.s.s the destruction of evil, the children of bad parents, or offspring not sanctioned by the State, will be destroyed. Weak and sickly children will also not be allowed to live.

The positive encouragement of good involves the education of the citizens by the State. Children from their earliest years do not belong to their parents, but to the State. They are, therefore, at once removed from the custody of their parents, and transferred to State nurseries. Since the parents are to have no {229} property nor interest in them, stringent means are adopted to see that, after removal to the public nurseries, parents shall never again be able to recognize their own children. All the details of the educational curriculum are decreed by the State. Poetry, for example, is only allowed in an emasculated form. Of the three kinds, epic, dramatic, and lyric, the two former are banished from the State altogether, because, in the base example of the immorality of the G.o.ds, which they depict, they are powerful instruments in the propagation of evil. Only lyric poetry is allowed, and that under strict supervision. The subject, the form, even the metre, will be prescribed by the proper authorities. Poetry is not recognized as valuable in itself, but only as an educative moral influence. All poems, therefore, must strictly inculcate virtue.

It is, in Plato's opinion, intolerable that the individual should have any interest apart from the interests of the State. Private interests clash with those of the community, and must therefore be abolished.

The individual can possess no property either in material things, or in the members of his family. This involves the community of goods, community of wives, and the State owners.h.i.+p of children from their birth.

6. Views upon Art.

In modern times aesthetics is recognized as a separate division of philosophy. This was not the case in Plato's time, and yet his opinions upon art cannot be fitted into either dialectic, physics, or ethics. On the other hand, they cannot be ignored, and there is nothing for it, therefore, but to treat them as a sort of appendix {230} to his philosophy. Plato has no systematic theory of art, but only scattered opinions, the most important of which will now be mentioned.

Most modern theories of art are based upon the view that art is an end in itself, that the beautiful has, as such, absolute value, and not value merely as a means to some further end. Upon such a view, art is recognized as autonomous within its own sphere, governed only by its own laws, judged only by its own standards. It cannot be judged, as Tolstoi would have us believe, by the standard of morals. The beautiful is not a means to the good. They may be indeed, ultimately identical, but their ident.i.ty cannot be recognized till their difference has been admitted. Nor can one be subordinated to the other.

Now this view of art finds no place at all in Plato's thought. Art is, for him, absolutely subservient both to morals and to philosophy. That it subserves morality we see from the "Republic," where only that poetry is allowed which inculcates virtue, and only because it inculcates virtue. It is no sufficient justification of a poem to plead that it is beautiful. Beautiful or not, if it does not subserve the ends of morality, it is forbidden. Hence too the preposterous notion that its exercise is to be controlled, even in details, by the State. That this would mean the utter destruction of art either did not occur to Plato, or if it did, did not deter him. If poetry cannot exist under the yoke of morality, it must not be allowed to exist at all. That art is merely a means to philosophy is even more evident.

The end of all education is the knowledge of the Ideas, and every other subject, science, mathematics, art, is introduced into the {231} educational curriculum solely as a preparation for that end. They have no value in themselves. This is obvious from the teaching of the "Republic," and it is even more evident in the "Symposium," where the love of beautiful objects is made to end, not in itself, but in philosophy.

Plato's low estimate of art appears also in his theory of art as imitation, and his contemptuous references to the nature of artistic genius. As to the first, art is, to him, only imitation. It is the copy of an object of the senses, and this again is only a copy of an Idea. Hence a work of art is only a copy of a copy. Plato did not recognise the creativeness of art. This view is certainly false. If the aims of art were merely to imitate, a photograph would be the best picture, since it is the most accurate copy of its object. What Plato failed to see was that the artist does not copy his object, but idealizes it. And this means that he does not see the object simply as an object, but as the revelation of an Idea. He does not see the phenomenon with the eyes of other men, but penetrates the sensuous envelope and exhibits the Idea s.h.i.+ning through the veils of sense.

The second point is Plato's estimate of artistic genius. The artist does not work by reason, but by inspiration. He does not, or he should not, create the beautiful by means of rules, or by the application of principles. It is only after the work of art is created that the critic discovers rules in it. This does not mean that the discovery of rules is false, but that the artist follows them unconsciously and instinctively. If, for example, we believe Aristotle's dictum that the object of tragedy {232} is to purge the heart by terror and pity, we do not mean that the tragedian deliberately sets out to accomplish that end. He does so without knowing or intending it. And this kind of instinctive impulse we call the inspiration of the artist. Now Plato fully recognizes these facts. But far from considering inspiration something exalted, he thinks it, on the contrary, comparatively low and contemptible, just because it is not rational. He calls it "divine madness," divine indeed, because the artist produces beautiful things, but madness because he himself does not know how or why he has done it. The poet says very wise and beautiful things, but he does not know why they are wise and beautiful. He merely feels, and does not understand anything. His inspiration, therefore, is not on the level of knowledge, but only of right opinion, which knows what is true, but does not know why.

Plato's views of art are thus not satisfactory. He is doubtless right in placing inspiration below reason, and art below philosophy. They do stand to each other in the relation of higher and lower. Not that such a question can be decided by mere personal preferences. The usual discussions whether art or philosophy is better, whether emotion or reason is higher, are pointless and insipid, because the disputants merely exalt their personal peculiarities. The man of artistic temperament naturally prefers art, and says it is the highest. The philosopher exalts philosophy above art, merely because it is his pet hobby. This kind of discussion is futile. The matter must be decided upon some principle. And the principle is quite clear. Both art and philosophy have the same object, the {233} apprehension of the Absolute, or the Idea. Philosophy apprehends it as it is in itself, that is to say, as thought. Art apprehends it in a merely sensuous form. Philosophy apprehends it in its truth, art in a comparatively untrue way. Philosophy, therefore, is the higher. But while any true philosophy of art must recognize this, it must not interpret it to mean that art is to be made merely a means towards philosophy. It must somehow find room for the recognition of the truth that art is an end in itself, and it is in this that Plato fails.

Aristotle, who had no spark of artistic capacity in his composition, whose own writings are the severest of scientific treatises, did far greater justice to art than Plato, and propounded a far more satisfactory theory. Plato, himself a great artist, is utterly unjust to art. Paradoxical as it may appear, the very reason why Aristotle could be just to art was that he was no artist. Being solely a philosopher, his own writings are scientific and inartistic. This enables him to recognize art as a separate sphere, and therefore as having its own rights. Plato could not keep the two separate. His dialogues are both works of art and of philosophy. We have seen already that this fact exercised an evil influence on his philosophy, since it made him subst.i.tute poetic myths for scientific explanation.

Now we see that it exercised an equally evil influence on his views of art. As a philosopher-artist his own practice is to use literary art solely as a means towards the expression of philosophical ideas. And this colours his whole view of art. It is, to him, nothing but a means towards philosophy. And this is the tap-root of his entire view of the subject.

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7. Critical Estimate of Plato's Philosophy,

If we are to form a just estimate of the value of Plato's philosophy, we must not fritter away our criticism on the minor points, the external details, the mere outworks of the system. We must get at the heart and governing centre of it all. Amid the ma.s.s of thought which Plato has developed, in all departments of speculation, that which stands out as the central thesis of the whole system is the theory of Ideas. All else is but deduction from this. His physics, his ethics, his politics, his views upon art, all flow from this one governing theory. It is here then that we must look, alike for the merits and the defects of Plato's system.

The theory of Ideas is not a something sprung suddenly upon the world out of Plato's brain. It has its roots in the past. It is, as Aristotle showed, the outcome of Eleatic, Heracleitean, and Socratic determinations. Fundamentally, however, it grows out of the distinction between sense and reason, which had been the common property of Greek thinkers since the time of Parmenides. Parmenides was the first to emphasize this distinction, and to teach that the truth is to be found by reason, the world of sense being illusory.

Heracleitus, and even Democritus, were p.r.o.nounced adherents of reason, as against sense. The crisis came with the Sophists, who attempted to obliterate the distinction altogether, and to find all knowledge in sensation, thus calling forth the opposition of Socrates and Plato. As against them Socrates pointed out that all knowledge is through concepts, reason: and Plato added to this that the concept is not a mere rule of thought but a metaphysical reality. This was the substance of the theory of Ideas. {235} Every philosophy which makes a systematic attempt to solve the riddle of the universe necessarily begins with a theory of the nature of that absolute and ultimate reality from which the universe is derived. This absolute reality we will call simply the Absolute. Plato's theory is that the Absolute consists of concepts. To say that the Absolute is reason, is thought, is concepts, is the universal--these are merely four different expressions of the same theory. Now this proposition, that the Absolute is reason, is the fundamental thesis of all idealism. Since Plato's time there have been several great idealistic systems of philosophy. That the Absolute is reason is the central teaching of them all. Plato, therefore, is the founder and initiator of all idealism. It is this that gives him his great place in the history of philosophy. That the Absolute is universal thought, this is what Plato has contributed to the philosophical speculation of the world. This is his crowning merit.

But we must go somewhat more into details. We must see how far he applied this principle successfully to the unravelment of the great problems of philosophy. In lecturing upon the Eleatics, I said that any successful philosophy must satisfy at least two conditions. It must give such an account of the Absolute, that the Absolute is shown as capable of explaining the world. It must be possible to deduce the actual world of facts from the first principle. Secondly, not only must this first principle explain the world; it must also explain itself. It must be really ultimate, that is, we must not, in order to understand it, have to refer to anything beyond and outside it. If we have to do so then our ultimate is not an ultimate at all; our first principle {236} is not first. That thing by means of which we explain it must itself be the ultimate reality. And besides being ultimate, our principle must be wholly intelligible. It must not be a mere ultimate mystery; for to reduce the whole world to an ultimate mystery is clearly not to explain it. Our first principle must, in a word, be self-explanatory. Let us apply this two-fold test to Plato's system.

Let us see, firstly, whether the principle of Ideas explains the world, and secondly, whether it explains itself.

Does it explain the world? Is the actual existence of things, horses, trees, stars, men, explained by it? What, in the first place, is the relation between things and the Ideas? Things, says Plato, are "copies," or "imitations" of the Ideas. They "partic.i.p.ate" in the Ideas. The Ideas are "archetypal" of things. Now all these phrases are mere poetic metaphors. They do not really tell us how things are related to Ideas. But suppose we ignore this, and a.s.sume, for the sake of argument, that we understand what is meant by "partic.i.p.ation" and that things are, in the literal sense, "copies" of Ideas. The question still remains, why do such copies exist, how do they arise? Now, if this problem is to be solved, it is not enough to show, merely as a fact, that, by some mysterious act, copies of Ideas come into existence. There must be a reason for it, and this reason it is the business of philosophy to explain. This reason, too, must exist in the nature of the Ideas themselves, and not outside them. There must be, in the very nature of the Ideas, some inner necessity which forces them to reproduce themselves in things. This is what we {237} mean by saying that the Ideas are a sufficient explanation of the existence of things. But there is in Plato's Ideas no such necessity. The Ideas are defined as being the sole reality. They have already all reality in themselves. They are self-sufficient. They lack nothing. It is not necessary for them further to realize their being in the concrete manifestation of things, because they, as wholly real, need no realization. Why, then, should they not remain for ever simply as they are? Why should they go out of themselves into things? Why should they not remain in themselves and by themselves? Why should they need to reproduce themselves in objects? There are, we know, white objects in the universe. Their existence, we are told, is explained by the Idea of whiteness? But why should the Idea of whiteness produce white things? It is itself the perfect whiteness. Why should it stir itself?

Why should it not remain by itself, apart, sterile, in the world of Ideas, for all eternity? We cannot see. There is in the Ideas no necessity urging them towards reproduction of themselves, and this means that they possess no principle for the explanation of things.

Nevertheless Plato has to make some attempt to meet the difficulty.

And as the Ideas are themselves impotent to produce things, Plato, unable to solve the problem by reason, attempts to solve it by violence. He drags in the notion of G.o.d from nowhere in particular, and uses him as a _deus ex machina_. G.o.d fas.h.i.+ons matter into the images of Ideas. The very fact that Plato is forced to introduce a creator shows that, in the Ideas themselves, there is no ground of explanation. Things ought to be explained by the Ideas themselves, {238} but as they are incapable of explaining anything, G.o.d is called upon to do their work for them. Thus Plato, faced with the problem of existence, practically deserts his theory of Ideas, and falls back upon a crude theism. Or if we say that the term G.o.d is not to be taken literally, and that Plato uses it merely as a figurative term for the Idea of Good, then this saves Plato from the charge of introducing a theism altogether inconsistent with his philosophy, but it brings us back to the old difficulty. For in this case, the existence of things must be explained by means of the Idea of the Good. But this Idea is just as impotent as the other Ideas.

In this connection, too, the dualism of Plato's system becomes evident. If everything is grounded in the one ultimate reality, the Ideas, then the entire universe must be clasped together in a system, all parts of which flow out of the Ideas. If there exists in the universe anything which stands aloof from this system, remains isolated, and cannot be reduced to a manifestation of the Ideas, then the philosophy has failed to explain the world, and we have before us a confessed dualism. Now not only has Plato to drag in G.o.d for the explanation of things, he has also to drag in matter. G.o.d takes matter and forms it into copies of the Ideas. But what is this matter, and where does it spring from? Clearly, if the sole reality is the Ideas, matter, like all else, must be grounded in the Ideas. But this is not the case in Plato's system. Matter appears as a principle quite independent of the Ideas. As its being is self-derived and original, it must be itself a substance. But this is just what Plato denies, calling it absolute {239} not-being. Yet since it has not its source in the Ideas or in anything outside itself, we must say that though Plato calls it absolute not-being, it is in fact an absolute being.

The Ideas and matter stand face to face in Plato's system neither derived from the other, equally ultimate co-ordinate, absolute realities. This is sheer dualism.

The source of this dualism is to be found in the absolute separation which Plato makes between sense and reason. He places the world of sense on one side, the world of reason on the other, as things radically different and opposed. Hence it is impossible for him ever to bridge the gulf that he has himself created between them. We may expect the dualism of a philosophy which builds upon such premises to break out at numerous points in the system. And so indeed it does. It exhibits itself as the dualism of Ideas and matter, of the sense-world and the thought-world, of body and soul. Not, of course, that it is not quite right to recognize the distinction between sense and reason.

Any genuine philosophy must recognize that. And no doubt too it is right to place truth and reality on the side of reason rather than sense. But although sense and reason are distinct, they must also be identical. They must be divergent streams flowing from one source. And this means that a philosophy which considers the absolute reality to be reason must exhibit sense as a lower form of reason. Because Plato fails to see the ident.i.ty of sense and reason, as well as their difference, his philosophy becomes a continual fruitless effort to overreach the dualism thus generated.

Thus the answer to our first question, whether the theory of Ideas explains the world of things, must be {240} answered in the negative.

Let us pa.s.s on to the second test. Is the principle of Ideas a self-explanatory principle? Such a principle must be understood purely out of itself. It must not be a principle, like that of the materialist, which merely reduces the whole universe to an ultimate mysterious fact. For even if it be shown that the reason of everything is matter, it is still open to us to ask what the reason of matter is.

We cannot see any reason why matter should exist. It is a mere fact, which dogmatically forces itself upon our consciousness without giving any reason for itself. Our principle must be such that we cannot ask a further reason of it. It must be its own reason, and so in itself satisfy the demand for a final explanation. Now there is only one such principle in the world, namely, reason itself. You can ask the reason of everything else in the world. You can ask the reason of the sun, the moon, stars, the soul, G.o.d, or the devil. But you cannot ask the reason of reason, because reason is its own reason. Let us put the same thought in another way. When we demand the explanation of anything, what do we mean by explanation? What is it we want? Do we not mean that the thing appears to us irrational, and we want it shown that it is rational? When this is done, we say it is explained. Think, for example, of what is called the problem of evil. People often talk of it as the problem of the "origin of evil," as if what we want to know is, how evil began. But even if we knew this, it would not explain anything. Suppose that evil began because someone ate an apple. Does this make the matter any clearer? Do we feel that all our difficulties about the existence of evil are solved? No. This is {241} not what we want to know. The difficulty is that evil appears to us something irrational. The problem can only be solved by showing us that somehow, in spite of appearances, it is rational that evil should exist. Show us this, and evil is explained. Explanation of a thing, then, means showing that the thing is rational. Now we can ask that everything else in the world should be shown to be rational. But we cannot demand that the philosopher shall show that reason is rational.

This is absurd. Reason is what is already absolutely rational. It is what explains itself. It is its own reason. It is a self-explanatory principle. This, then, must be the principle of which we are in search. The Absolute, we said, must be a self-explanatory principle, and there is only one such, namely, reason. The Absolute, therefore, is reason.

It was the greatness and glory of Plato to have seen this, and thereby to have become the founder of all true philosophy. For to say that the Absolute is concepts is the same as saying it is reason. It might seem, then, that Plato has satisfied the second canon of criticism. He takes as first principle a self-explanatory reality. But we cannot quite so quickly jump to this conclusion. After all, the mere word reason is not a key which will unlock to us the doors of the universe.

Something more is necessary than the mere word. We must, in fact, be told what reason is. Now there are two senses in which we might ask the question, what reason is, one of which is legitimate, the other illegitimate. It is illegitimate to ask what reason is, in the sense of asking that it shall be explained to us in terms of something else, which is not reason. This would be {242} to give up our belief that reason is its own reason. It would be to seek the reason of reason in something which is not reason. It would be to admit that reason, in itself, is not rational. And this is absurd. But it is legitimate to ask, what reason is, meaning thereby, what is the _content_ of reason.

The content of reason, we have seen, is concepts. But what concepts?

How are we to know whether any particular concept is part of the system of reason or not? Only, it is evident, by ascertaining whether it is a rational concept. If a concept is wholly rational, then it is a part of reason. If not, not. What we need, then, is a detailed account of all the concepts which reason contains, and a proof that each of these concepts is really rational. It is obvious that only in this way can we make a satisfactory beginning in philosophy. Before we can show that reason explains, that is, rationalizes the world, we must surely first show that reason itself is rational, or rather, to be more accurate, that _our conception_ of reason is rational. There must not be any mere inexplicable facts, any mysteries, any dark places, in our notion of reason. It must be penetrated through and through by the light of reason. It must be absolutely transparent, crystalline. How can we hope to explain the world, if our very first principle itself contains irrationalities?

Each concept then must prove itself rational. And this means that it must be a necessary concept. A necessary proposition, we saw, is one, such as that two and two equal four, the opposite of which is unthinkable. So for Plato's Ideas to be really necessary it ought to be logically impossible for us to deny their {243} reality. It ought to be impossible to think the world at all without these concepts. To attempt to deny them ought to be shown to be self-contradictory. They ought to be so necessarily involved in reason that thought without them becomes impossible. Clearly this is the same as saying that the Ideas must not be mere ultimate inexplicable facts. Of such a fact we a.s.sert merely that it is so, but we cannot see any reason for it. To see a reason for it is the same as seeing its necessity, seeing not merely that it is so, but that it must be so.

Now Plato's Ideas are not of this necessary kind. There is, we are told, an Idea of whiteness. But why should there be such an Idea? It is a mere fact. It is not a necessity. We can think the world quite well without the Idea of whiteness. The world, so far as we can see, could get on perfectly well without either white objects or the Idea of whiteness. To deny its reality leads to no self-contradictions. Put it in another way. There are certainly white objects in the world. We demand that these, among other things, be explained. Plato tells us, by way of explanation, that there are white objects because there is an Idea of whiteness. But in that case why is there an Idea of whiteness? We cannot see. There is no reason. There is no necessity in this. The same thing applies to all the other Ideas. They are not rational concepts. They are not a part of the system of reason.

But at this point, perhaps, a glimmer of hope dawns upon us. We ask the reason for these Ideas. Has not Plato a.s.serted that the ultimate reason and ground of all the lower Ideas will be found in the supreme Idea of {244} the Good? Now if this is so, it means that the lower Ideas must find their necessity in the highest Idea. If we could see that the Idea of the Good necessarily involves the other Ideas, then these other Ideas would be really explained. In other words, we ought to be able to deduce all the other Ideas from this one Idea. It ought to be possible to show that, granted the Idea of the Good, all the other Ideas necessarily follow, that to a.s.sume the Good and deny the other Ideas would be self-contradictory and unthinkable. There are examples in Plato of the kind of deduction we require. For example, in the "Parmenides" he showed that the Idea of the one necessarily involves the Idea of the many, and vice versa. You cannot think the one without also thinking the many. This means that the many is deduced from the one, and the one from the many. Just in the same way, we ought to be able to deduce the Idea of whiteness from the Idea of the Good. But this is clearly not possible. You may a.n.a.lyse the Good as long as you like, you may turn it in every conceivable direction, but you cannot get whiteness out of it. The two Ideas do not involve each other. They are thinkable apart. It is quite possible to think the Good without thinking whiteness. And it is the same with all the other Ideas. None of them can be deduced from the Good.

And the reason of this is very obvious. Just as the lower Ideas contain only what is common among the things of a cla.s.s, and exclude their differences, so the higher Ideas include what is common to the Ideas that come under them, but exclude what is not common. For example, the Idea of colour contains what white, blue, red, and green, have in common. But all colours {245} have not whiteness in common.

Green, for example, is not white. Hence the Idea of colour excludes the Idea of whiteness, and it likewise excludes all the Ideas of the other particular colours. So too the highest Idea of all contains only what all the Ideas agree in, but all the rest falls outside it. Thus the Idea of whiteness is perfect in its kind. And as all Ideas are likewise perfect, the highest Idea is that in which they all agree, namely, perfection itself. But this means that the perfection of the Idea of whiteness is contained in the supreme Idea, but its specific character in which it differs from other Ideas is excluded. Its specific character is just its whiteness. Thus the perfection of whiteness is contained in the Good, but its whiteness is not.

Consequently it is impossible to deduce whiteness from the Good, because the Good does not contain whiteness. You cannot get out of it what is not in it. When Plato deduced the many from the one, he did so only by showing that the One contains the many. He cannot deduce whiteness from goodness, because goodness does not contain whiteness.

The lower Ideas thus have not the character of necessity. They are mere facts. And the hope that we shall find their necessity in the supreme Idea fails. But suppose we waive this. Suppose we grant that there must be an Idea of whiteness, because there is an Idea of the Good. Then why is there an Idea of the Good? What is the necessity of that? We cannot see any necessity in it. What we said of the other Ideas applies with equal force to the highest Idea. The Good may be a necessary Idea, but Plato has not shown it.

Thus, though Plato named reason as the Absolute, {246} and though reason is a self-explanatory principle, his account of the detailed content of reason is so unsatisfactory that none of the concepts which he includes in it are really shown to be rational. His philosophy breaks down upon the second test as it did upon the first. He has neither explained the world from the Ideas, nor has he made the Ideas explain themselves.

There is one other defect in Plato's system which is of capital importance. There runs throughout it a confusion between the notions of reality and existence. To distinguish between existence and reality is an essential feature of all idealism. Even if we go back to the dim idealism of the Eleatics, we shall see this. Zeno, we saw, denied motion, multiplicity, and the world of sense. But he did not deny the existence of the world. That is an impossibility. Even if the world is delusion, the delusion exists. What he denied was the reality of existence. But if reality is not existence, what is it? It is Being, replied the Eleatics. But Being does not exist. Whatever exists is this or that particular sort of being. Being itself is not anywhere to be found. Thus the Eleatics first denied that existence is reality, and then that reality exists. They did not themselves draw this conclusion, but it is involved in their whole position.

With a fully developed idealism, like Plato's, this ought to be still clearer. And, in a sense, it is. The individual horse is not real. But it certainly exists. The universal horse is real. But it does not exist. But, upon this last point, Plato wavered and fell. He cannot resist the temptation to think of the absolute reality as existing.

And consequently the Ideas are {247} not merely thought as the real universal in the world, but as having a separate existence in a world of their own. Plato must have realised what is, in truth, involved in his whole position, that the absolute reality has no existence. For he tells us that it is the universal, and not any particular individual thing. But everything that exists is an individual thing. Again, he tells us that the Idea is outside time. But whatever exists must exist at some time. Here then this central idealistic thought seems well fixed in Plato's mind. But when he goes on to speak of recollection and reincarnation, when he tells us that the soul before birth dwelt apart in the world of Ideas, to which after death it may hope to return, it is clear that Plato has forgotten his own philosophy, that he is now thinking of the Ideas as individual existences in a world of their own. This is a world of Ideas having a separate existence and place of its own. It is not this world. It is a world beyond. Thus the Platonic philosophy which began on a high level of idealistic thinking, proclaiming the sole reality of the universal, ends by turning the universal itself into nothing but an existent particular.

It is the old old story of trying to form mental pictures of that which no picture is adequate to comprehend. Since all pictures are formed out of sensuous materials, and since we can form no picture of anything that is not an individual thing, to form a picture of the universal necessarily means thinking of it as just what it is not, an individual. So Plato commits the greatest sin that can be ascribed to a philosopher. He treats thought as a thing.

To sum up. Plato is the great founder of idealism, the initiator of all subsequent truths in philosophy. {248} But, as always with pioneers, his idealism is crude. It cannot explain the world; it cannot explain itself. It cannot even keep true to its own principles, because, having for the first time in history definitely enunciated the truth that reality is the universal, it straightway forgets its own creed and plunges back into a particularism which regards the Ideas as existent individuals. It was these defects which Aristotle set himself to rectify in a purer idealism, shorn of Plato's impurities.

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CHAPTER XIII

ARISTOTLE

1. Life, Writings, and general character of his Work.

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. at Stagirus, a Grecian colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and from this began Aristotle's long a.s.sociation with the Macedonian Court, which considerably influenced his life and destinies. While he was still a boy his father died, and he was sent by his guardian, Proxenus, to Athens, the intellectual centre of the world, to complete his education. He was then aged seventeen. He joined the Academy and studied under Plato, attending the latter's lectures for a period of twenty years. In subsequent times, Aristotle's detractors, anxious to vilify his character, accused him of "ingrat.i.tude" to his master, Plato. It was said that Plato's old age had been embittered by dissensions in the school caused by the factious spirit of Aristotle.

That there is no ground for attaching any blame to Aristotle for the troubles of Plato, which either did not exist or have been grossly exaggerated, is evident both from the facts within our knowledge and from the reference to Plato in Aristotle's works. It is not likely that, had Aristotle rendered himself genuinely objectionable, he could have remained for twenty years in {250} the Academy, and only left it upon the death of Plato. Moreover, although Aristotle in his works attacks the teaching of Plato with unsparing vigour, there is nowhere to be found in these attacks any suggestion of acrimony or personal rancour. On the contrary, he refers to himself as the friend of Plato, but a greater friend of the truth. The fact, in all probability, is that a man of such independent and original mind as Aristotle did not accord to Plato the kind of blind adoration and hero-wors.h.i.+p which he may have received from the inferior intellects in the school. As is so often the case with young men of marked ability, the brilliant student may have suffered from the impatience and self-a.s.sertion of youth.

There was certainly nothing worse.

While at the Academy Aristotle exhibited an unflagging spirit and unwearied zeal in the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, a spirit which gave rise to nick-names and anecdotes, which probably contained as much truth, or as little, as most of the anecdotes which gather round remarkable characters. One of these stories was that he used a mechanical contrivance to wake him up whenever sleep threatened to put an end to his hours of study.