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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 I 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY IN THE 
 GREEK PHILOSOPHERS.
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES MACLKHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW 
 ^nbUsh^ts to the anibersitB. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 
 New York, • • The Macnitlian Co. 
 London, • - • Simpkin, Hamilton atid Co. 
 Cninbridee, • • MacmiUan and Bowes. 
 Edinburgh^ • • Douglas and Foulis,
 
 The Evolution of Theology 
 
 in the 
 
 Greek Philosophers 
 
 The Gifford Lectures 
 
 delivered in the University of Glasgow in 
 
 Sessions 1 900-1 and 190 1-2 
 
 By Edward Caird 
 
 LL.D., D.C.L., D.Litt. 
 
 Fellow of the British Academy ; Corresponding Member of the French Academy 
 
 Master of BalHol College, Oxford ; Late Professor of Moral Philosophy 
 
 in the University of Glasgow 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 Glasgow- 
 James MacLehose and Sons 
 
 Publishers to the University 
 1904 
 
 Ali rights reserved
 
 GLASGOW : pniNTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 BY ROBERT MACLEHOSK AND CO.
 
 ^m 
 
 v.l 
 
 ^5>v. 
 
 ^ 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 WILLIAM WALLACE 
 
 LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, AND 
 
 white's professor of moral philosophy 
 in the university of oxford 
 
 63271.
 
 Es sagen^s aller Orten 
 
 Alle Eerzen unter dem Mmmlischen Tage, 
 
 Jedes in seiner Sprache.
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 These volumes contain the Gifford Lectures delivered 
 in the University of Glasgow in Sessions 1900-1 
 and 1901-2. I have, however, rewritten most of 
 them, and have added three lectures upon parts 
 of the subject which I was not able to discuss 
 with sufficient fullness. 
 
 I have attempted, so far as was possible within 
 the limits of such a course of lectures, to give an 
 account of those ideas of Greek philosophy which 
 have most powerfully affected the subsequent develop- 
 ment of theological thought. In doing so, I have 
 had to make a selection of topics which may require 
 some explanation, both as to what it includes and 
 as to what it excludes. On the one hand, I have 
 thought it best to confine myself mainly to the 
 most important writers, to Plato and Aristotle, 
 to the chief representatives of the Stoic philosophy, 
 and to Philo and Plotinus among the Neo-Platonists ; 
 and I have made no attempt to deal with secondary 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 variations of opinion among the less important 
 writers of the various schools. On the other hand, 
 in regard to the philosophers of whom I have 
 written more fully, I have dealt with many aspects 
 of their thought which may not seem to bear directly 
 upon theology. Thus I have treated at considerable 
 length the question of the development of the 
 Platonic philosophy in its logical and ethical as 
 well as in its metaphysical and theological aspects. 
 And though I have not gone quite so far in other 
 cases, I have not hesitated to introduce a compara- 
 tively full account of the theoretical and practical 
 philosophy of Aristotle and of the Stoics. It seemed 
 to me quite impossible to show the real meaning 
 of the theological speculations of these writers 
 without tracing oat their connexion with the other 
 aspects of their philosophy. In the case of Plotinus 
 I do not need to make any such statement ; for 
 theology is so obviously the centre of all his thought, 
 that everything else has to be directly viewed in 
 relation to it. In truth, however, this is only a 
 matter of degree. A man's religion, if it is 
 genuine, contains the summed-up and concentrated 
 meaning of his whole life ; and, indeed, it can 
 have no value except in so far as it does so. 
 And it is even more obvious that the theology of 
 a philosopher is the ultimate outcome of his whole 
 view of the universe, and particularly of his con-
 
 PREFACE Ix 
 
 ception of the nature of man. It is, therefore, 
 impossible to show the real effect and purport of 
 the former without exhibiting very carefully and 
 fully its relations to the latter. 
 
 I find it very difficult to trace out my obligations 
 to the numerous writers on the subjects of which 
 I have written. Of the books which I have recently 
 studied, I owe most to Baumker's Das ProUem der 
 Materie in der Griechischen Philosophie, to Bonhoffer's 
 Epidet und die Stoa, and to the account of Plotinus 
 in ^on Hartmann's Geschichte der Metaphysik I may 
 also mention Whitaker's The Neo-Platonists, which 
 contains a very careful and thorough account of the 
 whole history and iniauence of Neo-Platonism. 
 
 I have been much assisted by the opportunity 
 I have had of discussing various points with Professor 
 Cook Wilson, with Professor Henry Jones, and with 
 Mr. J. A. Smith of Balliol College. 
 
 Professor Jones and Mr. E. A. Duff of Glasgow 
 University have read all the proofs of these volumes, 
 and have made many suggestions which have been 
 very useful to me. 
 
 The work of preparing an Index has been kindly 
 undertaken by Mr. Hayward Porter. 
 
 Balliol College, 
 
 Oxford, November, 1903.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LECTUEE FIRST, 
 
 THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO THEOLOGY. 
 
 The Development of Religion — Its Relation to Theology, as the 
 Reflective Form of the Religious Consciousness — Increasing 
 Influence of Reflexion in the Highest Religions, especially in 
 Judaism and Christianity — How a Religion grows into a 
 Theology — How Theology and Religion, Reason and Faith, 
 become opposed to each other — Importance of the Interests 
 on both sides — The Danger of sacrificing either of them to 
 the other — The Idea of Evolution as an Eirenicon — The unity 
 of man's life in its diff"erent phases — Carlyle's view of the 
 Alternation of Action and Reflexion — Objections to the Law 
 of Evolution, (1) from those who separate Philosophy from 
 Life, (2) from those who separate life from Philosophy — In 
 what sense Theology begins in Greece, .... 1-30 
 
 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 The Central Idea of Religion, and its Reflective Expression in 
 Theology — The Opposition of the Secular and the Religious 
 Consciousness — That the Idea of Religion is expressed only
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 in the Highest Eeligion— Answer to an Objection to this 
 View— Three Periods in the Development of Theology- 
 Characteristics of the Theological Philosophy of Greece- 
 Characteristics of the Theology of the Early Christian and 
 Medieval Periods— Characteristics of Modern Theology or 
 Philosophy of Eeligion, , 3] -57 
 
 LECTUEE THIED 
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO. 
 
 Plato as the Father of Theology— His Mysticism and his 
 Idealism— The Eleatic and Ionic Schools— The One and the 
 Many— Socrates— His Eelation to Anaxagoras— His Limi- 
 tation of Philosophy to Ethics— His Idea of the Moral Life 
 as an Art— His View of the Place of Knowledge in 
 Morality— Onesidedness of this View— The Conscious and 
 the Unconscious in Moral Life— Individualistic Tendencies 
 of Socrates and the Minor Socratics -Plato's Philosophy as 
 a Synthesis of Pre-Socratic with Socratic Ideas, . . 58-79 
 
 LECTUEE FOUETH. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE PLATONIC IDEALISM. 
 
 Plato as the Disciple of Socrates— His Dissatisfaction with the 
 Socratic view of Ethics— The Dialogue Protagoras as the 
 Turning-point— Socrates opposed as a scientific Hedonist to 
 the Morality of Opinion— The Problem of the Meno—T\\Q 
 Myth of Eeminiscence and its Meaning— The Development 
 of Knowledge from Opinion to Science— Eight Opinion as 
 Inspiration— The New View of Ethics in the Oorgias— 
 Doing What We Will, and Doing What Seems Best— Opposi- 
 tion of a Science of Ethics which begins with the Idea of the 
 Whole to Hedonism— Light thrown by this Distinction upon 
 the Theory of Ideas, 80-108
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 THE NATURE OF IDEAS AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY. 
 
 Development of the Ideal Theory — Negative Relation of Ideas 
 to Sense and Opinion exhibited in the Phaedo — Their Positive 
 Relation exhibited in the Symposium — The Mystic and the 
 Artist — Plato's Metaphysical Attempt to combine these 
 two Relations — The Systematic Unity of Ideas — The Prin- 
 ciple of Anaxagoras and his Application of it — Plato's 
 Criticism of Anaxagoras — His method not diflferent from 
 that of the Physical Philosophers — Plato's Substitute for it — 
 The Theory of Ideas and the Method of Dialectic — Regress 
 to the Highest Idea — Plato's View of the Relation of Final 
 to Efficient Causes. 
 
 Note on Plato's Relation to Anaxagoras — The SeiJrfpos ttXoDs — 
 Ideas as Causes — The Regressive Method and the Hierarchy 
 of Ideas, 109-139 
 
 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 THE STATE AND THE IDEA OF GOOD. 
 
 The Republic as an Educational Treatise — The Organic Idea of 
 the State — Plato's Opposition to Individualism — His Socialism 
 — The Philosopher-King — That Virtue is Knowledge only for 
 the Ruler — The Ideal too great for the City-State — Plato's 
 Criticism of the Mythology of Greece and his Proposals for its 
 Improvement — Mythology for the Many and Philosophy for 
 the Few — Possibility of such a Division between Faith and 
 Reason — Two Ways of Idealism — The Idea of Good — The 
 Unworldliness of the Philosopher — Difficulty of connecting 
 Contemplation with Practice — Three ways of Defining the 
 Idea of Good : First, by Extension of the Individual Ideal 
 of Socrates ; Secondly, by the Analogy of the Sun ; Thirdly, 
 by the Synthesis of the Principles of the Sciences — Criticism 
 of the Neo-Platonic Explanation of the Idea of Good —
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 Difficulty of Defining the Ultimate Principle of Unity — Mystic 
 and Idealistic Solutions of it— The Relation of the Idea of 
 Good to God, 140-172 
 
 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY OF IDEAS. 
 
 Necessity of Uniting Analysis and Synthesis in Dialectic — Plato's 
 Conception of the Art of Rhetoric — His Method of Division — 
 His Attempt to Combine the Eleatic with the Heraclitean 
 Doctrines — His Criticism of Sensationalism and the Doc- 
 trine of Flux in the Theaetetus — His Criticism of Abstract 
 Idealism and the Eleatic Conception of the One in the 
 Sophist — The Problem of the One and the Many in the 
 Parmenides — Ideas not Abstractions or Separate Sub- 
 stances, but Principles of Unity in Difi'erence — Ideas neither 
 purely Objective nor purely Subjective — The Unity of 
 Thought and Reality — Absolute Reality of Mind — Are 
 Minds the only Real Substances — Possibility of Degrees of 
 Reality— Plato's Grades of Souls, .... 173-197 
 
 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 The Argument of the Phaedo — Connection of the Doctrine of 
 the Immortality of the Soul with the conception of Transmi- 
 gration — Wordsworth and Plato — Inference from the Nature 
 of the Objects of Intelligence as contrasted with Sensible 
 Objects — The Ontological Argument for Immortality — Its 
 Relation to the Ontological Argument for the Being of God — 
 Objections to both — Restatement of them in a better form — 
 Argument of the Republic — The Soul not destroyed by the 
 Death of the Body — Argument of the Phaedrus— The Soul as 
 Self-mover — The Relation of all Souls or Minds to the Divine 
 Intelligence, 198-220
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 FINAL RESULTS OF THE IDEALISM OF PLATO. 
 
 The Relation of the Ideal to the Phenomenal World— The Ideal 
 World Organic in itself — Distinction of its Differences from the 
 Differences of the Phenomenal World — The Question whether 
 Plato misconceived the Abstraction of Science — The Limit 
 and the Unlimited in the Philehus — Distinction of Being and 
 Becoming, of Knowledge and Opinion, in the Timaeus — The 
 Substratum of the Changing Qualities of the Phenomenal 
 World — Its Identification with Space — The Phenomenal as 
 an Image of the Ideal — Dilemma as to its Reality— How 
 the Conditions of Time and Space cause Imperfection — The 
 Distinction of the Conditions and the Causes of Things — The 
 Goodness of God as the Cause of the Existence of the World — 
 The Soul as a Mediating Principle between Mind and Body — 
 Mathematical Principles as Intermediates between Ideas and 
 Sensible Things— The Universe as the Only-Begotten Son of 
 God— The Mystic and Idealistic Aspects of Plato's Philosophy 
 —Is God for Plato Transcendent or Immanent ? , 221-259 
 
 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM PLATO TO ARISTOTLE. 
 
 Supposed Opposition between the Platonic and Aristotelian 
 Types of Mind — Aristotle's Relation to Plato — Plato's Ten- 
 dency to Unify and Aristotle's to Distinguish— Ambiguity of 
 the two Doctrines, that the Individual is the Real, and that 
 the Universal is the Real — How they Differ and how they 
 may be Reconciled — Common Source of Error in both Philo- 
 sophies — Aristotle's Empiricism — His Conception of Organic 
 Unity and Development — How far he carries these Ideas — 
 Man as a Complex Being not One with Himself — That Dis- 
 cursive Reason and the Feelings of Love and Hate belong to 
 the Perishable Part of Man— Aristotle ultimately more 
 Dualistic than Plato, 260-285
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON IN ITS PRACTICAL USB. 
 
 The Definition of the Soul— The Life of Nutrition and Repro- 
 duction in Plants— The Life of Sensation and Appetite in 
 Animals— The Life of Reason and Will in Man— The Division 
 of the Practical from the Contemplative Life— Beginnings of 
 this Division in Plato and its Completion in Aristotle— Sense 
 in which Ethics is a Science— Dependence of Moral Science 
 upon Practice— How it can assist Practice— Man as a aOpSeTov 
 —The Bliss of the Contemplative Life— How far Man can 
 Partake in it— The Religious Aspect of Ethics and of the 
 Contemplative Life, 286-314 
 
 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON IN ITS THEORETICAL USE. 
 
 Aristotle's View of the Relation of Reason and Passion— His 
 Ambiguous Utterances as to the Will— Tendency to forget 
 the Unreflective Activity of Reason— Difficulties in Relation 
 to the Free Activity of Reason in Contemplation — Experience 
 as the Beginning of all Knowledge— Conception of Science as 
 Demonstration— Various Views of Scientific Method— Aris- 
 totle's Actual Method higher than his Logical Theory- 
 Connexion of his Method with his Individualism— Whether an 
 Individual Substance can be regarded as part of a more Com- 
 prehensive Individual Substance— Diflaculties in the Definition 
 of Substance— Account of Reason in the De Anima— Its two 
 Aspects— Its Relation to Objects— Distinction of Actual and 
 Potential Reason— The Relation of Reason t<f Sense— The 
 Intuitive Reason and its Freedom from Error— Sensible and 
 Intelligible Matter— How far Intuitive Reason frees itself 
 from both— Difficulties as to the purely Affirmative Nature of 
 Intuitive Reason— Whether the Object of Aristotle's Intuitive 
 Reason is Abstract— Tendency to Mysticism as the Result of 
 Aristotle's View, 315-349
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG TO THEORETICAL OR TO 
 PRACTICAL REASON? 
 
 Aristotle's Exaltation of Theory contrasted with Kant's View 
 of the Primacy of Practical Reason — Kant's View of Experi- 
 ence and its Relation to the Ideas of Reason — The Ideas of 
 God, Freedom and Immortality — Knowledge and Belief — 
 Belief founded on the Will to Believe — Likeness and Differ- 
 ence of the Kantian and the Aristotelian views — Insufficiency 
 of Subjective Grounds of Belief — Kant's View of the Relation 
 of Teleology and Mechanism — Teleological Conceptions in 
 Modern Biology — How Kant supplies the Means of Tran- 
 scending his own Conception of Knowledge — Relation of 
 Consciousness and Self-consciousness — The Identity beneath 
 the Difference of Reason and Will — Relativity of the Opposi- 
 tion of What Is to What Ought To Be— Aristotle's View of 
 the Relation of Formal and Final to Efficient and Material 
 Causes — The False Ideal of Exact Science — In what Sense 
 the Highest Object is the Simplest — Why we find Contin- 
 gency in the Lives of Animals and Men — The Unity of the 
 Ideal and the Real — The Unity of the Theoretical and the 
 ft-actical Consciousness, .... . . 350-382
 
 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 THE EELATION OF RELIGION TO THEOLOGY. 
 
 A GREAT part of the scientific and philosophical work 
 of this century has been the application of the idea 
 of evolution to the organic world and to the various 
 departments and interests of human life. And, as 
 religion is the most comprehensive of all these 
 interests — that which goes highest and lowest in 
 man, and, as it were, sums up in itself all other 
 interests — it was inevitable that the attempt should 
 be made to throw new light on it by means of this 
 idea. I need not dwell upon the importance and 
 extent of the researches into the whole history of 
 man's religious life which have been prompted and 
 guided by this conception, nor upon the variety 
 of interpretations which have been given to it. In 
 a set of lectures delivered in another University,-^ 
 I endeavoured to deal with certain aspects of the 
 subject. I there tried to show, in the first place, 
 
 ^ The Evolution of Religion (MacLehose & Sons, Glasgow). 
 VOL. I. A.
 
 2 THE RELATION OF 
 
 what is the principle that underlies and finds ex- 
 pression in the religious life of man, or, in other 
 words, what it is that makes him a religious being, 
 a being who in all ages has been conscious of himself 
 as standing in vital relation to a supreme object of 
 reverence and worship whom he calls God. In 
 the second place, I tried to show that, while this 
 consciousness of God finds an adequate expression 
 only in the highest forms of religious thought and 
 experience, we can detect the beginnings of it, under 
 very crude and elementary forms, even in the super- 
 stitions of savages. And, though our knowledge does 
 not yet enable us, if it ever will enable us, to solve 
 many of the problems connected with the transmission 
 and filiation of the religious movements of different 
 times and nations, yet we can trace out a fairly distinct 
 and continuous series of stages through which the 
 religious life of man has passed. 
 
 There is, however, one aspect of this process of 
 development which is worthy of special attention, and 
 on which I could only touch incidentally in my former 
 lectures. This is the great and growing importance 
 of reflective thought — in other words, of the conscious 
 reaction of mind upon the results of its own un- 
 conscious or obscurely conscious movements — in the 
 sphere of religion. The impulse which makes man 
 religious, and which determines the character of the 
 object worshipped as well as the manner of worship.
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 3 
 
 may be a rational one, but it is certainly not due 
 in the first instance to the activity of conscious 
 reason. As man tbmks and argues, makes judgments 
 and draws inferences, long before he begins to examine 
 into the nature and laws of the logical process, as 
 he builds up for himself some kind of social order 
 and learns to observe moral rules and customs long 
 before he thinks of asking for any ultimate principle 
 of ethics, so he is a religious being long before he 
 seeks to understand or to criticise, to maintain or to 
 dispute the validity of the religious consciousness. 
 Theology is not religion ; it is at best the philosophy 
 of religion, the reflective reproduction and explana- 
 tion of it ; and, as such, it is the product of a time 
 that has outgrown simple faith and begun to feel the 
 necessity of understanding what it believes. Early 
 religion does not trouble itself about its own justifica- 
 tion : it does not even seek to make itself intelligible. 
 It manifests itself in a ritual rather than a creed. 
 And even when, as in Greece, it becomes more articu- 
 late and rises to some imaginative expression of itself 
 in a mythology which can furnish a theme for art 
 and poetry, yet, even then, it does not ask for any 
 reason for its own existence, or attempt to gather up 
 its general meaning and purport in a doctrine. It is 
 intuitive rather than reflective, practical rather than 
 speculative, conscious rather than self-conscious. It 
 hae a vigorous life, which maintains itself against all
 
 4 THE RELATION OF 
 
 the other interests of man and strives to subdue and 
 assimilate them to itself ; but it does not endeavour 
 to formulate its own principle or estimate its relations 
 to these other interests. We are a long way down 
 the stream of religious history ere we meet with 
 anything like a book-religion, i.e. a religion that has 
 a sufficiently definite view of itself to fix its own 
 image in a sacred literature. And from that there 
 is still a long way to traverse ere we find any attempt 
 made to liberate the religious idea from its imaginative 
 dress, to define the character of the object of worship, 
 or to discuss its relations to nature and to man. 
 
 Nevertheless man is from the first self-conscious, 
 and he is continually on the way to become more 
 clearly conscious of himself and of all the elements 
 and phases of his being. Slow as may be the 
 movement- of his advance, the time must at last 
 come when he turns back in thought upon him- 
 self, to measure and criticise, to select and to 
 reject, to reconsider and remould by reflexion, 
 the immediate products of his own religious life. 
 And though he can never metaphorically, any 
 more than literally, ' stand upon his head ' ; though 
 the day will never come when, in Goethe's sati- 
 rical phrase, the world shall be held together by 
 philosophy and not by hunger and love ; though, 
 in short, man cannot lay the foundations of his 
 existence in conscious reason, or build it up from
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 5 
 
 beginning to end with deliberate plan and purpose ; 
 yet in the long process of his history the part 
 played by reflexion must become more and more 
 important. Even if we allow that reflective thought 
 cannot originate any entirely new moral or religious 
 movement, yet it is inevitable that it should 
 become continually more powerful to disturb and to 
 modify religious faith, and that, in consequence, 
 man's hold of beliefs which he cannot justify to 
 himself should become more and more relaxed. 
 Nay, it is inevitable that the results of reflective 
 criticism should enter more and more deeply into 
 the very substance of religion itself, so that it be- 
 comes scarcely possible for those who hold it to 
 avoid theorising it. 
 
 Thus, to take an obvious instance, the later 
 religion of the Jews was no longer that simple 
 religious sentiment which held the race of Israel 
 together by binding them all to the God of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It had become enriched 
 with wider thoughts by the chequered experiences 
 of its national history, by the captivity and exile 
 — which, as it were, tore it away from its natural 
 root and forced it to seek a new and spiritual 
 principle of life — by the manifold relations of sym- 
 pathy and antagonism with other peoples into which 
 the Hebrews were brought. Thus it was that 
 the most narrowly national of all races gradually
 
 6 THE RELATION OF 
 
 became the organ of a spirit of prophecy, which looked 
 forward to the universal reign of a God of all men, 
 whose worshippers should be distinguished not by 
 race but only by the energy and purity of their 
 moral life. For it may fairly be said that if the 
 prophets still put forward a claim for the supremacy 
 of Israel, it was rather as the leader of humanity in 
 the path of spiritual progress than as a specially 
 privileged and exclusive nationality. A religion 
 that thus rose into the atmosphere of universality, 
 freeing the spirits of its worshippers from the bonds 
 of time and place, was no product of mere feeling or 
 unconscious reason. It showed in its inmost texture 
 the working of reflexion, and its life could be sus- 
 tained only by continued reflexion. It was so far 
 lifted above all that was local and particular in 
 Judaism that it could encounter the speculative 
 thought of Greece almost upon equal terms. It 
 had become itself something like a philosophy, and 
 could, therefore, in Alexandria and elsewhere, easily 
 make terms with another philosophy, and blend or 
 coalesce with it into a new product. 
 
 And what is true of the religion of Israel is still 
 more true of Christianity. Springing out of a 
 Judaism which was already deeply tinged with 
 Greek ideas, and developing itself under the con- 
 stant pressure of Greek influences, Christianity was 
 from the first what we may call a reflective re-
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 7 
 
 ligion, a religion which gathered into itself many of 
 the results of both Eastern and Western thought. 
 Already in the New Testament, it is not only a 
 religion, but it contains, especially in the writings 
 of St. Paul, the germs of a theology. Hence, strictly 
 speaking, it has never been, and can never be, a 
 religion of simple faith ; or, if it ever relapses into 
 such a faith, it immediately begins to lose its 
 spiritual character, and to assimilate itself to re- 
 ligions that are lower in the scale. It is not 
 merely that, as Anselm and the Schoolmen generally 
 contended, it is allowable for the Christian to 
 advance from faith to reason, from veneratio to 
 delectatio, but that, for him, not to do so is speedily 
 to lose hold of that which is most valuable in his 
 faith. And if he yields to a fear of the dangers 
 of reflexion, with the doubt and perplexity which 
 attend it, and declines into the easier path of 
 reliance on some kind of authority, he will inevit- 
 ably turn his creed into a dead formula and his 
 worship into a superstition. This does not, of 
 course, mean that a true Christian must be a 
 philosopher — philosophy is a special department of 
 activity like any other — but it means that the 
 Christian cannot in the long run maintain his faith 
 unless he is continually turning it into living 
 thought, using it as a key to the difficulties of life, 
 and endeavouring to realise what light it throws on
 
 8 THE RELATION OF 
 
 his own nature and on his relations to his fellow- 
 men and to God. And, if he does so, however 
 small may be his speculative powers, his religion is 
 on the way to become a theology. 
 
 Here, however, we meet with one of our greatest 
 difficulties, a difficulty which, more than any other, 
 has embarrassed the development of religion during 
 the last two centuries. For it is an obvious fact 
 that philosophy or reflective thought has often been 
 regarded, and not seldom has regarded itself, not as 
 the ally and interpreter, but as the enemy of the 
 faith in which religion begins ; not as evolving and 
 Elucidating, but as disintegrating and destroying, the 
 beliefs which are the immediate expression of the 
 religious life. And sometimes also it has undertaken 
 to provide a more or less efficient substitute for 
 them. This was the claim put forward in behalf 
 of the so-called Natural Pteligion by many represen- 
 tatives of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, 
 and it has been supposed to be put forward by the 
 adherents of some later systems of thought. On 
 the other hand, there have been, and there are, many 
 who hold that the teaching of reason and philosophy 
 upon religious subjects is mainly negative ; that its 
 chief result is to show that all religious faith is 
 what Matthew Arnold called extra-belief {Aherglauhe), 
 an illusion of the imagination and the feelings for 
 which there is no rational evidence ; or at least
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 9 
 
 that, if it does substitute anything for the complex 
 creeds of Christendom, it is something so vague and 
 general that it cannot have any important influence 
 upon the life of man. Thus the Supreme Being of 
 Deism was so distant and abstract a conception that 
 it could scarcely be said to do more than keep the 
 place open for a possible God. And Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer does not substantially alter the case, when 
 he claims the whole sphere of attainable knowledge 
 for science, and generously gives up to religion the 
 infinite spaces of the Unknowable. For a worship 
 of the Unknowable would at best only serve the 
 purpose of the lictor who in the midst of a Koman 
 triumph reminded the victorious Imperator that he 
 too was mortal. Eeligion, on such a basis, would be 
 nothing but a recognition of the impassable bounds 
 of the flammantia moenia mundi, the inevitable limits 
 of human knowledge and human destiny. It could 
 not be — what Christianity and all the higher religions 
 have claimed to be — the great power that consecrates 
 and idealises the life of man by relating it to that 
 which is eternal and divine. 
 
 Such a view of reason as the rival or enemy of faith 
 is naturally met, on the other side, by a proclamation 
 of faith as the enemy of reason. If natural religion 
 be set up as the substitute for revealed religion, it 
 is eagerly pointed out by some theologians that the 
 substitute is inefficient ; that, as it rests upon abstract
 
 10 THE RELATION OF 
 
 thought, it can at best meet the wants only of the few 
 who live by thouglit, and that, even for them, it is a 
 precarious and uncertain possession ; since it is devoid 
 of that power of interesting the feelings and transform- 
 ing the life which belongs to the beliefs that come 
 to us in a more direct way, prior to and independent 
 of the deliberate action of the intelligence. On the 
 other hand, if it be argued that reason is entirely 
 opposed to the claims of faith, that its attempts 
 to deal with the problem of religion inevitably lead to 
 a conviction that the problem is insoluble by any of 
 the methods of human science, and that, therefore, the 
 only rational creed is Agnosticism — this very argument 
 is apt to be accepted by religious men as a confession 
 of the incapacity of reason to deal with the highest 
 interests of man's spiritual life. In this way many 
 Eoman Catholic writers like De Maistre, and many 
 Protestant writers like Mansel and, to a certain extent 
 also, Mr. Balfour, have tried to maintain the cause 
 of religion on the basis of philosophical scepticism. 
 They have contended that reason, except within the 
 limits of empirical science, is a purely analytical 
 and therefore disintegrating agency, which can create 
 nothing and develop nothing, and which tears up 
 by the roots the tree of life in the effort to see 
 how it grows. They have sometimes endeavoured, 
 on the basis of the Kantian criticism of knowledge, 
 to show that, in face of the great problems of life —
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 11 
 
 of all the problems, in fact, with which religion is 
 specially concerned — reason is placed between two 
 alternatives, neither of which it is able to accept as 
 true. And they have in various ways tried to exploit 
 this incompetence of reason in the interests of faith, 
 sometimes of faith in an external authority, at other 
 times of a faith in some immediate or intuitive 
 consciousness which is maintained to be prior to 
 reason and above its criticism. 
 
 Now, whatever side we take in such a controversy, 
 the result seems to be that there is a deep and 
 apparently incurable schism in the spiritual life of 
 man, a schism between his unconscious and his con- 
 scious life ; or, as we may perhaps more accurately 
 state it — since man is always in a sense both conscious 
 and self-conscious — a schism between man's immediate 
 experience and the reflexion in which he is involved 
 whenever he attempts to understand himself. And 
 instead of a fides quacrens intellcdicm, a faith which 
 is simply the first direct grasp of the soul at truth, 
 and which therefore leads on necessarily to the more 
 adequate comprehension and appreciation of it, we 
 have, on the one side, a faith that withdraws itself 
 from criticism by raising a plea against the com- 
 petence of the critic, and, on the other, a reason 
 which treats faith as another name for illusion. 
 
 Now, it seems to me that we can to some extent 
 sympathise with the motives of both sides in this
 
 12 THE RELATION OF 
 
 old controversy. On the one hand, a faith which 
 is not seeking intelHgence is a faith which is stunted 
 and perverted ; for, as we have seen, the very nature 
 of religion, and especially of the Christian religion, 
 involves and stimulates reflexion upon the great 
 issues of life. Hence the attempt to defend 
 Christianity by questioning the right of the intelli- 
 gence to criticise it, is suicidal. The bulwark which 
 it sets up for the defence of religion is also a barrier 
 in the way of its natural development; and a 
 rehgion which does not develop must soon die. 
 The faith that does not seek, but shuns and repels 
 knowledge, is already losing its rational character. 
 The exclusion of science from the sphere of religion 
 — meaning, as it does, also the exclusion of religion 
 from the sphere of science — necessarily leads to its 
 withdrawal from other spheres of human life until, 
 instead of being the key to all other interests, 
 religion becomes a concern by itself, and, we might 
 almost say, a private concern of the individual. 
 
 On the other hand, it seems difficult to admit the 
 claim of science at all without making it so absolute 
 as to leave no room for faith ; and that whether 
 religion be conceived as irrational or as rational. 
 For while, in the former case, religion is set aside 
 and Agnosticism takes its place, in the latter case 
 it seems as if faith must equally disappear, because 
 reason provides a complete substitute for it, a
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 13 
 
 religio philosophi which is based on a definite 
 philosophical conception of the nature of God, and 
 a definite proof of His existence. Thus, if it be 
 admitted that a scientific interpretation of religion 
 is possible, it might seem that this interpretation 
 must take the place of religion itself; that, if faith 
 can be explained by reason, reason must become 
 the nemesis of faith. Moreover, it is impossible 
 that religion can be rationalised without being 
 greatly modified; and if such a transformation be 
 justifiable, how can we regard the first form of 
 religion as more than a temporary and provisional 
 scaffolding which has to be removed when the build- 
 ing is completed ? Thus, to treat the claims of 
 knowledge as absolute seems fatal to faith ; but, on 
 the other hand, it is futile to admit the right of 
 intelligence to examine and criticise up to a certain 
 point and no farther. All such compromises between 
 reason and faith must break down, because we 
 can find no third power beyond both to determine 
 their respective limits ; while, if we allow either 
 reason or faith to determine them, the power which 
 does so is ipso facto recognised as supreme. In 
 particular, if reason be limited by anything but 
 itself, it is enslaved ; it becomes, as the Scholastic 
 theologians maintained it should be, the ancilla 
 fidei ; and the voice of a slave has no authority : 
 it can add no weight to the word of the master.
 
 14 THE RELATION OF 
 
 It is impossible that religion can receive any 
 real aid or service from the activity of philoso- 
 phical reflexion unless such reflexion is absolutely 
 free. And if it be free, it seems as if it could 
 recognise no right but its own, as if it must set 
 aside as irrelevant all beliefs and doctrines which 
 have arisen independently of its own action, and as 
 if, in building up its scientific creed, it must clear 
 the ground of all that occupied it before. Yet, if it 
 does so, the fate of the eighteenth century Enlight- 
 enment, and that of the Agnosticism of the present 
 day, seem to show that religious belief is likely to 
 evaporate in our hands, or to reduce itself to some- 
 thing so vague and empty that it can hardly have 
 any influence upon the life of man. 
 
 I have been trying to put as sharply as possible 
 a dilemma which has greatly exercised the minds of 
 men during the last two centuries, and which is still 
 the source of perplexity to many. On the one hand, 
 it seems as if religious faith must seek reason, as a 
 condition of its own life ; and yet that, in seeking 
 reason, it seeks its own destruction. It must seek 
 reason: for it is impossible that any real faith can 
 live without attempting to understand itself or develop 
 its own intellectual content ; and when it has once 
 entered upon this course, it cannot stop short of the 
 end. If it appeals to reason, to reason it must go. 
 And if at any point it becomes apprehensive, and
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 15 
 
 endeavours to put a stop to the process of reflexion 
 and criticism, above all if it calls in the aid of 
 scepticism to defend it against such criticism, it loses 
 something of its sincerity, its wholeness of heart, and 
 of the courage and freedom that goes only with such 
 sincerity. Thus it is driven back upon itself and 
 deprived of that firm hold upon thought and life 
 which it formerly possessed. The result is that 
 religion, which should be the great principle of unity 
 in human life, becomes the source of the most un- 
 happy of all its divisions. Or if, again, the other 
 alternative be adopted, and it is recognised that, in 
 an age of science, religion, like everything else, must 
 submit to criticism on pain of losing its moral in- 
 fluence, it seems as if, at the best, we were inviting 
 such an idealistic re-interpretation of Christianity as 
 has been attempted by Kant, by Schelling, and by 
 Hegel : and then, it is alleged by many, we are 
 substituting for a religion of the heart and will, a 
 religion of the intellect that dissolves away all those 
 personal relations of God and man which constitute 
 the living power of Christianity. And if this be the 
 best, what is the worst ? It is that all such attempts 
 to explain or reconstitute religion upon a new basis 
 should fail, or, like the Natural Eeligion of the 
 eighteenth century, should dissolve away in abstrac- 
 tion, and leave us with nothing to correspond to 
 religion except the consciousness that beyond all that
 
 16 THE RELATION OF 
 
 we can feel and know there is an infinite unknown, 
 and that, in short, we ourselves 
 
 "are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Now there cannot be any doubt that this is a real 
 difficulty, which has produced and is now more than 
 ever producing a division in our life, and ranging us 
 in opposite ranks, and that not on the ground of any 
 individual or class prejudice, but on the ground of 
 what are really the highest interests of man's in- 
 tellectual and moral life : setting on the one side 
 those who feel that the powers of man's spiritual 
 nature can be fully drawn out only by a religion 
 that makes the strongest personal appeal to his will 
 and affections, and who therefore cling to forms of 
 belief which they refuse to criticise and try to exempt 
 from criticism : and setting on the other side those to 
 whom the most vital of all causes is the cause of 
 truth and intellectual honesty, and who are there- 
 fore prepared to accept the results of free enquiry, 
 even if it should tear away from them everything 
 they would wish to believe. Nay, this is a division 
 which everyone who is open to the intellectual in- 
 fluences of the time must feel in himself, as a 
 conflict, or apparent conflict, between two claims, 
 both of which rise out of his own nature. There are 
 many writings of the last century which might be
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 17 
 
 adduced as evidence of the prevalence of such a state 
 of mmd. Thus in reading Mill's Essays on Religion — 
 a book which attracted much attention when it was 
 first published — we can see that the author is con- 
 tinually asking himself how much he may still believe 
 and hope, how much of Christianity he may retain 
 consistently with his scientific integrity. And there 
 are at the present day numerous writers, like Pro- 
 fessor James, who maintain that there is a point at 
 which we have a right, without any other evidence, 
 to take what we think most desirable for our own 
 spiritual life as by that very fact sufficiently evidenced 
 to be true ; a point at which, in short, belief may 
 be safely founded on the ' will to believe.' Yet from 
 this there is only a step to the acceptance of the 
 principles of Newman's Grammar of Assent, which 
 asserts the right — in the general impossibility of find- 
 ing sufficient evidence for any kind of religious truth 
 — to treat insufficient evidence as if it were sufficient- 
 On the other hand, there are many who regard all 
 such expedients for the establishment or restoration 
 of faith as more or less refined adaptations of Pascal's 
 straightforward counsel : " II faut s'abetir " ; and who, 
 therefore, think themselves obliged to accept the 
 conclusion that our advancing knowledge is only 
 making us more clearly realise the limits of our life 
 and the impossibility of our discovering either whence 
 it comes or whither it goes, or what is the unknown 
 
 VOL. I, B
 
 18 THE RELATION OF 
 
 power that rules it; and that the intense life of 
 religious faith, in which so much that is great in the 
 past life of man had its source and spring, was based 
 upon an illusion, with which, for good or evil, we 
 must learn henceforth to dispense. 
 
 Now, it cannot be denied that much remains to 
 be done ere such difficulties as these can be solved 
 or removed. But I think that there is already in 
 our hands, in the idea of Evolution, a kind of 
 Eirenicon or means of bringing the opposing sides 
 nearer to an understanding with each other. In 
 particular, that idea enables us to throw some new 
 light upon the relations of the unconscious or unre- 
 flective to the conscious or reflective life, as stages 
 or factors in the development of man ; and thus, as 
 it were, to break off the horns of the dilemma of 
 which we have been speaking — a dilemma which 
 really arises from their being sharply and abstractly 
 opposed to each other. For, in the first place, in 
 the very idea that they are two factors or stages 
 of one life, it is involved that they are not governed 
 by two absolutely antagonistic principles, but that 
 there is an essential link of connexion between 
 them. Their difference and opposition, however far 
 it may reach, must ultimately be conceived as 
 secondary and capable of being explained from their 
 unity. Their conflict, in short, must be taken as 
 analogous to the conflict of different members or
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 19 
 
 forms of vital activity in one organism, a competition 
 which in the healthy organism is always subordinated 
 to co-operation, or at least only ceases to be co-operation 
 at a lower stage that it may become co-operation at a 
 higher. It is thus that in organic evolution greater 
 differentiation of function proves itself to be the 
 means to deeper integration and more concentrated 
 unity. And in this unity nothing that was valuable 
 in the lower stage of life is ultimately sacrificed, 
 however much the form may be changed. 
 
 Applying this to the case before us, we cannot 
 admit that there is any fatal opposition between the 
 unconscious or unreflective movement of man's mind 
 and that which is conscious and reflective. It is 
 the same reason that is at work in both, and all 
 that reflexion can do is to bring to light the pro- 
 cesses and categories which underlie the unreflective 
 action of the intelligence, and, in doing so, to make 
 the use of them more deflnite and adequate. We 
 must, therefore, maintain that, though reason may 
 accidentally become opposed to faith, its ultimate 
 and healthy action must preserve for us, or restore 
 to us, all that is valuable in faith. Or, if it 
 necessarily comes into collision with faith at a 
 certain stage of development, at a further stage this 
 antagonism must disappear, or be reduced within 
 ever narrower limits. Nay, in the long run a 
 living faith will absorb into itself the elements of
 
 20 THE RELATION OF 
 
 the criticism which is directed against it, and grow 
 by their means into a higher form of religious life. 
 We are too often disposed to say : Fiat justitia, mat 
 coelum, and to forget that justice sustains the 
 universe, and cannot be the cause of its ruin. And 
 so we are too apt to think the division of faith 
 and reason to be incurable, and to suppose that 
 we must choose the one and reject the other; 
 forgetting that a faith that really springs out of 
 our rational or spiritual nature, or commends itself 
 to it, cannot be fundamentally irrational or incap- 
 able of being explained and defended ; and that 
 a reason which is unable to find an intelligible 
 meaning in some of the deepest experiences of 
 human souls, must be one-sided and imperfectly 
 developed. Hence, while we cannot deny the relative 
 opposition of the two forms of spiritual life, and 
 are indeed obliged to recognise it as one of the 
 most potent factors in development, we cannot admit 
 that it is an absolute opposition. 
 
 Nor, again, is it possible to be satisfied with a 
 conception of progress that has often been advocated 
 in the last century, by no one more forcibly than 
 by Thomas Carlyle, the conception of an alternation 
 of two different eras of human history — an era of 
 intuition, faith, and unconsciousness, in which the 
 minds of men are at one with themselves, and work 
 joyfully and successfully in the service of some idea
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 21 
 
 which inspires them, but which they never seek to 
 question or analyse, and an era of reflexion in 
 which the " native hue of resolution is sicklied 
 o'er with the pale cast of thought," in which faith 
 grows weak, and the symbols which formerly satisfied 
 the souls of men, and united them with each other, 
 are dissected and torn to pieces by scepticism. 
 Apparently Carlyle has little consolation for those 
 who are born in such an unhappy age of transition, 
 except to bid them wait for a new inspiration, a 
 new imaginative synthesis, which shall set up another 
 symbol in place of that which has disappeared. 
 Least of all has he any trust in the reflective in- 
 telligence, in the work of thought, as capable of 
 bringing about such a synthesis or substantially 
 contributing towards it. But a deeper consideration 
 of the process in question may show, as I have 
 already indicated, that the two great movements 
 which constitute it, the movement of unconscious 
 construction, faith and intuition, and the movement 
 of reflective analysis and critical reconstruction, are 
 not essentially opposed, but rather form the necessary 
 complements of each other in the development of 
 man's spiritual life : and that, as it is essential to 
 faith that it should develop into reason, so the 
 criticism of faith, as it is a criticism by reason of 
 its own unconscious products, cannot be ultimately 
 destructive or merely negative in its effect. Its
 
 22 THE RELATION OF 
 
 searching fires may, indeed, burn up much of the 
 wood, hay, stubble — the perishable adjuncts that 
 attach themselves to the edifice of human faith 
 — but they cannot touch the stones of the building, 
 still less the eternal foundation on which it is 
 built. I will not conceal my conviction that its 
 dissolving power must be fatal to many things 
 which men have thought and still think to be 
 bound up with their religious life, but I do not 
 believe that it will destroy anything that is really 
 necessary to it. Christianity is not, like some 
 earlier religions, essentially connected with imagin- 
 ative symbols, which must lose their hold upon 
 man's mind so soon as he is able to distinguish 
 poetry from prose. It had its origin, as we have 
 seen, in an age which was, up to a certain point, 
 an age of reflexion, and the first movement of its 
 life was to break away from the local and national 
 influences of the region in which it was born. It 
 lived and moved from the beginning in an atmos- 
 phere of universality, and in spite of the reactionary 
 influences to which in its further history it was 
 exposed and which gradually affected its life and 
 doctrine, it never lost its essentially universal 
 character. Hence, when its official representatives 
 had turned it into a system of superstition and 
 obstruction, its own influences have often inspired 
 the reformers and revolutionists who attacked and
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 23 
 
 overthrew that system. It has thus, we might 
 say, brought " not peace but a sword " mto the 
 life of men, because it would not let them rest 
 in any partial or inadequate solution of their 
 difficulties, or in anything short of the ideal of 
 humanity which it set before them. Such a uni- 
 versal religion, built upon the idea of the unity 
 of man with God, and therefore on the conviction 
 that the universe in which man lives is in its 
 ultimate meaning and reality a spiritual world, 
 cannot be justly regarded as a transitory phase 
 of human development, or as a creation of feeling 
 and imagination which science and philosophy are 
 bound ultimately to displace. Whatever may be- 
 come of the special doctrines in which it has found 
 its first reflective expression, it contains a kernel 
 which is essentially rational and which cannot but 
 gain greater and greater importance the more man's 
 spiritual life is developed. It has in it a seed of 
 ideal truth which is one with man's mind — the 
 anima natiiraliter Christiana of which Tertullian 
 speaks — and which therefore must grow with its 
 growth and strengthen with its strength. And 
 philosophy, in spite, or rather because, of its critical 
 reaction upon all the products of Christian thought 
 and life, must in the long run supply one of the 
 most important of all the agencies by which that 
 seed is brought to maturity. It must show itself
 
 24 THE RELATION OF 
 
 neither as the enemy of religion, nor as a substitute 
 for it, but as the purest form of its consciousness 
 of itself, and therefore as the great means of its 
 development. 
 
 The view of the evolution of religion and of its 
 relation to theology which I have stated is one that 
 has been gaining ground in modern philosophy ever 
 since the time of Leibniz. It occupies an important 
 place in the theories of all the German idealists 
 from Kant to Hegel, and in those of many other 
 writers who have followed in their footsteps during 
 the last century. From what has been said above, 
 it will be seen that the objections brought against 
 it may be summed up under two heads : they are 
 either the objections of those who would separate 
 philosophy from life or the objections of those who 
 would separate life from philosophy. 
 
 The former class of objections have not seldom 
 been urged by recent critics, generally in the in- 
 terest of religion. If philosophy can explain and 
 criticise religion, still more if it can in any sense be 
 said to give it a new and more rational form, 
 must it not, they ask, set religion aside and 
 take its place ? In other words, does not such a 
 reflective interpretation of religion involve the sub- 
 stitution of the philosophy of religion for religion 
 itself, and therefore of a mere intellectual process 
 for an experience which embraces the whole com-
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 25 
 
 plex nature of man, feeling, thought, and will ? If 
 so, then the change of form, which philosophical 
 reflexion brings with it, will involve such a trans- 
 formation of the whole content of religion as well 
 as of the attitude of the individual towards it, that 
 all the vivid interest of immediate religious experi- 
 ence must die out and leave in its place a mere caput 
 mortuum of abstraction or a dialectical movement 
 of thought, which are as far removed from life as 
 the conceptions of pure mathematics. 
 
 Such a view, however, involves an entire misconcep- 
 tion of the work of philosophy and its relation to life. 
 To say that a religion must develop, into a theology 
 does not mean that theology as a system of thought 
 must take the place of religion. It was a fatal 
 inversion of the true order of spiritual things, when 
 doctrines as to the nature of God were treated by 
 so-called Natural Eeligion as the basis of the religious 
 life, instead of being regarded as the results of an 
 effort to interpret it. Philosophy, if we separate 
 it from life, can never be a substitute for life ; it 
 is only life brought to self-consciousness ; and to 
 say that it is higher than the other forms of life 
 is either untrue, or true only in a sense to which 
 no reasonable objection can be taken. It is true 
 only in the sense that a religion which understands 
 itself, which has reflected on the principles on which 
 it is based, is an advance upon a religion that
 
 26 THE RELATION OF 
 
 has not so reflected. But theology no more gives us 
 a new religion than the science of ethics gives us a 
 new morality. Under limitations shortly to be stated, 
 they cannot do so, and if they did, they would be 
 worse than useless. They would be carrying us to 
 another life and another experience, when w^hat we 
 want is to explain the life we are actually leading and 
 the experiences we are having here and now. They 
 would be liable to all the objections of those who 
 say that the philosopher builds up a purely ideal 
 world ' out of his own head.' If any philosopher 
 ever did so, he might justly be left as its sole 
 inhabitant. The only truth in the objection is that 
 — while it is the business of philosophy simply to 
 explain experience, and among other things to 
 explain the religion and morality that exist and 
 not any other — yet it is inevitable that our ethical 
 and religious attitude should be greatly changed by 
 our attaining to a reflective consciousness of the prin- 
 ciples which we had before been using without 
 reflexion. Ethics does not, and cannot produce a 
 morality which is essentially different from the 
 morality of innnediate experience, the morality ex- 
 isting in the intuitive vision of good men, who live 
 up to the highest standard of their time, and in 
 living up to it carry it a step higher. Yet it is 
 true to say that reflexion contributes to moral pro- 
 gress. If, for example, we reflect on the order of
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 27 
 
 the State and bring to light the principle that 
 dominates its activities, the unity that pervades 
 and connects its dispersed rules and institutions, 
 the State becomes in a sense a new thing for us. 
 The consciousness of the meaning of our life must 
 react upon the life itself and conduce to its im- 
 provement by liberating the political idea from the 
 accidents of its temporary embodiment. And so it 
 is with religion. As reflexion advances, it leads to 
 a distinction which is continually growing clearer, 
 between that which is accidental and of temporary 
 value and that which is essential and fruitftil for 
 all time ; and this in turn must bring about a 
 further development of the latter at the expense 
 of the former. Thus as man's progress, in one 
 important aspect of it, is a progress to self- con- 
 sciousness, he is in some sense a new man when 
 he has gained a new consciousness of himself. But 
 it would be repeating the central mistake of the 
 Enlightenment of the eighteenth century to separate 
 speculation from life and to make it a substitute 
 for the experience from which it springs. The main 
 practical use of philosophy is to prune away the 
 accretions of time, to counteract the tendency to 
 stereotype or fossilise particular forms of life and 
 thought, and so to give room for the further growth 
 of the spirit of man. Philosophy is the criticism of 
 life, and to separate it from life or substitute it for
 
 28 THE RELATION OF 
 
 life, would be like attributing to the gardener what 
 is due to the vital forces of the plant. The metaphor, 
 indeed, fails to be adequate, but it fails in a way 
 that tends further to emphasise the principle illus- 
 trated by it. ( For the philosophy that criticises life 
 is an element in the life it criticises, and the treat- 
 ment of it as something independent, something that 
 sets up claims for itself, must end in depriving it of 
 its raison d'Stre and making it barren and unfruitful) 
 On the other hand, if it be an error to attempt 
 to separate philosophy, as the criticism of life, from 
 life itself, it is an equal error to attempt to separate 
 life from philosophy. There is a literal truth in 
 the saying of Socrates, that " a life without criticism 
 is not worthy of being lived by men " ; and even 
 that, strictly speaking, it cannot be lived by them. 
 As I have already attempted to show, the critical 
 reaction of the human mind upon experience begins 
 almost as soon as the experience itself. Least of 
 all is it possible to separate man's highest life, his 
 religious experience, from such a critical reaction ; 
 and in this sense theology begins to exist as soon 
 as religion has taken any definite form. At the 
 same time it is true that the criticism does not 
 separate itself from the thing criticised till a 
 comparatively late stage of human history. It 
 works rather as a silent transforming influence, 
 modifying and improving the beliefs of men or
 
 RELIGION TO THEOLOGY 29 
 
 gradually making one belief obsolete and causing 
 another to triumph over it. 
 
 Looking at it from this point of view, therefore, we 
 may fairly say that the beginning of theology is to 
 be found in Greek philosophy ; for it was in Greece 
 that reflexion first became free, and at the same time 
 systematic. It was in Greece that philosophy first 
 organised itself as a relatively separate interest, over 
 against the immediate practical interests of life. Philo- 
 sophy, indeed, cannot detach itself from life ; in so 
 far as it does so, it must be smitten with barrenness. 
 Its office is to bring life to clear self-consciousness, 
 and because Greek philosophy did this, it acquired 
 and maintained a relative independence. And it 
 is this that gives primary importance to its con- 
 tribution to theology. There is, it is true, a 
 theological philosophy of India, which is earlier in 
 development than Greek philosophy ; but the thought 
 of India, though often subtle and profound, is un- 
 methodical ; and when it goes beyond the most 
 abstract ideas it mixes the forms of imagination 
 with those of religion in a way that does not con- 
 duce to distinct and adequate thinking. And, while 
 it is not easy to ascertain what elements it has 
 contributed to Western theology, it may safely 
 be asserted that its influence was secondary and 
 subordinate. Even in the Neoplatonic philosophy, 
 which is most kindred in spirit with it, the likeness
 
 30 RELIGION AND THEOLOGY 
 
 is mainly at least the result of the independent 
 development of Greek speculation. It was the 
 thought of Greece which, in this as in other de- 
 partments, gave to the philosophical enquiries of 
 Christendom a definite method and a definite aim. 
 It was from Greece that the Fathers of the Church 
 borrowed the forms of thought, the fundamental 
 conceptions of nature and human life, in short, 
 all the general presuppositions which they brought 
 to the interpretation of the Christian faith. Hence 
 it is hardly possible to trace with intelligence the 
 evolution of doctrines either in the early or medieval 
 Church, or in modern times, without a previous 
 study of the development of theology in the Greek 
 philosophers.
 
 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY, 
 
 In the last lecture I said that Theology begins in 
 Greece, or at least that it is not necessary ,to trace 
 it farther back ; for it is there that we find philo- 
 sophical reflexion, upon religion as upon other subjects, 
 for the first time distinctly emancipating itself from 
 sensuous images, and attempting to define its objects 
 by their essential nature and relations to each other. 
 \ Theology is religion brought to self-consciousness. It 
 is tEe reflective analysis of the consciousness of God in 
 its distinctive form, and in its connexion with all our 
 other consciousness of reality. In this technical sense 
 the word Theology first appears in Aristotle, as a 
 name for what was afterwards called Metaphysic, the 
 \ ^ience which seeks to discover and exhibit the funda- 
 mental principles of Being and Knowing, and which 
 therefore finds its ultimate object in God. But, while 
 the word is not found before Aristotle,^ the thing itself 
 
 ^The word 'theologian' occurs in Plato, but only in the sense 
 of a mythologist.
 
 32 STAGES IN THE 
 
 already exists in its full development in Plato, who, 
 for good or evil, is deeply imbued with the theo- 
 logical spirit, and might, indeed, justly _ be called the, 
 first systematic theologian.) In other words, he is 
 the first philosopher who grasped the idea that lies at 
 the root of all religion, and made it the centre of 
 his whole view of the universe. 
 
 Now, that which underlies all forms of religion, 
 from the highest to the lowest, is the idea of God^ 
 as an absolute power or principle. For, as I have 
 attempted to show elsewhere,^ the religious conscious- 
 ness, in its essential meaning, is the consciousness of 
 a Being who embraces all our life and gives unity 
 and direction to it, who lifts us above ourselves and 
 binds our limited and transitory existence to the 
 eternal. It is the consciousness that all our finite ex- 
 perience presupposes and rests upon a principle which 
 comprehends all its various contents and transcends 
 all its differences. It is, finally, the consciousness 
 that, beyond all the objects we perceive without us, 
 and beyond all the states and activities of the self 
 within us, there is a unity which manifests itself in 
 both, and from which neither can be separated. 
 Now, such a consciousness is not an arbitrary product 
 of circumstances ; it is a necessary condition of the 
 development of the mind of man, an experience which, 
 in some form or other, man must make as he comes 
 
 ^ The Evolution of Religion ; see especially I, Lect, 3.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 33 
 
 to realise the meaning of his own life, an idea which 
 is presupposed from the first in all science and all 
 morality, and which must rise to the surface when 
 their nature is understood. It is seldom, indeed, that 
 we recognise fully and distinctly the unity of the 
 whole in which our existence is contained. But when 
 we analyse our experience, and search out its ultimate 
 conditions, we are forced to realise that all that we 
 know is known as a factor in one experience, the 
 experience of one world, and that such a unity is the 
 presupposition of all our consciousness, both of our- 
 selves and of other objects. The idea of the continuity 
 and self-consistency of the intelligible world, as a 
 system which throughout all its differences is the 
 manifestation of one principle, may seem at first to 
 be a distant and difficult conception ; but it is in 
 reality very near to us, and indeed may be shown to be 
 the source of all our spiritual life. To think, to feel, 
 to will — all the forms of our consciousness — are ulti- 
 mately bound up with the idea of an all- comprehend- 
 ing whole; and to believe in a God is, in the last 
 resort, simply to realise that there is a principle of 
 unity in that whole, akin to that which gives unity 
 to our own existence as self-conscious beings. Nor 
 is the truth of this statement affected by the fact 
 that it is the result of a reflective analysis of belief, 
 which goes much beyond the immediate consciousness 
 
 of the believer. 
 
 VOL. I. g
 
 34 STAGES IN THE 
 
 Now, if this be the real or ultimate meaning of 
 religion, as I have attempted elsewhere to show, 
 we are obliged to draw a marked contrast between 
 the religious and the profane or secular consciousness. 
 The secular consciousness — i.e. our ordinary unre- 
 flective consciousness of ourselves and the world — 
 starts from the division and separation of things ; 
 it takes them all, so to speak, as independent sub- 
 stances which might exist by themselves, and whose 
 relations to each other are external and accidental. 
 It deals primarily with the finite, with the manifold 
 forms of existence which limit, and are limited by each 
 other in space and time ; or, if it rises to the eternal 
 and infinite, it is only as to something beyond and 
 far away — something that is not present in experience, 
 but which the limitations and imperfections of ex- 
 perience make us suspect or aspire to, a transcendent 
 something, which we can neither name nor define 
 except as the opposite of the finite. The religious 
 consciousness is the direct antithesis of this way 
 of thinking. It, so to speak, turns the tables upon 
 the whole secular system of thought, beginning where 
 it ends and ending where it begins, " burning what 
 it adores and adoring what it burns," denying or 
 treating as phenomenal and illusive what it regards 
 as most real and certain, and regarding as the first 
 principle of knowledge and reality what to it is the 
 vaguest of abstractions. In other words, the first
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 35 
 
 concern of religion is not with the difference of 
 things from each other, and from the subject that 
 knows them, but with the unity that underlies all 
 these differences. It demands that we should not 
 regard the whole as the sum of the parts or particular 
 existences presented to us one by one in our ordinary 
 experience, but ratlier that we should regard the parts 
 as having a dependent and derived life, which cannot 
 for one moment be severed from the life of the 
 whole, or from the principle of reality which reveals 
 itself therein. If, therefore, it does not deny all reality 
 or independence to the finite, yet it looks first 
 and last to God as the unity from which all comes, 
 to which all tends, and in which all is contained. In 
 its conception of things it takes its stand not at 
 the point of view of any one of them, but at the 
 point of view of the universal principle, in relation 
 to which they are and are known. The language 
 of the natural man — if we may use that expression 
 for the man whose thoughts and feelings are least 
 influenced by religion— would be something like this : 
 " I know most surely and certainly the things which 
 I can see and handle, the outward objects I apprehend 
 through my senses; I also know, in a way, the self within 
 me— though about the soul or self there is something 
 dark and mysterious whenever I try to realise its 
 nature as other, and yet not other, than the body. 
 But when I seek to rise above myself and the objects
 
 36 STAGES IN THE 
 
 I perceive, and to think of a Being who is neither 
 the one nor the other, and yet somehow is the source 
 and end of both, I seem to lose all solid basis either 
 for knowledge or belief, and to be trying to give 
 substance to a dream." On the other hand, the 
 language of the man who looks at the world with 
 the eyes of religion must rather be something like 
 this : " I may be deceived, and am often deceived, 
 as to the things without me, which at best are 
 ever passing and changing. Of the self within me 
 I have a more stable consciousness, as bound up 
 with all that I know or feel, and as the source of 
 a moral ideal which I cannot but regard as absolute ; 
 but even the self seems to escape me when I think 
 of the limits of my earthly existence and of the rapid 
 alternations of my thoughts and feelings. Of one 
 thing, however, I am sure, of the abiding presence 
 and reality that holds together all the shifting phases 
 of the outer and the inner life, of the all-embracing, 
 all-sustaining unity in which I and all things 'live 
 and move and have our being.' Though all else 
 should fail me, I am certain of God." The religious 
 consciousness, therefore, overturns all ordinary 
 standards of value, and sets up a new standard in 
 their place, a standard derived, not from any one 
 finite existence or end, but from the relation of 
 all finite existences and ends to the infinite. For, 
 if the thought of God be admitted at all, it must claim
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 37 
 
 everything for itself, and can leave nothing for Caesar 
 or for any other power. It cannot but demand that 
 we should both understand and estimate everything 
 else in relation to it, that all our knowledge of the 
 universe should ultimately be brought to a focus 
 in the knowledge of God, and that all the objects 
 of our will should be valued only as means to the 
 realisation of God in the world. , 
 
 Now, it may be said, in objection to this view, that 
 such a complete religious inversion of our ordinary 
 consciousness of reality, such a ' transvaluation of 
 all values ' in the light of the infinite, goes very 
 far beyond what we find in many religions, and 
 that, indeed, it is a rare phenomenon even in the 
 highest religion we know. In many religions God 
 seems hardly to be regarded as an absolute being 
 at all, but rather to be identified with some finite 
 object or objects, or at least with some such object 
 idealised, transfigured and lifted by imagination above 
 the ordinary levels of finitude. And even when a 
 more spiritual conception of divinity is attained, 
 yet the relation of the individual to his God often 
 takes a form which seems greatly to fall short of any 
 such consciousness as I have described. It seems to 
 be rather the relation of weak creatures to one 
 who is far stronger than they, and from whom, 
 therefore, they have much to hope and to fear — a 
 relation which, even when it takes the form of
 
 SS STAGES IN THE 
 
 admiration and love, is still analogous to the 
 dependence of one finite being upon another, and 
 not the unique consciousness in a finite creature 
 of his union with the Infinite, in whom he loses, and 
 in whom alone he can find himself. 
 
 Such objections can be met, in the first place, by 
 showing that the religious consciousness, as the con- 
 sciousness of the whole to which we belong, and of the 
 supreme reality of the principle of unity in that whole, 
 is involved in all our consciousness of the universe and 
 of ourselves : and in the second place, that this prin- 
 ciple, though involved in all our thought and activity, 
 is for that very reason the last to be clearly appre- 
 hended by us. Aristotle's assertion that that which 
 is first in nature is last in time, has its highest 
 exemplification here. In the history of man religion 
 does not at first reveal itself in that which is its 
 true or adequate form. It represents God purely 
 as an object or purely as a subject, as manifesting 
 Himself purely without, or again purely within us, 
 before it rises to the consciousness of God as God, 
 the one principle of all knowledge and reality. 
 Yet, even from an early period the true idea is 
 silently working under the imperfect forms of its 
 expression, and giving indications of itself in many 
 w^ays, especially in the language of worship ; for, 
 under the sway of religious emotion, the individual 
 is often carried beyond the limits of his ordinary
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 39 
 
 thought. And the whole history of the evohition 
 of religion is a record of the process whereby it 
 gradually reveals what was latent in it from the 
 beginning and finds ever better ways of represent- 
 ing its object, and whereby these again react in 
 producing a truer relation of the individual to that 
 object, as the principle of his own life and of the 
 life of all things. 
 
 Such considerations — which I have dealt with more 
 fully in another course of lectures ^ — may be sufficient 
 to meet the difficulty of recognising in the various 
 forms of religion what I have asserted to be the 
 principle that underlies them all, and is more or less 
 distinctly expressed in every one of them. Here, 
 however, we have to deal not with religion but 
 with theology, the science or philosophy of religion. 
 And theology, as we have seen, is just religion 
 brought to self-consciousness, and endeavouring 
 reflectively to criticise and interpret its own uncon- 
 scious processes. Theology begins, therefore, as soon 
 as the immediate process of religious life, the direct 
 movement by which our minds rise to the conscious- 
 ness of God, ceases to be sufficient for itself. In other 
 words, it begins when the mind turns back upon 
 itself to question the results of its own spontaneous 
 activity. Here, as elsewhere, science arises in doubt, 
 a doubt which makes the mind retrace in reflective 
 
 ^ The Evolution of Religion, I, Lect. 7.
 
 40 STAGES IN THE 
 
 thought the path in which it has been led by ita 
 first imaginative intuitions of truth, and ask whether 
 it can justify in whole or in part the results at 
 which it has arrived. And the question thus raised 
 is one that brings with it more searching of heart 
 than any other which arises in the transition from 
 intuition to reflexion, from the ordinary consciousness 
 to science. For religion does not affect merely one 
 aspect of life or one department of things. A man's 
 real religion, whatever he may profess, is the summed- 
 up product of all his experience, the ultimate attitude 
 of thought and feeling and will, into which he is 
 thrown by his intercourse with the world. And 
 though this attitude of mind is, in the main, due 
 to the working of what we call unconscious 
 reason, yet the whole nature of man as a rational 
 being comes into play in producing it. Hence the 
 awaking of conscious reason to sift and criticise 
 religion, must bring with it a more serious disturb- 
 ance of the existence of man than any other critical 
 reaction of thought upon life. It must give rise to 
 a movement of doubt and denial, and ultimately to 
 a sifting process which, even if it restores the funda- 
 mental principles of earlier faith, yet inevitably 
 makes great changes in its form, and rejects so 
 much that had formerly seemed essential, that some- 
 times it is difficult to detect the identity which 
 maintains itself through the change.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 41 
 
 Now, this remark has a special application to the 
 development of theology in Greece. The religion 
 of Greece, indeed, especially in its later human- 
 ised polytheism, marks a great advance in the 
 spiritual history of man, a higher appreciation both 
 of his own nature and of his relations to the 
 world than can be discerned in earlier religions. 
 Greek mythology, as it appears in Homer, in Pindar, 
 and in the Tragedians, already shows the same 
 freedom of spirit, the same large outlook upon the 
 facts of human life and destiny, which at a later time 
 manifested itself in the speculations of its philoso- 
 phers. The Greek poets, indeed, wielded their imagin- 
 ative symbols so freely, as a means of expressing all 
 their thoughts and feelings, that the mythology they 
 created or remoulded is like a collection of transparent 
 allegories, through which spiritual truth is con- 
 veyed; and it was but a short step for the philo- 
 sophers who came after them, to drop the symbols 
 altogether and adopt the abstract language of 
 thought. At the same time the imaginative form 
 of Greek mythology exposed it in a peculiar way to 
 the attacks of scepticism, so soon as the intellect 
 of Greece had awakened to the distinction of poetry 
 from prose. The delicate moonlit web of poetic 
 fiction which the Greek imagination had woven 
 around the crude naturalism of pre-historic religion, 
 insensibly softening, colouring, and idealising it, could
 
 42 STAGES IN THE 
 
 not maintain itself in the daylight of a critical 
 age. Hence, at least in all the educated classes, 
 there was a rapid collapse of faith ; and philosophy 
 seemed to have had thrown upon it the task, not only 
 of interpreting religion, but, as it were, of provid- 
 ing a new religion out of itself. Bacon declares 
 that with the ancients moral philosophy took the 
 place of theology : he should rather have said that 
 it tried to supply the want caused by the failure 
 of popular religion. Indeed, the greatest of all the 
 differences between the religious development of 
 Greece and that of Christendom lies just in this, that, 
 in the former philosophy at once breaks away from 
 the tutelage of faith and asserts its independence, 
 nay, claims to provide the only true basis on which 
 the moral and spiritual life can be supported ; 
 whereas, in the latter, there is a long period during 
 which philosophy remains strictly the ancilla fidei ; 
 and when it emancipates itself, it cannot be said, 
 even with those who are most influenced by philoso- 
 phical reflexion, to substitute itself for the religion 
 of faith, but only to seek a rational basis for it, 
 and to subject it to a sifting criticism. 
 
 A consideration of these facts enables us to make 
 a preliminary division of the field which a complete 
 history of theology would have to traverse, and 
 to distinguish three main periods in that history, 
 namely, the period of Greek and Eoman antiquity.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 43 
 
 the Christian era down to the Eeformation, and the 
 modern period. In these lectures I shall confine 
 myself almost entirely to the first of those periods; 
 but it may do something to put our enquiries in 
 their proper setting if we begin by sketching out, 
 in however imperfect a way, the whole field of 
 investigation. 
 
 In the first period, the period of Greek and Eoman 
 antiquity, philosophy is almost absolutely free, hardly 
 even troubled by any counter-claim of authority, in 
 its attempts to discover the nature of things and of, 
 the Being in whom all reality centres. The poetic 
 conceptions of early religion could not, as I have 
 said, stand for a moment the shock of criticism. 
 Sometimes, indeed, we find early philosophers treating 
 mythology as an allegory of the higher truth which 
 is expressed in their own doctrine, while at other 
 times they attacked it as untrue, or set it aside 
 as irrelevant. Seldom or never do we find them 
 treating it as having any value in itself. And 
 if Plato recognises that some other kind of 
 teaching than that given by philosophy is neces- 
 sary for men in the earlier stage of their intel- 
 lectual and moral education — necessary for all in 
 whom the power of philosophical reflexion has 
 not been, or cannot be developed — yet he regards 
 the actual mythology as altogether unfit for 
 such a purpose, and looks for the creation of a
 
 44 STAGES IN THE 
 
 purified body of myths which should convey a 
 better ethical lesson. And, on the other side, 
 closely as religion was bound up with the political 
 life of Greece, we hear of very few attempts to 
 interfere with the freedom of speculation to 
 criticise and refute it. The attack made upon 
 Anaxagoras for the impiety of his physical theories 
 was really aimed at Pericles, whose friend he was. 
 And Socrates is the only martyr of philosophy in 
 the ancient world, the only man who can be said 
 to have suffered for the freedom of thought. After 
 his time philosophy became the natural refuge of 
 all those whose spiritual needs could not be satis- 
 fied by the decaying superstitions of the ancient 
 world. The decline of that independent political 
 life of cities, with which the religion of Greece 
 had been so closely connected, deprived that religion 
 of half its meaning ; and under the empire of 
 Rome the educated classes in ever-increasing 
 numbers found moral support and guidance in the 
 teaching of one or other of the philosophical schools. 
 It is true that to a certain extent the Stoics, and to 
 a still greater extent the Neo-Platonists, endeavoured 
 by an allegorising method to revive in some degree 
 tlie life of mythology, and even to find some rational 
 meaning in the ritual and ceremony of popular 
 religion. And there were some in later times, 
 among whom the most celebrated is the Emperor
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 45 
 
 Julian, who took seriously this curious amalgam 
 of philosophy and superstition. But, at the most, 
 it could only be said that philosophy patronised 
 the popular religion, and not that it formed a real 
 alliance with it, still less paid to it any real 
 deference. 
 
 It may then safely be said that ancient philo- 
 sophy was, at once and almost without effort, free. 
 If it owed much to the religion from which it 
 emerged, it was hardly at all conscious of the debt. 
 And perhaps its imperfection was partly due to the 
 very ease with which it won its freedom. In spiri- 
 tual things the greatness of the price we pay, has 
 much to do with the value of the good we acquire. 
 And one consequence of the facility with which criti- 
 cism disposed of the primitive faiths of the ancient 
 world was, that the purely intellectual life, the life 
 of philosophical reflexion, tended too much to with- 
 draw upon itself and to disconnect itself from the 
 life of feeling and impulse, to break away, in short, 
 from the unconscious basis out of which the life of 
 consciousness arises. This exaltation of conscious as 
 opposed to unconscious reason begins with Socrates, 
 who in teaching that ' virtue is knowledge ' seemed 
 to cast contempt on any virtue which is not the 
 product of distinct reflexion upon the ends of human 
 existence, any virtue that depends upon rule and 
 habit, or upon the influence of society in drawing
 
 46 STAGES IN THE 
 
 out and disciplining the moral energies of man. 
 And though, as we shall see, this defect was partly 
 corrected by Plato and Aristotle, who laid increasing 
 weight upon habit and social training, yet these great 
 writers repeated the same error in a more dangerous 
 form, when they exalted the intellectual above the 
 practical life, and treated the former as that in 
 which alone man could be said to rise into unity 
 with the divine. Against this undue exaltation of 
 the intellect there is a partial reaction in the later 
 schools of the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, in 
 which the guidance of practical life again becomes 
 the great object of philosophy. But this change is 
 less important than it seems. For in these schools 
 ethics was almost entirely divorced from the 
 wider social interests with which in earlier times 
 it had been concerned, and confined to a con- 
 sideration of the ways in which the inner inde- 
 pendence and harmony of the individual soul might 
 be maintained. The Eoman Empire, while estab- 
 lishing outward order and organisation of life among 
 all the races submitted to its rule, had exercised 
 a disintegrating influence upon all the social and 
 political bonds that had hitherto held them together. 
 And philosophy could only accept the result and 
 endeavour to fortify the individual man in his isola- 
 tion, and to bestow upon him that strength of heart 
 and moral self-sufficiency of which he was in need.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 47 
 
 Hence, even more than Socrates, the Stoics and 
 Epicureans tend to concentrate attention upon the 
 inner life, as a sphere to be regulated by con- 
 scious reason and deliberate purpose ; and they 
 show even less respect than he did for the move- 
 ments of natural feeling and immediate impulse. 
 Their philosophical religion is a creation of 
 abstract thought which hardly attempts to connect 
 itself with experience, or to find any interpretation 
 of it. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius live in an 
 ideal world, which they hold, indeed, to be the 
 only reality, but which they hardly attempt to 
 bring into any rational connexion with the facts of 
 their external lives. They are optimists, who yet 
 take an almost pessimistic view of the actual con- 
 ditions of existence in which they find themselves. 
 Their philosophy is rather a refuge from the con- 
 fusion and evil they see around them than a means 
 of removing the appearance of confusion by throwing 
 upon it the light of a higher truth. They seek 
 not to overcome the world but to make themselves 
 indifferent to it. And with the Neo-Platonists, the 
 last of the Greek schools of philosophy, this tendency 
 to withdraw from life and all its problems becomes 
 still more marked. The higher claims of contempla- 
 tion, which had been asserted by Plato and Aristotle, 
 are again put forward and* in a still more exclusive 
 sense ; for while Plato and Aristotle sought to bring
 
 48 STAGES IN THE 
 
 all nature and all the interests of human life within 
 the scope of philosophy, and had made theology only 
 the culminating phase of science which brings all 
 its varied results to a final unity, with the Neo- 
 Platonists this unity becomes in itself the main and, 
 we might almost say, the sole object of interest. 
 Thus theology, absorbing the whole life of philo- 
 sophy, is emptied of its contents, or rather has for 
 its whole content the bare idea of religion. That 
 idea, indeed, is expressed in Plotinus with a depth 
 and comprehensiveness which has hardly anywhere 
 else been equalled ; but we might perhaps say that 
 with him the idea swallows up the reality. Man 
 is left, as it were, alone with God, without any 
 world to mediate between them, and in the ecstatic 
 vision of the Absolute the light of reason is extin- 
 guished. 
 
 It appears, then, that in ancient philosophy thought 
 is free ; but, as it did not pay ' a great price ' for its 
 freedom, as it gained that freedom without any hard 
 struggle with faith and social authority, its emancipa- 
 tion made it lose hold of reality. It tended in the 
 end to an exclusive intellectualism, in which the form 
 of thought was opposed to the matter, and the actual 
 world was not idealised or spiritualised, but rather 
 condemned as un ideal and unspiritual. Nevertheless, 
 the debt of philosophy an(f theology to Greek thought 
 is incalculable. It first distinctly lifted man above
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 49 
 
 vague wonder at a universe he could not comprehend, 
 and gave him courage to define and to measure, to 
 distinguish and to relate, all the forms of his inward 
 and outward life. It first made him ask distinct 
 questions of experience, and taught him the methods 
 by which he could hope to answer them. It first 
 attempted to name and to determine the categories 
 or forms of thought under which we have to bring all 
 things, if we would seek to understand their nature 
 and to exhibit their relations to each other. Finally — 
 what is most important in relation to our subject — 
 it first sought to grasp and verify that idea of the 
 ultimate unity of all things, which lies at the basis of 
 all religion. It thus laid down the indispensable pre- 
 suppositions of all later theological thought, and 
 developed that flexible language of reflexion in which 
 alone its ideal relations could be expressed. If the 
 Eoman empire, by the peace which its organised rule 
 secured, the pads Romanae majestas, provided the 
 external conditions under which Christianity could 
 advance to the conquest of civilised mankind, the 
 philosophy of Greece provided the inward conditions 
 whereby its ideas could be interpreted and brought 
 into that systematic form which was necessary to 
 secure their permanent influence upon the human 
 mind. 
 
 The second stage in the evolution of theology is 
 that in which the conceptions and methods of Greek 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 STAGES IN THE 
 
 philosophy were used to formulate and interpret the 
 new ideas as to the nature of God and man and their 
 relations to each other, which were involved in, or 
 suggested by, the facts of the life of Christ and the 
 spiritual experiences of His followers. To a certain 
 extent the two stages overlap one another ; for Chris- 
 tianity had begun to be developed into a dogmatic 
 system long before Neoplatonic thought had received 
 its culminating expression in Plotinus. The charac- 
 teristic attitude of theology during this whole period 
 is directly the reverse of that which had prevailed 
 during the first period; for whereas in the first 
 period philosophical reflexion was hardly conscious of 
 limitation by any authority, and had not in any way 
 to yield to the immediate claims of the religious con- 
 sciousness, in the whole period of the evolution of 
 Christian doctrine down to the Eeformation philosophy 
 is in a strictly subordinate position. In the early 
 Christian centuries its influence is very great, and, 
 indeed, can hardly be exaggerated ; but it was not 
 recognised. The Fathers did not seem to themselves 
 to be actively developing a system of doctrine, but 
 simply to be handing down the faith once delivered 
 to the saints ; and, though in the Scholastic period 
 philosophy was recognised to have a place of its own, 
 it was strictly that of an instrument to analyse and 
 explain doctrines which were accepted as true on the 
 authority of the Church. While, therefore, there is
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 51 
 
 a real evolution of doctrine, involving great activity 
 of thought and many changes in the interpretation 
 of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, the pre- 
 vailing view of theologians was that they were simply 
 maintaining an immovable truth ; and that, if they 
 had made any alteration in its expression, it was 
 merely of a formal kind, which had no effect upon the 
 substance of the faith. Only once, in the Alexandrian 
 school of theologians, did philosophical reflexion gain 
 a certain independence, and even claim to be a higher 
 way of apprehending the truth; but this was a passing 
 phase in the early history of the Church. 
 
 The result of this process was that each doctrine, 
 as it established itself as one of the articles of 
 faith, tended to become fixed and fossilised, and 
 ceased to have the power of growth ; and the new 
 life of thought seemed rather to transfer itself 
 to fresh questions than to deepen and reinterpret 
 the results already attained. Hence, though we can 
 trace a rational process of development and a real 
 movement of intelligence in the successive steps by 
 which Christianity defined itself, yet this is disguised 
 and to a great extent deprived of its value by the 
 mode in which it took place. For, on the one hand, 
 reason can never show its real power in servitude, or 
 when its weapons are used by those who are not fully 
 conscious of their nature. The conceptions of Plato 
 and Aristotle, of the Stoics and Neo-Platonists, as
 
 62 STAGES IN THE 
 
 employed by those in whom the genuine life of Greek 
 thought was no longer present and who could not 
 criticise the ideas they were using, were often com- 
 bined in an external and mechanical way with the 
 data supplied by Christian life and experience. And, 
 on the other hand, it has to be remembered that these 
 conceptions themselves contained elements that were 
 essentially alien and even hostile to the matter to 
 which they were applied. The consequence was that 
 the movement of theological thought became more 
 forced, unnatural, and fictitious the farther it ad- 
 vanced, till it ended in the production of the great 
 Scholastic systems — systems in which compromise and 
 balance take the place of organic unity, and arguments 
 for foregone conclusions are substituted for scientific 
 or philosophical investigation. Scholastic theology 
 really deserves the character which Mommsen has 
 attributed to all theology : it is " the bastard child 
 of faith and reason." It is the extreme manifestation 
 at once of the slavery of reason and of the necessary 
 recoil of reason against that which has enslaved it. 
 The effort to confine the intelligence to the task 
 of analysing data which it is not allowed to examine, 
 and of arguing from premises which it may not ques- 
 tion, could only end in making it rationalistic, scep- 
 tical, and even destructive. And the Scholastic, while 
 seeming to himself only to be analysing the doctrine 
 of Christianity, really dissected it, and turned it from
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 53 
 
 a living truth into a dead body of dogma. Finally, the 
 Nominalism of the age before the Eeformation practi- 
 cally showed that the Scholastic method was fatal 
 to a Christian, and even to a religious view of life, 
 and made it necessary in the interest of philosophy 
 and theology itself that the long divorce of faith and 
 reason should come to an end. 
 
 What we find, then, in this second period of the 
 history of theology is an external combination of re- 
 ligion with philosophy, and the production of a system 
 of dogma in which the ideas and methods evolved by 
 the free speculation of Greece were used to express 
 and interpret the new principle of Christianity. But 
 the results of such an artificial process, in which the 
 form of thought was derived from one source and the 
 matter from another, were necessarily very inade- 
 quate, and could have only a provisional value. It 
 was inevitable in the long run that the reflective 
 power, called forth by this imperfect attempt to 
 work out the consequences of the new view of life, 
 should turn against its own products. It was in- 
 evitable that modern philosophy, which had grown 
 to maturity under the tutelage of the Church, 
 should reassert the ancient freedom of Greek 
 speculation, and again endeavour to interpret for 
 itself the widening experience of humanity. And 
 this movement of renewal and revival, or, as it is 
 called, Renaissance, soon extended also to religious
 
 54 STAGES IN THE 
 
 experience, when the Eeformers, setting aside the 
 whole system of thought and Hfe which the medieval 
 Church had built upon the foundation of Christianity, 
 tried to put themselves again in direct contact with 
 the life and teaching of Christ. 
 
 The Eeformation, indeed, was far from being, in 
 the first instance, an assertion of those claims of 
 reason which Scholasticism had discredited ; but it 
 contained the germ of a reconciliation between the two 
 factors of man's life, which in the medieval Church 
 had been opposed to each other; for it demanded 
 a faith which should not be the acceptance of the 
 dictates of an outward authority, but the spiritual 
 apprehension of Christianity by each man for himself. 
 Such a faith was really, what a faith in authority 
 could never become, a fides quaerens intellectum, a faith 
 that had in itself the necessity of its own development 
 into reason. And when Descartes put forward his 
 maxim : De omnibus dithitanduin est, and sought to 
 restore philosophy to its rights, as an investigation 
 into truth without any presuppositions, he was really 
 proclaiming that the era of compromise — of the blend- 
 ing of incongruous elements derived from different 
 sources, or of an external truce between opposite prin- 
 ciples — was at an end ; and that the form and matter 
 of thought must henceforth be derived from the same 
 source, and brought into complete unity with each 
 other. Hence modern philosophy, and the theology
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 55 
 
 or view of ' the highest things/ in which it culminates, 
 is, like Greek philosophy, free speculation. It deals 
 with religion, as it deals with the other experiences 
 of life, which it tries with perfect impartiality and 
 disinterestedness to interpret. And when any attempt 
 has been made to limit its freedom, it has reasserted 
 itself in a sceptical and even a revolutionary spirit 
 against all dogma whatsoever, and even against 
 Christianity itself, so far as it was identified with 
 dogma. 
 
 It could not, however, permanently retain such a 
 merely negative attitude. Nor could it fall back upon 
 that indifference to popular religion, which was the 
 general characteristic of the Greek philosophers. It 
 found itself in the presence of a religious experience, 
 which had a far richer content than that of the 
 Greeks, and it was forced to seek for some explanation 
 of that experience. It had to deal with a religion 
 which was not bound up with the peculiarities of any 
 special age or nation, but which from the first has 
 breathed the atmosphere of universality — a religion 
 which found its immediate expression, not in a fanci- 
 ful mythology, but in a life lived under human 
 conditions and carried through suffering and death 
 to a spiritual triumph. It could not escape into 
 abstraction from the influence of this great fact, 
 and of all the experiences to which in the history 
 of humanity it has given rise. Nor could it hope
 
 56 STAGES IN THE 
 
 to discover the ultimate reality of things by with- 
 drawing into the inner life, or by losing all the 
 manifold forms of existence, like Plotinus, in a 
 mystic unity. It was committed to the hard task 
 of idealising a world which in its first aspect seems 
 to know nothing of the ideal; of taking away the 
 commonness of life by the power of a more compre- 
 hensive vision, and finding the key to its discords in 
 a harmony which realises itself through them. It 
 had to seek the essential means for the realisation 
 of its ideal in that very chance and contingency 
 of life, which the greatest of ancient philosophers 
 regarded as inexplicable, or as the result of that ex- 
 ternal necessity which clings to all finite existence. In 
 Christianity we might say that religion was for the 
 first time brought face to face with the whole problem 
 of the world in its vastness and universality, and at the 
 same time in all its complexity of individual concrete 
 detail. It had to idealise life and death, and in a 
 certain sense even sin and evil, and to attain to a 
 more real optimism through the lowest depths ever 
 fathomed by pessimism. And philosophical reflexion 
 upon such a religion was bound to follow in its foot- 
 steps, to face the same difficulties, and find by its own 
 methods a way to the same or to a better solution 
 of them. Hence modern philosophy, though in its 
 earlier stages — in the effort to assert its own free- 
 dom and to establish the first basis of an intelligible
 
 EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 57 
 
 view of the universe — it tended rather to withdraw 
 from the whole sphere of religious thought, and even 
 to regard it with hostility, has been obliged by 
 the necessity of its own development more and more 
 definitely to take cognisance of the Christian system 
 of thought and life. It has been obliged to consider 
 whether in its own way and by its own methods it 
 can reinterpret and justify the thorough-going and 
 fearless idealism and optimism of the founder of 
 Christianity, while bringing it in relation to the 
 whole results of modern life and science. This 
 aspect of its work has gained greater prominence 
 since the days of Kant, in the great speculative 
 movement which he initiated at the end of the 
 eighteenth century. And if it be true that during 
 the course of last century there has been a partial 
 reaction from the premature attempt then made 
 to snatch at the fruits of philosophy before they 
 were quite ripe, I think it may fairly be said that 
 in its later years, after all the great development 
 of science, especially of biological and historical 
 science, there has been a return upon the methods 
 and principles of idealism which, if it be characterised 
 by greater caution, is perhaps on that account the 
 more likely to bring about a permanent result.
 
 LECTUKE THIRD. 
 
 THE PEECUESORS OF PLATO. 
 
 In the last lecture I suggested that Plato is the 
 first systematic theologian, the first philosopher who 
 distinctly grasped the idea that Hes at the root of 
 aU religion, and used it as the key to all the other 
 problems of philosophy. Or, if this statement require 
 some qualification, we may at least say that he is 
 the philosopher to whom all o\ir theology may be 
 traced back, and to whom it ow^es most. Emerson 
 once said that Plato's Dialogues were the Bible 
 of educated men ; and if by this he meant that from 
 them the reflective consciousness has drawn its 
 greatest nutriment and support, it is not too much 
 to say of the writings of one who is the fountain- 
 head of idealistic, we might even say of ideal, views 
 of life. Plato has done more than any other writer 
 to fiU both poetry and philosophy with the spirit 
 of religion, to break the yoke of custom and tradition 
 " heavy as frost and deep almost as life," which
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 59 
 
 cramps the development of man's mind, to liberate 
 him from the prejudices of the natural understanding, 
 and to open up to him an ideal world in which 
 he can find refuge from the narrowness and inadequacy 
 of life. In the Terrestrial Paradise, on the summit of 
 the Purgatorial mount, Dante is made to drink of 
 the waters of Lethe to wash away from his memory 
 all his earthly cares and sins, and then of the 
 waters of Eunoe to refresh and strengthen his spirit 
 for the vision of the heavens. Plato's writings may 
 be said to be Lethe and Eunoe in one, at once 
 the liberation of thought from that which is limited 
 and temporary, and its initiation into a new ideal 
 way of conceiving the world. To put it more 
 directly, Plato is the source of two great streams of 
 theological thought which have flowed through all 
 the subsequent literature of religion down to the 
 present time. On the one hand, we may find in 
 him the source, or at least one of the sources, of 
 that spirit of mysticism which seeks to merge the 
 particular in the universal, the temporal in the 
 eternal, and ultimately to lose the intelligible world 
 and the intelligence in an absolute divine unity ; a 
 spirit which, through the Neo-Platonists, has exercised 
 a very powerful influence upon the thought of 
 Christendom, sometimes deepening and elevating it, 
 though, on the whole, tending to give it a false 
 direction. But Plato is also the main source of that
 
 60 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 idealism which is the best corrective of mysticism, 
 the idealism which seeks not merely to get away 
 from the temporal and the finite, but to make 
 them intelligible; not to escape from immediate 
 experience into an ideal world in comparison with 
 which it is a shadow and a dream, but to find the 
 ideal in the world of experience itself, underlying 
 it, and giving a new meaning to all its pheno- 
 mena. These two tendencies conflict in Plato, as 
 in subsequent philosophy and theology, and if we 
 cannot say that in his writings their conflict comes 
 to a definite issue, or results in the final victory 
 of the more comprehensive view, yet the very 
 statement of the alternative was of immense import- 
 ance in the history of religious thought, and makes 
 the study of Plato essential to any one who would 
 understand its development. 
 
 There is always an element of illusion in the 
 attempt to sum up the thought of a great writer 
 in a few words of definition. But I may give a 
 succinct view of Plato's work, and at the same time 
 prepare the way for a more detailed statement, if 
 I say that there are two principles or tendencies 
 the union or coalescence of which gives its dis- 
 tinctive character to the Platonic philosophy. In 
 the first place, his thought is always moving from 
 the particular to the universal, from the part to the 
 whole; he is constantly endeavouring to show the
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 61 
 
 relative and illusive nature of the former as separated 
 from the latter, and to reach a principle of unity 
 deeper than all the differences of thought and things, 
 a principle on which they depend and in relation to 
 which alone they can be understood. And, in the 
 second place, he is bent on establishing an ideal 
 or spiritual conception of this principle of unity; or, 
 in other words, on proving that thought or mind 
 is the ultimate ground, at once the first and the 
 final cause, of all reality. Now, in the former of 
 these points, Plato is following up a line of thought 
 which had been marked out by the earlier Greek 
 philosophers, while in the latter he was giving a 
 deeper meaning and a wider scope to an idea which 
 he had derived from his master, Socrates. It will 
 therefore be necessary for the interpretation of Plato 
 to go back for a little upon his predecessors. 
 
 The conception of an absolute principle of unity 
 in the universe which is deeper than any of the 
 special forms of existence, was the earliest thought 
 of Greek philosophy ; but it was not clearly grasped 
 before Xenophanes, who first set the permanent 
 unity of all things in opposition to all their diver- 
 sity and change. Xenophanes very naturally ex- 
 pressed this thought in an attack upon the 
 anthropomorphism of Greek mythology, which he 
 regarded as an illegitimate attempt to raise one 
 particular kind of being, one of the forms of
 
 62 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 the finite, into the place which could be given 
 only to the Absolute. " There is one God, greatest 
 of all gods and men, who is like to mortal 
 creatures neither in form nor in mind." It is 
 man's petty ambition and vanity that makes him 
 think of God as such an one as himself, and, " if 
 the oxen or the lions had hands and were able to 
 paint pictures or carve out statues like men, they 
 would have given their own forms to the gods." 
 We have here a criticism of the humanised Poly- 
 theism of Greece, a criticism which rests on the 
 basis of an abstract Pantheism and repudiates the 
 idea of giving any form whatsoever to the abso- 
 lute Being, even the form of man himself. In 
 other words, we have here the idea of God as the 
 mere negation of the finite — an idea which could 
 not be adequately represented in mythology ; though 
 we may find a partial expression of it in the 
 Homeric representation of fate as a power beyond 
 the gods. In the apparently antagonistic philosophy 
 of Heraclitus we have what is really another 
 aspect of the same idea : for the endless flux of 
 the particular forms of the finite, whose existence 
 is nothing but the process whereby they pass away 
 and merge in each other, is but the opposite 
 counterpart of the changeless unity of the whole. 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass." 
 The Heraclitean philosophy exhibits what has been
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 63 
 
 called the " dialectic of the finite," or, in other words, 
 its self-contradiction when taken by itself : and this, 
 as we have seen, is just the dialectic of the religious 
 consciousness, by which it is lifted from the par- 
 ticular to the universal, from the transitory to the 
 eternal, from the finite to the infinite. Take any 
 partial or limited existence, take even matter or 
 mind in its abstraction, and we find that the idea 
 of it ultimately breaks down and carries us beyond 
 itself, and that to treat it as a self-determined 
 whole, an absolutely independent substance, involves 
 a contradiction ; in other words, we cannot think it 
 at all except as transitory and changing. And what 
 makes this movement of thought real for the com- 
 mon consciousness, even where its logical necessity is 
 not reflected upon, is that the very existence of a finite 
 being is found to be the process of its dissolution. 
 " The process of its life is the process of its death." 
 This lesson is brought home to everyone by the 
 experience of a life, which is lived under the 
 shadow of death, and in which everything inward 
 and outward seems to be perpetually slipping away 
 from us. But the Greek mind was specially open 
 to this pathos of finite existence, just because of 
 its keen sensitiveness to its joys. The refrain of 
 mortality is continually appearing even in the 
 earliest song of Homer with all its fresh delight in 
 the beauty of life : and as reflexion deepened, it
 
 64 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 seemed to the Greeks only to disclose more dis- 
 tinctly — beyond all the brightness of earthly existence 
 and even beyond all the beautiful forms of the gods 
 of Olympus — the harshness of an inexorable law of 
 destiny. 
 
 Now, the first reading of this lesson of the 
 vanity of all finite things tends to carry the 
 mind to the idea of an Absolute in which all is 
 lost and nothing is found again ; from mere change 
 and multiplicity to mere permanence and unity, 
 from the nothinmess of the finite w^orld to a God 
 who is only its negation. From this point of view 
 we may recognise the philosophies of Xenophanes 
 and Heraclitus as half-thoucrhts, each of which finds 
 its complement in the other, the whole thought 
 which arises out of their recombination being just 
 that conception of an absolute unity mediated by 
 the negation of all difference and change, which we 
 have already recognised as the basis of all theology. 
 
 This, then, is the first of the two characteristic 
 elements in the philosophy of Plato. But so far we 
 have only a pantheistic unity, a principle of unity 
 which is negatively related to all things, and which 
 therefore cannot be properly conceived as an ideal 
 or spiritual, any more than it can properly be con- 
 ceived as a material principle. The second element, 
 the idealistic or spiritualistic element, in the Platonic 
 thought is derived, mainly if not entirely, from
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 65 
 
 Socrates. It is true that Anaxagoras first referred 
 the order of the universe to a rational principle, 
 when he said that " all things were in chaos till 
 reason came to arrange them " ; but apparentl}^ all 
 he meant was that the world is a system capable 
 of being understood, because the connexion of its 
 parts is determined by definite laws, and not that, 
 as a whole, it is a manifestation of reason, or 
 a system in which the highest good is realised. 
 It was Socrates who first reached the conception 
 of such a system. In a passage in the Memora- 
 bilia^ he is represented as declaring that, just as 
 the substances that go to constitute man's body are 
 derived from the material world, so his mind is a 
 little ray of intelligence drawn from the great soul 
 of the universe. Socrates then proceeds to give 
 expression to a few of the ordinary arguments from 
 design, based mainly on the adaptation of man's 
 environment to his needs or of his physical organism 
 to the purposes it has to subserve. It is clear, 
 therefore, that if Socrates had attempted to con- 
 struct any system of nature, he would have adopted 
 a teleological view of things in which God would 
 have been conceived as a designer working with 
 conscious purpose to realise an end, and that end 
 the happiness of his creatures and especially of 
 man. In short, Socrates, in so far as he attempted 
 
 1 Mem., I, 4, 8. 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 a theory of the universe at all, was disposed to 
 think of it in the same way as he thought of 
 the moral life of man. But he rather put aside 
 all such ambitious designs and, except in this one 
 place, he is represented as confining himself entirely 
 to the sphere of ethics. And even ethics was for 
 him not so much a science, as an art of life. 
 
 Socrates was thus, as it were, a philosopher by 
 accident, one who took to philosophy to satisfy not 
 a speculative but a practical want. Living in an 
 age of enlightenment, an age when the old guides 
 of life, religion and law and custom, were losing 
 their hold upon the mind of man, he was com- 
 pelled to find a substitute for them by reflexion 
 upon the meaning and object of human existence. 
 Hence he is the prophet of clear self-consciousness, 
 who takes the Delphic epigram, * Know thyself,' 
 as his motto, and maintains that virtue must 
 always be founded on such knowledge. For him 
 the great source of error and evil is want of 
 thought — that men go on living without considering 
 the meaning and value of life, or asking themselves 
 what good they expect to get out of their existence 
 as a whole. Hence, though their wish is for the 
 good — and, strictly speaking, no one can wish for 
 anything else — they neither know what the good is, 
 nor where to find it, and they blunder on from 
 day to day, taking anything that attracts them for
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 67 
 
 the good which they really desire. The aim of 
 Socrates is to awake men to a realisation of what 
 they are, and what therefore they must seek, if they 
 would make the best of their existence and find 
 satisfaction for themselves. Morality, he contends, is 
 nothing but the art of living, and the conditions of 
 success in it are like those of any other art. Now, 
 every kind of art, whether mechanical or fine art, 
 has to prescribe a definite course of conduct in 
 which actions are regulated with reference to an 
 end ; and it therefore involves a clear consciousness 
 of that end, and of the means whereby it is to be 
 attained. But while no one would attempt to 
 practise any common art without such knowledge, 
 in the greater art of living men constantly act in 
 this way, without asking themselves what they are 
 living for, or whether the particular actions they 
 do are fitted to secure it. 
 
 Is there then no end at all for human life, 
 no good which it may be expected to secure for 
 him who uses it aright ? To suppose that this 
 is so, is to forget that in all our ethical judg- 
 ments, in all our expressions of moral approval 
 or disapproval, in all our characterisation of actions 
 as good or bad, we presuppose that there is 
 such an end ; and that it is the standard to 
 which we are bound to bring our lives, and 
 by which we must estimate their worth. But this
 
 68 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 general acknowledgment is fruitless, because no 
 attempt is made to realise what such language 
 really means. It is supposed that everyone knows, 
 and just for that reason no one enquires ; but so 
 long as no one enquires, it is impossible that 
 ignorance can be removed, or that any remedy 
 can be applied to the ills which ignorance brings 
 with it. 
 
 Hence the first demand of Socrates is for ethical 
 reflexion and investigation, o ave^eraa-Tog /3/os' ov 
 /SicoTo^ avOpcjoTTcp : 1 "a life without criticism, or re- 
 flexion upon the meaning of life, is unworthy of a 
 man " : it is rather the life of an irrational animal. 
 For * virtue is knowledge,' both in the negative sense 
 that there can be no virtue without knowledge, and 
 in the positive sense that, if knowledge is attained, 
 virtue must follow. As to the former of these senses, 
 Socrates maintains that he who is not conscious of 
 the good, or does not know in what it consists, cannot 
 possibly pursue it, or even consider the means whereby 
 it is to be attained. If a virtuous life is a moral 
 work of art in which every part is determined by the 
 idea of the whole, it is impossible that it should be 
 realised except by one who has that idea. It is 
 possible that the particular actions done by an indi- 
 vidual without any knowledge of the good may be 
 similar to those which he would have had to do iu 
 
 ^ Apologia, 38 A.
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 69 
 
 order to attain it ; but they will not really have the 
 same character as if they were so done. Indeed, as 
 not being done with a view to the good, they will have 
 the character of vice. " He who is courageous with- 
 out knowledge is courageous by a kind of cowardice : 
 he who is temperate without knowledge is temperate 
 by a kind of intemperance." On the other hand, if 
 men are once awakened to a consciousness of their 
 real good, how can they do otherwise than pursue it ? 
 "We needs must love the highest when we see it." 
 In all that we seek, what we really wish to find is 
 the good ; and if it be once revealed to us, if we are 
 enabled to see through the illusions which make us 
 mistake something else for it, we must pursue it and 
 it alone. It is just because men are blind, because 
 "they know not what they do," that they are led away 
 from the right path; and if we can awake them to 
 reflexion, we shall have laid the foundation for their 
 moral regeneration. 
 
 The first step, therefore, is to make men conscious 
 of their ignorance, i.e. not merely of ignorance in 
 general, but of ignorance of that in which they con- 
 tinually regard themselves as wise. For every moral 
 judgment, every judgment with such predicates as 
 just, unjust, temperate, intemperate, right, wrong, 
 'involves such a claim to ethical knowledge ; yet this 
 claim is found to be invalid and baseless so soon as 
 those who confidently use such general terms are
 
 70 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 called upon to define or explain them. The aim of 
 the Socratic interrogation was, therefore, in the first 
 place, to awake a consciousness that knowledge was 
 wanting, and that without it men were like vessels 
 without rudder or steersman ; and, secondly, to teach 
 them the method of reflexion and investigation by 
 which alone such ignorance could be removed. To find 
 what is meant by the moral universals, the words of 
 ethical import which we are continually using, above 
 all to define * the chief good,' to which all such words 
 point as their ultimate basis, is the great object of all 
 theory, as to realise it in our lives is the great object 
 of all practice. Thus a virtuous life is for Socrates a 
 life in which every thought and feeling, every impulse 
 and action, is regulated in view of that good which 
 man's nature fits him to realise and enjoy. And the 
 first condition of such a life is that this good should 
 be clearly defined, and that the means to it should 
 be deliberately chosen. Whether the individual is 
 a part of a wider teleological system or no, becomes 
 thus for Socrates a secondary question ; and what he 
 is mainly interested to maintain is that each man for 
 himself should work out such a system in his own 
 life. Socrates thinks, indeed, that each individual, 
 in achieving his own mission, will also be serving the 
 State and realising the divine will ; but his starting- 
 point is individualistic and ethical, and the social and 
 religious aspects of life fall into the background. He
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 71 
 
 does not bid men rebel against authority, but he finds 
 the source and sanction of all authority not without 
 but within, in the reason and reflexion of the indi- 
 vidual. Let each man be man and master of himself 
 knowing what he seeks in life and steadfastly seeking 
 what he knows. This is to Socrates the umim 
 necessarium, the first principle of ethics, the one con- 
 dition of moral existence to which everything else is 
 to be subordinate. 
 
 Now, the obvious criticism upon this view of moral 
 life is that it would exclude the greater part of what 
 we commonly call morality. For the virtue of child- 
 hood in all cases, and the virtue of most men 
 throughout life, is not what Socrates demands, not 
 the conscious pursuit of that which is recognised 
 as the highest moral end; it is only the habitual 
 practice of certain kinds of action which are accepted 
 as good, the habitual obedience to certain rules which 
 are regarded as right, without any reflexion upon the 
 reasons why they are so regarded. Men from their 
 earliest years are moralised by the silent influences 
 of their social environment in the family and the 
 State, aided by the sanctions of religion. But if, for 
 a virtuous life, we demand a definite conception of 
 the good of human existence and a definite regulation 
 of all a man's ways by such a conception, we shall 
 find very little virtue in the world, if indeed we can 
 find any virtue at all. Comte said that the ideal of
 
 72 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 a happy life was that the aspkation after some great 
 object or achievement should be awakened in youth 
 and gradually followed out to its completion in 
 maturer years. But such a continuity of growing 
 purpose is given to very few, and even to them it is 
 not given in the definite form which Socrates seems 
 to require. It is given rather as a dim anticipation 
 which becomes clearer and clearer as the man ad- 
 vances toward its fulfilment, and which rises into 
 perfect distinctness only when it has been attained. 
 Thus life, even to those who realise most fully what 
 their aims are, is a strangely mingled web of con- 
 sciousness and unconsciousness, and the star which 
 they follow is a light shining in darkness. " A good 
 man," said Goethe, " in his dark strivings is somehow 
 conscious of the right way " ; while Ohver Cromwell, 
 looking upon the opposite side of the shield, declared 
 that " we never rise so high as when we do not know 
 whither we are going." At least we may say that it 
 is not given to any man to order his life from be- 
 ginning to end with a clear knowledge of its meaning 
 and purpose, and that action guided by conscious 
 principle is rather the highest form to which morality 
 rises than its normal type. Even Socrates himself 
 may be quoted in the same sense; for he did not 
 profess in all cases to guide his own life by ethical 
 science, but fell Imck on what he called a divine voice 
 that spoke within him, i.e. upon an unreasoned intui-
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 73 
 
 tive perception of what ought to be done, which 
 he regarded as a kind of oracle of the gods. 
 
 The truth is that in the moral life we cannot draw 
 a sharp line of division between consciousness and 
 unconsciousness, or rather we must say that there 
 are many grades of relative consciousness or uncon- 
 sciousness; reaching down, on the one hand, to the 
 mechanical observance of rules prescribed by an 
 external authority; and up, on the other hand, to 
 the full realisation of a universal principle as furnish- 
 ing a guide in all the details of action. The child 
 is, in the main, externally guided or constrained to 
 practise certain habits and to obey certain rules ; but 
 these rules and habits have generally some rationale 
 behind them, as being rules and habits which are 
 needful to the maintenance of order in the society 
 to which he belongs. And the intelligence of the 
 child, while he is taught to observe them, does not 
 remain entirely passive. What is commanded, so 
 far as it has a rational meaning, commends itself 
 to his reason and conscience, and helps to develop 
 them. The rule from without is met by the 
 'greeting of the spirit' from within, and obedience 
 is made easier by an awaking consciousness of its 
 necessity. There is, no doubt, a long way from such 
 dawning appreciation of the order to which his life is 
 subjected to the full and loyal acceptance of it as his 
 own law, and therefore as a law of liberty ; and from
 
 74 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 that again to a reflective consciousness of the universal 
 principle that underlies all the particular rules, at 
 once giving them their authority and limiting their 
 application. Nor is it possible at any point in this 
 advance to draw a sharp line of distinction between 
 conscious and unconscious morality. Rather we might 
 say that there is no stage at which morality is either 
 completely conscious or completely unconscious ; and 
 that every stage may be called conscious in relation 
 to the stage before it, and unconscious in relation 
 to the stage after it. It is true, indeed, that the 
 continuity of the moral life is sometimes interrupted 
 by crises and even by revolutions, in which men seem 
 to break away from their past and to make an 
 entirely new beginning. There is such a thing as 
 conversion. But such breaks are apt to be treated 
 as more sharp and complete than they really are, 
 and often — at least in cases where the individual 
 has had any good social training — the main feature 
 of the change is that he learns to realise the full 
 meaning and spirit of the rules he has been taught 
 to obey, and so vivifies the half -mechanical life of 
 habit by the apprehension of the principle from 
 which it derives its value. Thus revolution in 
 individual as in national life is generally the cul- 
 mination of a long process of preparation, like the 
 lighting of the spark for which the explosive train 
 has been laid ready, or, to use a better illustration,
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 75 
 
 like the first emergence of the plant from under- 
 ground where its germinative forces have been slowly 
 maturing. 
 
 We can see, however, that it was very natural 
 for Socrates, as for other teachers in a similar 
 position, to exaggerate the difference between con- 
 scious morality and that which is relatively un- 
 conscious. His whole purpose, his essential work 
 and vocation, was to awaken men to reflexion, to 
 arouse them to a clear consciousness of themselves, 
 to call upon them to take life seriously and 
 realise for themselves what they were to make of 
 their lives. His attitude was like that of a modern 
 religious teacher who is endeavouring to make men 
 feel the necessity of acting from the highest principle ; 
 and who, in view of this object, is not careful to 
 make a distinction between one who is outwardly 
 respectable and satisfies the demands of the ordin- 
 arily accepted code of morals, and one who falls 
 below that standard, or even one who is openly 
 vicious. For what he seeks is not merely to make 
 men act rightly, but to make them act upon the right 
 motive ; and he may even be inclined to accept the 
 dangerous maxim that " whatever is not of faith is 
 sin," and to treat the outwardly good and the out- 
 wardly bad as upon the same level, in so far as 
 the former, no less than the latter, want that deep 
 religious principle from which alone, in his view,
 
 76 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 true moral life can spring. So it was with Socrates. 
 No action seemed to him virtuous which was not 
 based upon a knowledge of the ethical end, and he 
 even asserted the paradox that it was better to do ill 
 with knowledge than to do well without it. Nor does 
 he seem to have allowed that there was any middle 
 term between knowledge and ignorance, between the 
 deliberate pursuit of the highest good and a life 
 guided by casual impulses and mechanically accepted 
 customs which are entirely without any moral 
 value. 
 
 Such a view, however little Socrates might intend 
 it, was essentially individualistic and unsocial in its 
 effect. It set each man to think out the problem 
 of life for himself; and if it did not put him in 
 opposition to society, at least it made him regard 
 his relations to it as secondary, and not as the 
 essential basis of his moral existence. And from 
 the point of view of a religion like that of Greece, 
 which was essentially national (and even municipal) 
 in its spirit, consecrating the City-state as a kind 
 of church or divine institution, this was a pro- 
 foundly irreligious attitude. Thus, literally and 
 absolutely, Socrates was guilty of the charges which 
 were brought against him. He " corrupted the youth 
 and brought new gods into Athens," if it were cor- 
 rupting tVie youth to teach them to set reason above 
 authority, and if it were bringing new gods into
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 77 
 
 Athens to appeal to inward conviction as the one 
 authentic voice of God. Hence also it was a natural 
 result that many of the immediate followers of 
 Socrates, the Minor Socratic schools as they are called, 
 should have adopted a thorough-going individualism, 
 which withdrew them from the community, and 
 repudiated all its claims, as well as all the re- 
 ligious ideas that were connected therewith. Thus 
 with them, as with some of the Sophists, the 
 appeal to conscious reason took a distinctly revolu- 
 tionary form, breaking the bonds of kindred and 
 citizenship, and making the individual a law and 
 an end to himself, independent at once of gods 
 and men. This conception was developed in a 
 hedonistic way by the Cyrenaics, who made pleasure, 
 and even the pleasure of the moment, the end of 
 all action : and it was developed by the Cynics in 
 the direction of an asceticism which sought to secure 
 the freedom of the individual by breaking all the 
 ties which bind him to the things or beings that 
 are without him. The Cynic philosophy, with its 
 intolerance, its defiance of all law and authority, 
 its revolutionary effort to liberate man by stripping 
 him of every covering of his nakedness which 
 civilisation or the customs and institutions of social 
 life have provided, was the extreme form, we might 
 say the rediwtio ad dbsurdum, of the Socratic idea 
 of independence. And the Cyrenaic philosophy
 
 78 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 
 
 seemed to reach the same result by showing that 
 he who lives for himself must live for pleasure, 
 and — since individual pleasures as such have no 
 necessary unity or connexion — for the pleasure of 
 the moment. 
 
 We have now considered the two main lines of 
 speculation which contributed to the development of 
 the Platonic philosophy. Plato, in fact, entered upon 
 the whole inheritance of Greek thought, and his ideal- 
 ism was the result of a synthesis of all the tendencies 
 that show themselves in it. In particular, to adopt a 
 phrase of Green's, he read the earlier philosophers with 
 the eyes of Socrates, and Socrates with the eyes of 
 the earlier philosophers, and thus was enabled to rid 
 himself of the presuppositions of both, and to re- 
 constitute philosophy on a new basis. It was his 
 great work to combine that idea of a fundamental 
 principle of unity in all things, which inspired the 
 earlier schools, with the Socratic conception of reason, 
 as the one power which is able to produce order out 
 of chaos and to reduce all the manifold and conflict- 
 ing elements of reality to one self-consistent whole. 
 This conception which Socrates had set before him- 
 self and his pupils as an ethical ideal, Plato 
 treated as the master-key to the real nature not 
 only of man, individual and social, but also of the 
 whole universe. In doing so, he was led gradually 
 to correct and supplement the errors and inadequacies
 
 THE PRECURSORS OF PLATO 79 
 
 of the philosophy of Socrates — his abrupt and un- 
 mediated contrast of knowledge and ignorance, the 
 indeterminateness of his conception of the good, his 
 tendency to over-emphasise the subjective aspect of 
 ethics and to withdraw the individual from the 
 community, and man from the universe of which he 
 is essentially a part. On the other hand, while thus 
 freeing the ideas of Socrates from their onesided- 
 ness, Plato drew the Eleatic conception of the unity 
 of all things out of its abstraction, and found in the 
 teleological ideas of Socrates the means of combining 
 it with the Heraclitean conception of manifoldness 
 and change. He thus laid the foundations of ideal- 
 istic philosophy for all subsequent times. 
 
 It will be my endeavour in the following lectures 
 to show how these views are developed in the 
 successive dialogues of Plato.
 
 LECTURE FOUETH. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE PLATONIC IDEALISM. 
 
 We have seen that the Platonic philosophy in its 
 most general aspect may be described as an exten- 
 sion to the universe of the principle which Socrates 
 applied to the life of the individual man, and more- 
 over that this extension was due mainly to the com- 
 bination of Socratic ideas with ideas derived from 
 the earlier philosophy of Greece. This general state- 
 ment, however, true as it is, will not enable us to 
 explain the distinctive character of Platonism, unless 
 we follow out at least the main lines of development 
 along which Plato's thought was carried as it absorbed 
 these different elements. This mode of explanation 
 has been made easier and more effective of late years 
 since the order of the Platonic dialogues has been 
 approximately determined by linguistic considerations 
 irrespective even of the doctrines taught in them. 
 
 Following such indications we find that, as we 
 might have expected, Plato is in the first instance
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 81 
 
 simply the pupil of Socrates, and that his earliest 
 works are mainly devoted to the illustration of the 
 Socratic method and the Socratic ideas. They deal, 
 on the one hand, with the method of interrogation 
 by which Socrates awakened in his pupils a con- 
 sciousness of ignorance and then led them on to the 
 formation of more and more comprehensive and exact 
 definitions of moral conceptions ; and, on the other 
 hand, with the Socratic view of the moral life as a 
 process determined by the idea of good as the end 
 of action. In the course of these dialogues, how- 
 ever, Plato shows a growing sense of certain diffi- 
 culties which beset the strict Socratic doctrine, and, 
 in particular, of two great but closely connected 
 difficulties, the one arising from the sharpness of the 
 Socratic distinction between knowledge and ignorance, 
 of which I have already spoken, and the other 
 from the ambiguity and imperfection of the Socratic 
 definition of the good which is the final end of 
 action. Socrates, indeed, seemed to fix the nature 
 of that end by the term evSaijuopla, commonly trans- 
 lated 'happiness'; but the various senses in which his 
 teaching was understood by his disciples show that 
 he did not anticipate or decide any of the contro- 
 versies about the nature of happiness which arose 
 among them ; and, in particular, that he did not 
 discuss the great question — wliether happiness is to 
 be found in activity or in feeling, in the exercise of 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 the faculties of man, or in the pleasure or satisfac- 
 tion that follows upon such exercise. 
 
 Now to Plato that question became one of 
 the most important of all ethical issues, and there 
 was ultimately no ambiguity in his rejection of 
 the purely hedonistic alternative. But there was 
 a time when Hedonism seemed to him to afford the 
 most natural interpretation of the Socratic theory 
 that ' virtue is knowledge.' In the Protagoras, which 
 is probably the latest of the Socratic dialogues, 
 Socrates is made to maintain the doctrine after- 
 wards called psychological Hedonism, that pleasure is 
 the only possible object of desire, and that, when we 
 seem to pursue any object which is not the most 
 pleasant at the moment, it is only as an indirect 
 means to greater pleasure in the future. On this 
 view, it would follow that the difference between 
 virtue and vice lies, not in our acting or not acting 
 with a view to pleasure, but in the character of the 
 pleasures we seek. The vicious man is he who is 
 led by his short-sightedness to sacrifice a greater but 
 remoter good to one that is nearer but less valuable ; 
 the virtuous man is he who has learned to look 
 before and after, and to calculate the ultimate effect 
 of each action in producing pleasure and pain. Such 
 an ethical calculus alone, it is held, can raise men 
 above the illusive appearance of the moment, and 
 enable them to regulate tlieir conduct in view of
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 83 
 
 the greatest pleasure in life as a whole. On the 
 other hand, if we can so regulate our actions, we 
 inevitably must do so ; for, ex hypothcsi, the only 
 thing we can desire or will is pleasure, and when 
 we know what course will bring us most pleasure, 
 we necessarily follow it. In this sense, therefore, 
 virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, and the 
 whole task of ethics is to furnish a relative esti- 
 mate of the degree and quantity of pleasure to be 
 derived from different objects. 
 
 But Plato has no sooner drawn out this hedonistic 
 scheme of life than he begins to throw doubt upon 
 it, both in itself and as an interpretation of the 
 Socratic doctrine ; and even in the very dialogue in 
 which he sets it before us, he opposes to it another 
 view, which he puts into the mouth of the Sophist 
 Protagoras. Protagoras is made the representative of 
 ordinary morality, which is based upon custom and 
 opinion and not upon scientific reflexion; and in answer 
 to the question of Socrates as to the way in which 
 ethical truth is to be taught, he is made to maintain 
 the thesis that it is not the subject of any special 
 science but the product of a common instinct of 
 humanity; and that therefore there are no special 
 experts from whom it must be learnt, but that, in a 
 sense, everybody teaches it to everybody. This idea 
 is expressed in a sort of mythic apologue, in which 
 the gods are described as making all mortal creatures
 
 84 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 out of the elements, and then handing them over to 
 Prometheus and Epimetheus to endow them with the 
 qualities necessary for their preservation. It is agreed 
 that Epimetheus shall make the distribution, and that 
 Prometheus shall inspect and criticise the result. 
 Epimetheus, therefore, gifts the animals with various 
 powers — some with swiftness, some with size, some 
 with strength, and so on, till he has exhausted all 
 that he has to bestow. But then it is found that 
 man has been left unprovided, a helpless, unarmed 
 creature, whose existence is narrow and precarious ; 
 and Prometheus has to come to the rescue, and to 
 steal from heaven fire and the arts that work by fire, 
 as well as the art of weaving, to be the heritage of 
 man. But even when so endowed, men are still left 
 without the political art, the art of living together in 
 peaceful co-operation ; consequently they are involved 
 in a continual struggle for existence against each 
 other, and are in danger of being dispersed and 
 destroyed by the other animals. But " Zeus, fearing 
 that the entire race should be exterminated, comes 
 to their aid, bringing with him reverence and justice 
 (aiScog and Sikt]) to be the ordering principles of cities 
 and the bonds of friendship and conciliation." These 
 principles, however, are not given like special talents 
 to particular individuals, but shared among all ; for 
 " cities cannot subsist if a few only share in the 
 virtues, as a few only have capacity for any special
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 85 
 
 art " : civil society, therefore, must be protected by 
 the law that " he who has no part in justice or 
 reverence shall be put to death as a plague to the 
 State." ^ Hence it is that, when men consult together 
 upon matters that fall under the particular arts, they 
 take experts into their counsel, and pay no attention 
 to advice from those who are not experts ; whereas, 
 when they discuss virtue and vice, good and evil, 
 everybody is supposed to have a right to speak : 
 for on this subject, though one man may know a 
 little more than another, there are no professional 
 teachers who are essentially distinguished from the 
 rest of mankind, but all the citizens are teachers 
 of all. 
 
 Protagoras then proceeds to give a sketch of the 
 forms taken by this popular education in morals as 
 it was actually in use in Greece. " Education and 
 admonition commence in the first years of life and 
 last to the very end of it. Mother and nurse, father 
 and tutor, are vying with each other about the im- 
 provement of the child as soon as ever he is able 
 to understand what is said to him : he cannot say or 
 do anything without their setting forth to him that 
 ' this act is just ' and ' that is unjust ' ; ' this is holy ' 
 and ' that is unholy ' ; 'do this ' and ' abstain from 
 that.' And if he obeys, well and good ; if not, he is 
 straightened by threats and blows like a piece of bent 
 
 ^Protag., 322 d.
 
 86 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 or warped wood. At a later stage they send him to 
 teachers, and enjoin them to see to his manners even 
 more than to his reading and music ; and the teacliers 
 do as they are desired. And when the boy has 
 learned his letters, and is beginning to understand 
 what is written, as before he understood what was 
 spoken, they put into his hands the works of great 
 poets, which he reads sitting on a bench at school ; in 
 these are contained many admonitions and many 
 profitable tales, and encomiums of ancient famous 
 men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order 
 that he may imitate or emulate them, and desire to 
 become like them. Then again the teachers of the lyre 
 take similar care that the young disciple is temperate 
 and gets into no mischief ; and when they have taught 
 him the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the 
 works of other excellent poets who have written 
 lyrics ; and these they set to music, and make their 
 harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children's 
 souls, in order that they may learn to be gentle and 
 harmonious and rhythmical, and so fitted for speech 
 and action ; for the life of man in every part has need 
 of harmony and rhythm. Then they send them to 
 the masters of gymnastic, in order that their bodies 
 may better minister to the virtuous mind, and that 
 they may not be compelled through bodily weakness 
 to play the coward in war or on any other occasion. 
 , . . When they have done with masters, the State
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 87 
 
 again compels them to learn the laws, and live after 
 the pattern which they furnish, and not after their 
 own fancies : and, just as, when the pupil is learning 
 to write, the writing-master first draws lines with a 
 style for the guidance of the young beginner, and gives 
 him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so 
 the city draws the laws which were the invention of 
 good lawgivers living in the olden times ; these are 
 given to the young man to guide him in his conduct, 
 whether he is commanding or obeying ; and he who 
 transgresses them is to be corrected, or, in other 
 words, called to account."^ 
 
 Now it i«, I think, obvious that we have here two 
 views of education which are sharply contrasted. On 
 the one side, we have the uncompromising development 
 of the Socratic doctrine that ' virtue is knowledge,' 
 with all the contempt of Socrates for ordinary opinion 
 — which he regards as ignorance pretending to be 
 knowledge — a contempt which reminds us of the atti- 
 tude of Bentham towards those who appealed to moral 
 sentiment in opposition to the results of his utilitarian 
 theory. And what makes the parallel closer is that 
 Socrates is here made to narrow his own doctrine by 
 defining the good as the maximum of pleasure and the 
 minimum of pain, and thus to reduce ethical science 
 to a calculus of pleasures. On the other hand, the 
 
 ^Protag., 325 c. seq. The similarity of this sketch of education 
 to that given in the earlier part of the Republic is evident.
 
 88 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 unsystematic and unscientific idea of morals is stated 
 with equal one-sidedness by the Sophist Protagoras, 
 who identifies morality with a natural sentiment 
 which is developed by the action of many minds 
 upon each other, by the ordinary social training of 
 the family and the school, by the influences of poetic 
 literature, and by the rewards and penalties which 
 the State bestows and inflicts on its members, but 
 not at all by that scientific process of reflexion and 
 definition which Socrates regarded as all-important. 
 
 Now if it be asked, which of these views we are to 
 attribute to Plato, we must answer. Neither and both. 
 In other words, as is indicated at the end of the 
 dialogue, Plato has set before us two views, each of 
 them one-sided and imperfect, neither of which he 
 could absolutely accept or reject. It was impossible 
 that he should accept the narrow hedonistic view here 
 attributed to Socrates ; yet neither could he surrender 
 his confidence in the Socratic method or his convic- 
 tion of the necessity of raising ethics into the form of 
 science. He was obviously beginning to perceive that 
 in ordinary opinion — in that common consciousness of 
 ethical distinctions which is developed without any 
 special scientific training by the experience of social 
 life — there is a large element of truth, however mingled 
 with error and illusion. The abrupt Socratic division 
 of knowledge and ignorance was no longer tenable for 
 him, nor could he any longer suppose that virtue was
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 89 
 
 dependent for its primary development upon philo- 
 sophical discussion. Eather — as was shown by the 
 practice, however it might be excluded by the theory, 
 of Socrates himself — ordinary opinion must be regarded 
 as the first form of that consciousness of the good, 
 which philosophy has to analyse and develop. And 
 if, as is the case, ethical science must be regarded as 
 standing in a negative relation to opinion, as in a 
 sense opposing and even subverting it, yet after all it 
 must derive the means of correcting and transforming 
 opinion from opinion itself. Opinion must furnish at 
 least the starting-point of investigation ; and if there 
 were no truth in it, truth in ethics could never be 
 attained at all. 
 
 We may take it, then, that Plato in the Protagoras 
 is at the parting of the ways. He is emancipating 
 himself from Socrates, or, as he would probably himself 
 have conceived it, he is advancing from a lower to a 
 higher interpretation of Socratic principles, by the 
 interposition of the middle term of opinion between 
 the extremes of ignorance and knowledge which 
 Socrates left in unmediated opposition. And in the 
 Meno, a dialogue which on linguistic grounds must be 
 placed in close connexion with the Protagoras, we find 
 that Plato has taken this new step. In the beginning 
 of the dialogue he states in the most direct way the 
 difficulty which arises out of the Socratic position. 
 Socrates has proposed to enter upon an enquiry into the
 
 90 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 nature of virtue, of which he professes himself ignorant, 
 and is met by Meno with the objection : " How will 
 you enquire into that which you do not already know ? 
 What will you put forth as the subject of the enquiry ? 
 And, if you find what you want, how will you recognise 
 that this is the thing which you did not know ? " "I 
 see what you mean," answers Socrates, " but consider 
 what a troublesome discussion you are raising. You 
 argue that a man cannot enquire either into tliat which 
 he knows or into that which he does not know : for, if 
 he knows, he has no need to enquire, and, if not, he 
 cannot enquire, for he does not know the very subject 
 about which he has to enquire." ^ 
 
 The difficulty here suggested is not a mere Scholastic 
 subtility : it is really one of the most important prob- 
 lems in the theory of knowledge. It is the question 
 of the relation of science to the ordinary conscious- 
 ness. If science were merely an analysis of ordinary 
 experience, and did not yield anything more than we 
 can find in such experience, it would be useless ; for 
 it would not bring us a step farther than we were 
 before. If, on the other hand, it does carry us beyond 
 such experience, must it not be by a kind of leap in 
 the dark ? If the premises anticipate the conclusion, 
 what is the use of drawing it ? If they do not antici- 
 pate the conclusion, how can it legitimately be drawn ? 
 Plato was the first to face this difficulty, and the 
 
 1 Mem, 80 d.
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 91 
 
 answer he gives to it, or at least his first answer, 
 takes the form of what seems to be a mere myth or 
 poetic fiction ; though perhaps we may find that it 
 conveys a serious meaning, a meaning which becomes 
 more distinct in the farther development of his philo- 
 sophy. In any case the answer is one which deserves 
 our particular attention, as it is the first expression of 
 that ideal theory which is the basis of Plato's 
 philosophical theology. 
 
 Poets and other inspired men, we are here told, have 
 declared " that the soul is immortal and at one time 
 has an end which is termed dying, and at another 
 time is born again, but is never destroyed. . . . The 
 soul then, as being immortal, and as having been born 
 again many times, and having seen all things that 
 exist, whether in this world or in the world above, has 
 knowledge of them all : and it is no wonder that she 
 should be able to call to remembrance all that she 
 knows about virtue : for, as all nature is akin and the 
 soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in 
 eliciting, or as men say, learning, out of a single 
 recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does 
 not faint : for all enquiry and all learning is recollec- 
 tion." ^ On this view, then, the soul from the begin- 
 ning has all truth in itself, but has it in a dim implicit 
 way, as we might be said to know something which we 
 have forgotten but of which the recollection may be 
 ^Meiio, 81 B.
 
 92 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 again awakened in us. This view Socrates seeks to 
 illustrate by the aid of a young slave whom he ques- 
 tions, and gradually, by mere questioning, leads to the 
 discovery of the solution of a geometrical problem. 
 In the first instance, the boy gives a wrong answer, 
 but he is made by further questioning to correct 
 himself and to attain to a true view of the sub- 
 ject : and Socrates then draws what seems to be 
 the necessary inference. " What do you say of 
 this, Meno, were not these answers given out of 
 his own head ? " " Yes, they were all his own." 
 " And yet, as we were now saying, he did not know ? " 
 " Yes." " But still he had in him these notions of his, 
 had he not ? Then he who does not know, may still 
 have true notions of that which he does not know." 
 " Yes." " And at present these notions have just been 
 stirred up in him as a dream, but if he were frequently 
 asked the same questions in different forms, he would 
 know as well as any one of us at last." ^ His 
 knowledge, therefore, Socrates argues, is recollection, 
 and if he did not acquire it before in this life, he must 
 have acquired it in another life, or else he must hav« 
 had it always. The possibility of learning is thus 
 traced back to the fact that knowledge, all knowledge, 
 is in the soul in a potential way, as a memory of some 
 previous state of existence, which is not at first con- 
 sciously present to us but may be recalled. 
 ^ Meno, 85 b. seq.
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 93 
 
 Analogy is usually the first form in which new 
 truth presents itself, and it was so ahove all with 
 Plato, in whom the poet generally spoke before the 
 philosopher. Yet there is always a danger that one 
 who has grasped such an analogy, may treat it not 
 merely as a guide to the truth — to the identity that 
 underlies the likeness — but as itself constituting the 
 whole truth to which it points : and it may be that 
 this was the case with Plato. But we should not 
 at once assume that it was so, still less should we 
 assume that it remained so with him to the end. 
 The metaphor of * Eeminiscence ' is a convenient 
 way of bringing before us the idea that the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge is not a process of putting some- 
 thing into the mind ah extra, but the evolution of 
 something involved in its own nature. The same 
 metaphor is implied in many common ways of 
 speaking. When w^e say that we ' recognise ' the 
 truth of an observation, it is not that we have 
 known it before, but only that we had already 
 before us the data from which it might be drawn. 
 When we say " You are forgetting yourself," we 
 do not mean that you have forgotten the indi- 
 vidual being that you are, but that there is a 
 rational principle, which is one with your very 
 self, and which you are failing to realise. Self- 
 recollection in this sense does not mean going back- 
 ward upon the past but inward upon a deeper
 
 94 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 nature, which perhaps we have never been fully 
 conscious of before. The same idea is illustrated 
 by the claim which Plato puts into the mouth of 
 Socrates, that in interrogating he is practising 
 his mother's art of midwifery upon the souls of 
 those whom he subjects to his questions.^ Ob- 
 viously the metaphor of reminiscence cannot be 
 applied literally to the process whereby the mind 
 rises from the particular to the universal : for, 
 in so doing, it is not calling up the image of 
 some object or event known in the past, but 
 discovering the principle that underlies all similar 
 objects and events. Nor could Plato possibly have 
 thought that, in any world, universal s could be 
 the objects of sense-perception, like particular 
 phenomena. Hence we should be disposed to say 
 that he was merely using this image as a first 
 expression of the truth which Aristotle puts more 
 definitely when he says that mind is potentially 
 all that it can know. And this, indeed, seems to 
 be the meaning of the alternative to which Plato 
 himself pointed when, in the passage already 
 quoted, he suggested that perhaps the mind 
 always had possession of these principles. While, 
 
 ^ This metaphor is commonly attributed to Socrates, but it 
 appears for the first time in the Theaetehis, which is a compara- 
 tively late dialogue, and it indicates an advance beyond the 
 Platonic idea of Eeminiscence. It probably rather represents 
 Plato's own reflexion on the method of Socrates.
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 95 
 
 therefore, it may not be correct to say that to 
 Plato the idea of reminiscence was merely a 
 metaphor, it is at least obvious that it is not 
 the only or the final form in which he presents 
 his doctrine to us. 
 
 This becomes still more obvious when we con- 
 sider another conception which Plato introduces in 
 the passage quoted above : " As all nature is akin, 
 and the soul has learned all things, there is no 
 difficulty in thus eliciting, or as men say, learning, 
 out of a single recollection all the rest, if one 
 is strenuous and does not faint." The idea here 
 expressed is that reality is not a collection of 
 things, each of which might be known fully without 
 the others, but a connected system in which each 
 part implies the whole. Thus if we know anything, 
 there is in what we know a link of connexion 
 with everything else ; and if we follow it out, we 
 shall gradually be brought into possession of the 
 whole. What we know already contains a partial 
 revelation of tlie general principle manifested in 
 all that exists. Thus it is as in an organism, 
 where the life of the whole works in every member 
 and organ, and there is no possibility of appreciat- 
 ing the significance and value of any part without 
 grasping in some measure the meaning of all the 
 rest. Hence learning cannot be a mere successive 
 process of adding on unconnected perceptions or
 
 96 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 experiences to each other ; it must be a process 
 of evolution, whereby a universal truth — v/hich is 
 at first confused with a particular case of its appli- 
 cation — becomes separated from all particulars, and 
 at the same time is recognised as the principle that 
 determines their nature and their relations to each 
 other. 
 
 Now, this conception of reality, as an objective 
 system which is implied in the nature of the mind 
 that apprehends it — so that the growth of knowledge 
 of the world is at the same time the evolution of 
 self-consciousness — enables us to understand the 
 view of opinion which Plato takes, and by means 
 of which he seeks to solve the difficulty of the 
 Meno. Opinion is not to him, as it was to 
 Socrates, another word for ignorance : it is a state 
 of mind between knowledge and ignorance, in 
 which we make judgments in particular cases, 
 but are not able to give any reason for these 
 judgments. We say, ' this is just,' and ' that is 
 unjust,' without knowing what justice is. Eight 
 opinion may, indeed, in many cases serve the pur- 
 pose of knowledge. But it has two great draw- 
 backs. In the first place it is unstable. It is 
 " like the images of Daedalus," which are beautiful 
 works of art but " are apt to run away, unless 
 they are fastened by some tie." So right opinions 
 are good but insecure, " unless they are fixed down
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 97 
 
 by a consideration of the cause " ^ i.e. of the reason 
 or principle from which they flow. And, in the 
 second place, as those who possess a faculty of 
 making right judgments without any consciousness 
 of the grounds on which they rest are incapable 
 of explaining or vindicating them, they are unable 
 to communicate their faculty to others. It is in 
 them as a kind of inspiration or intuitive insight, 
 which makes them act rightly without knowing 
 what they do. Therefore " not by any wisdom nor 
 because they were wise, did Thendstocles, Pericles 
 and other great statesmen succeed in guiding their 
 states aright, but by a kind of divination; for 
 diviners and prophets say many things truly, but 
 they know not what they say." And so it is also 
 with the poets, and in a sense with all good men, 
 who therefore are often called divine. If, however, 
 we could find anyone of these who should add to 
 his intuitive perception of the right a consciousness 
 of the reason of its rightness, his moral judg- 
 ments would have a far higher value, and he 
 would be among other living men what Tiresias was 
 among the dead ; for, in the words of Homer " he 
 alone had the breath of life and intelligence in 
 him, while all the rest were but flitting shades." ^ 
 
 But important as this division between knowledge 
 and opinion seems to be, we must not forget that, 
 
 ^Meno,9SA. ^ Id., 100 a, 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 for Plato, it is these very opinions which supply the 
 means whereby we attain to knowledge. It is out 
 of the unexplained judgments of the ordinary moral 
 consciousness that we have to elicit the principles 
 or reasons on which scientific morals must rest. 
 We have to ascend from the particulars as given 
 in opinion to the universal principle, by aid of 
 which our views of these very particulars may be 
 corrected. But how is this process to be carried 
 out ? The Protagoras had suggested what seemed 
 a very simple way of performing it. It had pointed 
 out that there is one common element or circumstance 
 accompanying, and forming a part in all the ends 
 of our action, namely, that they secure pleasure or 
 avert pain by their attainment; and it had gone on 
 to maintain that this common element in all our 
 ends must be taken as the end, the summum bonum, 
 in reference to which they must all be estimated or 
 valued. Hence, what is needed to correct ordinary 
 opinion and to give a scientific basis to our particular 
 judgments in morals, is simply a measuring art, which 
 shall fix the value of all our actions by the amount 
 of pleasure they produce. But while this was one 
 way of achieving the Socratic aim of making morals 
 scientific, another and a better way seemed to be 
 suggested in the Meno. The great object of Socrates 
 had been to define tlie moral universals, the words 
 of approval or disapproval which are used in the
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 99 
 
 ordinary moral judgments of men ; and his method 
 of achieving it had consisted simply in bringing such 
 judgments together, comparing them, showing their 
 agreements and differences, and using one of them 
 as a negative instance to correct the hasty hypo- 
 thesis suggested by another ; for in this way he 
 hoped to find a principle which would explain 
 them all, showing the amount of truth contained in 
 each, and accounting for the error that was mingled 
 with it. Thus, just as Newton from the many 
 apparent motions of terrestrial and celestial bodies 
 was enabled to elicit the principle of gravitation, 
 which explained all the appearances, and showed in 
 each case what the real motions were ; so Socrates, 
 according to this view, sought by a synthesis of the 
 varying judgments of men in particular moral 
 difficulties, to discover a fundamental principle of 
 morality which should justify these very judgments 
 so far as they were right, and correct them so far 
 as they were wrong. In so doing, in short, he was 
 simply following the path which inductive science 
 always has to follow when it seeks to penetrate 
 beyond phenomena to the real laws and nature of 
 things. 
 
 Now, the Meno had suggested a new explanation 
 of this process and its result. It had suggested 
 that the mind is possessed of a universal faculty, 
 or, in other words, that it is guided in its
 
 100 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 apprehension of particular phenomena by universal 
 principles, of which, however, it is not at first 
 conscious, and which it can only imperfectly apply. 
 Science, or knowledge in the stricter sense of the 
 word, must, therefore, mean primarily the bringing 
 of these principles to clear self-consciousness. Thus 
 the true import of the doctrine that 'virtue is 
 knowledge ' must be, not that a calculative art of 
 life is to be substituted for the haphazard judgments 
 of ignorance, but that the truth which underlies the 
 judgments of the ordinary moral consciousness, even 
 when these judgments are erroneous, should be 
 discovered ; that the reality, which is partly hid and 
 partly revealed by the first appearances of things, 
 should be brought to light by a comprehensive 
 induction and a dialectical discussion of these very 
 appearances. For the error of opinion, or, in other 
 words, of the ordinary consciousness, lies in this, not 
 that it altogether fails to apprehend truth or reality, 
 but that it does not bring its different views of 
 things into connexion, or correct one of them by 
 another ; or, in other words, that it does not seek 
 for the unity that underlies all the differences and 
 contradictions of the appearances. Opinion is always, 
 so to speak, at some point of the circumference and 
 never at the centre, and therefore it can never see 
 things in their real value and relations. And truth 
 is to be found only by concentration, by * thinking
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 101 
 
 things together ' ; i.e. it is to be found only in some 
 principle which explains all the diversities of ex- 
 perience in consistency with each other. 
 
 The Gorgias is the dialogue in which the reconsti- 
 tution of ethics upon the new basis begins. In it 
 Plato insists, not, as in the purely Socratic dialogues, 
 upon the opposition of ignorance and knowledge, but 
 upon the opposition, and at the same time the relation, 
 of opinion and knowledge, or, in other words, of the 
 apparent and the real in morals. Polus, one of the 
 antagonists of Socrates, speaks of the tyrant in a 
 despotic State and of the skilful rhetorician in a free 
 State as the persons who alone have it in their power 
 to attain the highest happiness ; for, more than any 
 other men, they can do what they please, can force 
 all other men to bend to their will, and can exile or 
 ruin all who oppose them. And Socrates is made to 
 answer with the apparent paradox that such men can 
 indeed do ' what seems to them best,' but that they, 
 least of all men, can do * what they will.' ^ Eor what 
 men really will is not the means but the end, not the 
 particular acts they do or the particular objects they 
 strive after, but the good which they seek to secure 
 through these acts and objects. The immediate 
 objects of human desire — health, wealth, honour, etc. 
 — are, after all, only means to happiness, and not 
 
 ^Gorgias, 466 E, ovd^u yap iroLelv i^v ^ovXovTai, ws iiro% eiirelv iroieiv
 
 102 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 happiness itself ; they are sought not for themselves 
 but sub ratione boni, with a view to the supreme good 
 of life. Thus what we really want is not to satisfy 
 our desires but to satisfy ourselves, and we can satisfy 
 ourselves only by the Summum Bonum ; but in our 
 shortsightedness the ultimate good we seek is apt to 
 become identified with the objects of special desires, and 
 we pursue such objects as if they offered a complete 
 satisfaction. And although, when we attain them, we 
 find that we are still unsatisfied, this experience does 
 not prevent us on the next occasion from falling 
 under the same illusion. Hence the mere power to 
 do what we please cannot help us, so long as we do 
 not know what we will, do not know where the real 
 satisfaction of the soul is to be found. 
 
 What, then, is this real good which Plato contrasts 
 with the satisfaction of particular desires ? One point 
 is clear to begin with, that it cannot be defined by 
 aid of the measuring art of the Protagoras. For, 
 according to the view there expressed, the supreme 
 good was simply the sum of particular goods or 
 pleasures. In other words, the Socrates of that 
 dialogue assumed the particular desires and the plea- 
 sures to which they point as his starting-point, and 
 regarded the supreme good as simply the greatest pos- 
 sible aggregate of such pleasures. He sought to define 
 the whole by means of the parts, taken severally and 
 then summed up together. But Plato now maintains
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 103 
 
 that we must begin with the unity of the whole and 
 regard the parts only as elements in it or means to it. 
 We are not to ask whether this object and that other 
 object, each by itself, satisfies a particular desire and 
 therefore gives a particular pleasure, and then add 
 them all together, deducting any pains that follow on 
 such pleasures and avoiding the objects which in the 
 long run cause a preponderance of pain. We are to 
 regard the good of life as one whole, and to estimate 
 the particular objects only as contributing to this. 
 For, as in any organism the whole is not the mere 
 sum of the parts, nor could we describe a man as 
 consisting of a head, plus arms, -plus legs, and so 
 on, but rather the whole is in every part, and each 
 part can be estimated only as contributing to it : so 
 we cannot say that the good of man consists of a 
 number of separate goods — food, drink, wealth, honours, 
 and so on — and that his complete satisfaction consists 
 in the sum of the satisfactions to be got from all 
 these. Eather we must regard the pleasure resulting 
 from the attainment of each of these objects as 
 illusory, in so far as it is not a means to, or an 
 element in, the one complete good which we are 
 always seeking. Nor does it alter the result, if we 
 look at happiness in another way, as a good which 
 has to be realised in time ; for we cannot regard life 
 as a sum of particular actions or feelings, each of 
 which has to be estimated separately, but rather we
 
 104 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 must regard eacli moment or period as a stage in the 
 attainment of the one good of existence, the full 
 realisation and satisfaction of the self. 
 
 This is not the exact form in which Plato pre- 
 sents his idea to us, but it expresses his essential 
 meaning. Thus he points out the analogy of virtue 
 in the soul to health in the body. To regard it as 
 the good of life to gratify every particular desire 
 to the utmost is, he argues, as if we should sup- 
 pose it to be the greatest good of the body to 
 have the utmost possible satisfaction of all the 
 appetites of sense without any consideration of 
 health. Hence the politician who seeks merely to 
 aggrandise the State, and to provide the citizens 
 with ' harbours and ships and colonies ' and all the 
 luxuries and conveniences of life, without attending 
 to their moral and intellectual education, is like 
 a cook setting up for a doctor, and supplying 
 his patient v/ith every kind of dainty that pleases 
 the palate withr)ut heeding the diseased state of the 
 body he may be producing. In the case of the 
 body it is obvious that it would be ruinous thus 
 to look to what is pleasant in particular and to 
 regard the general good as secondary ; for when 
 the order and due regulation of the parts is sacri- 
 ficed, this in the long run brings about the ruin of 
 the parts themselves. And the same is no less true 
 in the case of the soul : for what we reallv desire
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 105 
 
 is, as already said, not the particular object but the 
 good which we think to find in it, and the satis- 
 faction derived from the former is transitory and 
 illusory, if it comes into collision with the latter. 
 
 Plato, then, concludes the dialogue by putting 
 the contrast between the two points of view in its 
 most vivid and extreme form. Hence Callicles, the 
 final opponent of Socrates, is made to maintain that 
 the supreme bliss is to have as many, as diverse 
 and as violent desires as possible, provided we 
 have the opportunity of satisfying them. " How," 
 he asks, " can a man be happy who is the servant 
 of anything ? On the contrary I venture plainly to 
 assert that he who would truly live ought to allow 
 his desires to wax to the uttermost and not to 
 chastise them ; but when they have grown to the 
 greatest, he should have the courage and intelligence 
 to minister to them and satisfy all his longings. 
 This I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. 
 To this, however, many cannot attain ; and they 
 blame the strong man because they are ashamed of 
 their own weakness, which they desire to conceal ; 
 and hence they say that intemperance is base." ^ 
 " That," answers Socrates, " means that we are to 
 be like a cask with holes, into which water is con- 
 tinually being poured and from which it is as con- 
 tinually running out." Hence it is the highest bliss 
 
 ^ Gonjlax, 491 e.
 
 106 THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 to be filled with a devouring craving which is ever 
 receiving, but never has received, satisfaction. Our 
 pleasure is bound up with the pain of a want that 
 can never be filled ; and, as Shakespeare puts it, using 
 the same metaphor, 
 
 "The cloyed will, 
 That satiate but unsatisfied desire, that tub 
 Both full and running, ravening first the lamb, 
 Longs after for the garbage."^ 
 
 As against this Plato puts the picture of the tem- 
 perate man, the man whose inner life is ordered by 
 one principle and therefore in harmony with itself, 
 who " when his casks are once filled, has no need 
 to feed them any more, and has no farther trouble 
 or care about them." In other words, in him each 
 desire and impulse has a definite limit, within which 
 it is kept by regard to the others and to the whole 
 of which it is a part. But if this is the type of 
 humanity we are to aim at, then the true states- 
 man, the true educator of men, is one who will 
 maintain the balance of the soul, and who, when it 
 is in a diseased state, is ready to mortify and chas- 
 tise any particular desire till it is again reduced to 
 its proper proportions in relation to the rest. And 
 from this point of view Plato is prepared to support 
 the apparent paradox that it is better to suffer than 
 to do injustice, and that if any one does injustice, 
 
 ^Quoted by Thomson in his edition of the Gorgias.
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 107 
 
 he ought to wish to be punished for it and not to 
 escape, seeing that it is only by punishment he can 
 be cured. 
 
 In all this Plato does not yet give us more than 
 a formal description of the good, as an order or 
 organisation of life which is determined by one 
 principle. But what he distinctly maintains is that 
 we must begin with the unity of the whole and 
 not with the difference of the parts, with the uni- 
 versal and not with the particulars, and that the 
 former must determine the latter. And this is a 
 very important point ; for it shows that for Plato 
 the universal, or, to use his own word, the idea, is 
 not merely a common element in the particulars, 
 as pleasure is a common element in all the satis- 
 factions of our desires. It has, moreover, a very 
 distinct bearing upon the ordinary representation of 
 Plato's theory of ideas, in which they are taken as 
 just such common elements. In the Gorgias at least 
 it is clear that the universal is conceived as the 
 organising principle of a whole which determines the 
 relations of all the parts. Further, this organising 
 idea in ethics is not conceived as something which 
 has to be brought to the parts or particulars from 
 without, but something which is implied in them, 
 or in our conceptions of them, from the beginning. 
 For, as Plato points out here, and as he shows 
 more fully in the Bejyublic, the desire of the good
 
 108 THE PLATONIC IDEALISM 
 
 underlies all our particular desires, and it is the good 
 that we really seek in every end we set before us. 
 " This is what every man pursues and makes his end, 
 having a presentiment that there is such an end, and 
 yet hesitating because neither knowing its nature 
 nor having the same sure proof of it that we have 
 of other things." ^ In other words, the good is the 
 presupposition of all particular goods just as the 
 truth is the presupposition of all our ordinary judg- 
 ments, which, no doubt, are often erroneous, but 
 nevertheless by synthesis and dialectic may be made 
 to yield the knowledge of a principle which will 
 enable us at once to explain and to correct them. 
 
 ^Bep., 505 B.
 
 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 THE NATUEE OF IDEAS AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC 
 UNITY. 
 
 In the last lecture I pointed out that Plato goes 
 beyond Socrates in two ways : in the first place, in so 
 far as he puts opinion — which is his name for the 
 ordinary consciousness before it has been changed by 
 any process of reflexion — between ignorance and 
 knowledge. In other words, he maintains that we 
 are never in a state of pure ignorance from which 
 science has to deliver us. If we ever were in such 
 a state, learning would be impossible, for it would 
 have nothing from which it could start. Opinion, 
 however, is inchoate knowledge ; it is a knowledge 
 of appearances, which must indeed be partly illusive, 
 but which cannot be absolutely without relation to 
 the truth. It, therefore, affords a starting-point 
 from which investigation may begin, a material from 
 which, by synthesis and dialectic, truth may be 
 extracted.
 
 no THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 In the second place, Plato transforms the view of 
 morality which is attributed to Socrates in the 
 Protagoras. He rejects the idea that the principle of 
 morals is to be found in the pleasure which accom- 
 panies, or forms an element in all attainment of our 
 ends, and that the science of morals is therefore simply 
 a calculus of pleasures. Such a view would involve 
 that the whole good of life was merely the sum of the 
 parts, whereas for Plato the particular goods of life 
 must rather be estimated and determined by the 
 nature of the whole. The fundamental idea of ethics 
 must therefore be conceived as a principle of unity 
 and order, which is implied in all our particular 
 ethical judgments, but fully expressed in none of 
 them, and which, when it is discovered, can be used 
 to correct and complete the judgments from which 
 it is derived. 
 
 So far Plato has been dealing mainly with the 
 problem of philosophy as it is conceived by Socrates. 
 He has l)een seeking to define the universals 
 which underlie our ethical judgments and these 
 only. But it was impossible for him to confine 
 his speculations to this sphere. For in every judg- 
 ment we make, we use universals or general ideas, 
 and in every case the same maxim will apply, namely, 
 that the universal must be taken neither as the 
 sum of the particulars nor as the abstraction of a 
 common element in them, but as a principle of unity
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 111 
 
 which is implied in them, and which, when discovered 
 and defined, will make them intelligible. Thus it is 
 not only such predicates as ' good,' * just,' * temperate,' 
 that require definition, but all the predicates we use 
 even in our simplest judgments, such as ' one,' ' equal,' 
 * great,' * beautiful.' In all our immediate judgments 
 we use general ideas such as these, to determine 
 particular objects, without any previous definition of 
 the general ideas themselves. In all equally we 
 assume that we know that of which we are ignorant, 
 and in all equally the Socratic process of investigation 
 is necessary in order to define our universals, and to 
 correct the uncertain and imperfect use of them which 
 must prevail so long as they are undefined. 
 
 Nor could Plato be content with the definition of 
 these general terms taken separately. Each of them 
 is the name of a principle of unity within a certain 
 limited sphere, but all special spheres of existence are 
 elements in the one great whole of reality. Hence, 
 just as in the moral life all our definitions of par- 
 ticular virtues had to be carried back to the definition 
 of the good, as the principle of unity in human life, 
 so all definitions of general ideas must be carried 
 back to one principle of unity in the universe. 
 The problem of philosophy is, therefore, to rise from 
 opinion to truth, not only in ethics, but in all spheres 
 of reality; and not only to find special principles of 
 unity in all particular spheres of reality, but to bring
 
 112 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 them all together into one system by the discovery of 
 one highest principle. 
 
 The dialogues which are most important in relation 
 to this development of the ideal theory are the 
 Symjjosmm, the Phacdo, and the RepuUic — dialogues 
 which on the whole belong to the same stage of 
 thought, and which were probably not far distant 
 from each other in time of composition. The Sym- 
 posium and the Phaedo in particular seem to be 
 counterparts and complements of each other, the 
 former dwelling upon the ^^osi^i-ye relation of the 
 particular and the universal, the latter upon their 
 negative relation ; the former giving us a view of the 
 education of man in which sense and opinion are 
 treated as stepping-stones on which he may rise 
 to truth, while the latter regards sense and opinion 
 mainly as hindrances to his progress, and insists on 
 the necessity of a complete emancipation from both. 
 Yet it may easily be shown that there is no essential 
 discord between the two views ; for Plato has already 
 taught us to recognise the double nature of sen- 
 sible experience, as the necessary starting-point or 
 datum of science, and yet at the same time as 
 in itself only an imperfect and illusive appre- 
 hension of things, which it is the business of 
 science to correct and transform. Thus the object 
 of opinion at once is, and is not. It is a phenomenon 
 or appearance ; and as the appearance both discloses
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 113 
 
 and hides the reality, as it " half reveals and half 
 
 conceals the soul within," it has an ambiguous 
 
 character, and may be regarded either as that which 
 
 prevents us from attaining to knowledge, or as that 
 
 which is the necessary and only means of attaining 
 
 to it. It becomes a hindrance, in so far as the 
 
 appearance is taken for the reality; and in this point 
 
 of view the great effort of science is to rise above 
 
 opinion, to tear away the illusive veil which it casts 
 
 over the truth, and to grasp the permanent unity 
 
 which is disguised in its changing forms. Hence 
 
 opinion is sometimes represented as a kind of dream 
 
 in which shadows are taken for substances.^ " He 
 
 who recognises the existence of beautiful objects but 
 
 not of beauty itself, and is not capable of perceiving it 
 
 even if it be pointed out to him, does he not seem to 
 
 live in a perpetual dream rather than in waking 
 
 reality ? " ^ For in no one of the particular objects 
 
 to which he ascribes beauty is the principle of beauty 
 
 adequately realised : and so it is with all the other 
 
 principles of unity. " Of all the many beautiful 
 
 things there is none which may not appear ugly, 
 
 of the many just acts none that may not appear 
 
 unjust, of the many equals none that in another 
 
 relation may not appear unequal." ^ And the reason 
 
 is that, while beauty, justice and equality have 
 
 definite natures, and while each of them is one self- 
 
 1 Symp. , 192 d. 2 ^^p _ 47(5 c. 3 Id. , 479 a. 
 
 VOL I. H
 
 114 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 identical thing, in their particular presentments, 
 where they are confused with one another and with 
 the subjects in which they appear, they take manifold 
 and diverse forms.^ 
 
 When he is dwelling upon this point of view 
 Plato sometimes seems almost, if not altogether, 
 to fall back upon the unmediated opposition of 
 knowledge and ignorance as it was conceived by 
 Socrates. The ideal reality of things is represented 
 as existing in eternal self-identity, as the one beyond 
 the many, or as the permanent substance which is far 
 removed from all the variableness of the phenomena. 
 Thus, especially in some passages of the Fhaedo, opinion 
 is set in direct antithesis to science, and the negative 
 relation of the latter to the former is insisted upon in 
 language which approximates to the utterances of 
 eastern mysticism. The idea in its pure nature, it 
 is alleged, is not seen until we have purged away 
 all the imperfections and irrelevancies which attach 
 to its particular embodiments ; and this means also 
 that the mind that would grasp it must altogether 
 free itself from the dominion of the senses. It will 
 be observed that these two, the objective and the 
 subjective aspects of Plato's idealism, go together 
 and imply each other. The ideal type is a de- 
 finite form, a pure universal in which there is no 
 variableness of aspect or compounding of different 
 
 ^Bep., 47(J A.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 115 
 
 elements, but a transparent and unchanging unity. 
 But, as such, it is invisible, and cannot be presented 
 to sense or imagination, but only grasped by the 
 intelligence : and the intelligence which grasps it 
 must itself be of kindred nature to it. Furthermore, 
 even the intelligence can only grasp such a unity 
 when it withdraws into itself from the confusions of 
 sense which distract and disturb its pure activity. 
 For " when in its perception of things it uses the 
 body as its instrument, apprehending through sight 
 or hearing or any other sense, then it is dragged 
 down by the body into the region of things that 
 never maintain their identity ; it wanders and is 
 confused, and loses control of itself, and is as it 
 were intoxicated, because it is dealing with things 
 that have no stability in themselves. But when it 
 returns into itself and reflects, it passes into another 
 region, the region of that which is pure and ever- 
 lasting, immortal and unchangeable ; and feeling its 
 kindred thereto, it dwells there under its own control 
 and has rest from its wandering, and is constant and 
 one with itself, as are the objects with which it 
 deals." ^ From this point of view the body is a kind 
 of tomb of the soul from which it can rise only at 
 death, and the whole life of the philosopher has to 
 be conceived as a practice for that final moment in 
 which it shall free itself from this " muddy vesture 
 
 1 Phaedo, 70 c.
 
 116 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 of decay " that doth so " grossly close it in," and 
 hinder it from the vision of the intelligible world. 
 It is in such passages as these that we find the 
 strongest support for the common conception of 
 Plato's idealism as a kind of apotheosis of abstrac- 
 tions, an attempt to find the truth of things in the 
 most general and therefore empty predicates which we 
 attach to them. Further, this conception of Plato's 
 meaning is favoured by the circumstance that he has 
 usually been read under the influence of the un- 
 sympathetic criticism of Aristotle, or through the 
 interpretations of the Neo-Platonists, who could 
 appreciate only the negative aspect of his philosophy. 
 We have, however, to observe, in the first place, that 
 Plato, even in the passages where he goes farthest in 
 the direction of mysticism, constantly upholds the 
 doctrine that opinion is not ignorance but imperfect 
 knowledge, and that it is only through opinion, which 
 is mediated by sense, that we can rise to a knowledge 
 of the ideal reality of things. We know ideas at first 
 only as predicates of particular objects, though really 
 they are absolute types to which these objects are 
 never adequate, which they recall, but of which they 
 necessarily fall short. Thus when we give the predi- 
 cate of equality to two material objects, we are 
 attributing to them something to which they may 
 approximate but which they never exactly attain. 
 The pure mathematical relation can never be
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 117 
 
 adequately realised in sensible experience, though 
 it is constantly suggested by it. And the same is 
 the case with such predicates as ' beautiful,' ' just,' 
 Mioly,' and so on. No particular thing can realise 
 the type, though every one suggests or recalls it; and 
 indeed it could not become an object of our con- 
 sciousness unless it did so. And " must we not allow 
 that when any one, looking at an object, observes 
 that the thing which he sees aims at being some 
 other thing, but falls short of, and cannot be tliat 
 other — he who makes the observation must have had 
 a previous knowledge of that to which the other, 
 though similar, was inferior ? " ^ 
 
 Setting aside the idea of Keminiscence, what Plato 
 here puts before us is that we always know the 
 particular through, and in relation to, a universal, 
 which has a wider import. The universal is, therefore, 
 logically prior to the particular, in the sense that in 
 apprehending the particular we presuppose it ; though 
 it is also true that it is not till later that we direct 
 attention to the universal for itself or attempt to 
 define it. 
 
 But, in the second place, Plato's view of the par- 
 ticular, as like the universal and therefore capable of 
 recalling it, is closely connected with his conception of 
 art and also with his idealisation of love. Art is for 
 him the great means of presenting the higher under 
 ^ Phaed., 74 u.
 
 118 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 the form of the lower. Its business is to give to the 
 particular object of sense a form in which it will more 
 adequately represent its idea. In other words, art by 
 a kind of ' noble untruth ' removes from the object all 
 the imperfections of finitude and makes it serve as 
 a substitute for the idea itself. Art and poetry 
 bring down the idea into the region of ordinary 
 experience, and make it a presence in the sensible 
 world for tliose who cannot raise their minds above 
 that world to the intelligil)le reality of which it is 
 but a semblance. And the same may be said of 
 natural beauty. For, as Plato says in the Fhacdrus, 
 the beautiful is the form in which the ideal comes 
 nearest to the senses, and is presented most vividly 
 to the ordinary consciousness ; ^ while the purely 
 ethical and intellectual ideal has at first no form 
 or comeliness that can commend it to the sense or 
 imagination. And his explanation of the passion of 
 love is that it arises just from that confusion or 
 identification of the ideal with the sensible, of the 
 universal with the particular, which beauty seems to 
 authorise. Hence in the Sij7nposium Plato gives us 
 the picture of a process of education or elevation of 
 the soul, which begins in the wonder and desire pro- 
 duced by the outward beauty of one finite individual ; 
 and which rises by gradual stages from the body to 
 the soul, from one to all beautiful forms, till it finds 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 250 C.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 119 
 
 at last its perfect satisfaction in the contemplation 
 of the ideal principle of beauty itself.^ 
 
 In this way Plato seems to pass from a negative 
 to a positive view of the relations of the particular 
 to the universal, from the mystic longing to be freed 
 from the bonds of sense to the recognition that the 
 madness of the poet and the lover, who see the ideal 
 in the sensible, has in it something of divine inspira- 
 tion. But this is not all. Aristotle brings against 
 Plato the charge that he sought the one beyond the 
 many instead of seeking it in the many. But science, 
 as Aristotle himself recognises,^ must necessarily do 
 both. It must go beyond the phenomena with which 
 it starts in order to explain them. If it seeks a 
 principle of unity in the diversity of the things of 
 experience, it must isolate the particular aspect or 
 sphere of reality it is investigating from all that is 
 irrelevant to it or not immediately connected with 
 it. Thus the geometrician has to free his figures 
 from every characteristic that does not flow from 
 their definition as spatial forms or determinations of 
 abstract space ; and the arithmetician has to isolate 
 his numbers from every determination that does not 
 belong to them as discrete units, standing in external 
 relations to each other. The existence of such sciences 
 
 ^Symp., 210 a. .seg. 
 
 '^Cf. Anal. Post., II. 19. iK 5' inireipias t) iK Travrbs rjpeiuLrja-avTos 
 ToO Ka66\ov eu rrj ^vx^j, tov epos irapa rd TroXXd, 6 Siv ev diraaiv iu 
 {vri iKeivois to avrb, Texvns o-PXV '^"^ €TrLaTr]/j.r]S.
 
 120 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 depends on our being able to consider the relations 
 with which they deal apart from every other relation 
 — i.e. apart from everything that cannot be explained 
 by the principle of unity that governs the special 
 aspect or sphere of reality in question. And though 
 such abstraction cannot be so fully and definitely 
 attained in other cases, yet it remains true that in 
 every science we have to deal with a special aspect or 
 sphere of reality ; and that in order to deal with it 
 successfully, we have to abstract as far as possible 
 from all that is unconnected with its immediate 
 object. In other words, we seek to free each science 
 from irrelevancies, and to make it into a transparent 
 body of truth, each part of which implies the whole. 
 In many cases we may not be able perfectly to realise 
 such a systematic unity, but it is the ideal we have 
 always to strive after. For knowledge can hardly 
 be regarded as worthy of the name of science till it 
 ceases to be a collection of facts, and begins to take 
 the form of an organic whole, all the elements of 
 which are determined by the same principle of unity. 
 Now, if I'lato's ' one beyond the many ' meant 
 this — and we shall find reason to maintain that it 
 did so — it is not liable to the objection that its 
 unity is a mere abstraction. A science must abstract 
 from what is irrelevant to its special point of view, 
 in order that it may work out more fully and 
 definitely what in that point of view is relevant.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 121 
 
 It must abstract from all that is not connected with 
 its own specific aim, or included in the specific sphere 
 of existence it has to investigate, in order that it 
 may take as complete a view as possible of all that 
 contributes to that aim, or falls within that sphere. 
 And — subject to a qualification to be explained in 
 the sequel — the Platonic ideas may be fairly inter- 
 preted in this sense ; for by an idea Plato means 
 something which can be defined, and from the 
 definition of which consequences can be drawn, i.e. 
 he means not a bare unit but a unity of differences, 
 not a simple abstraction which excludes all distinction, 
 but a content whose elements, though distinguishable, 
 are yet in transparent unity with each other. When, 
 therefore, he speaks of the exclusion of multiplicity 
 and change from his ideas and from the science of 
 them, what he means to express is that, when we 
 reach the inmost nature of anything we find in 
 it, not parts that are external to each other, or phases 
 that merely succeed each other, but a whole, the 
 elements of which are recognised as essentially con- 
 nected with each other. In other words, what he 
 is aiming at is not the negation of all diiference, 
 but only of differences that do not flow from 
 one principle or are not involved in it. This 
 seems to be the real meaning of Plato, though we 
 have to acknowledcre that at this sta^^e of his 
 development he dwells too exclusively upon the
 
 122 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 negative aspect of science, upon the permanent unity 
 and simplicity of the idea as opposed to the 
 multiplicity and variableness of the phenomena ; and 
 that his language, especially in the Phacdo, might 
 encourage the notion that all that is necessary to 
 attain the ideal is to turn away from the world of 
 sense and opinion. His mind, in fact, is occupied 
 almost wholly with the movement upwards to appre- 
 hend the principles of unity in things, and hardly 
 at all with the movement downwards to reconstitute 
 the phenomena by a new interpretation. And this 
 over-emphasis, natural as it might be in the first effort 
 to rise from opinion to science, inevitably led to the 
 misunderstanding to which we have referred — a mis- 
 understanding which seems to have arisen at an early 
 period in the Platonic school itself, and which in his 
 later dialogues Plato seeks to correct. Whether he 
 ever completely corrected it so as to exclude the error 
 of mysticism, or whether he was finally driven to 
 admit an irreconcilable division between the world 
 of sense and the world of intelligence, we shall have 
 to consider hereafter. 
 
 In the meantime we must go on to deal with a 
 second point, in which theology is vitally interested, 
 namely, that for Plato, even in this earliest form of 
 the ideal theory, all ideas form a whole, and point 
 to one highest idea which includes or absorbs all 
 the others into itself. Eor in Plato's philosophy, as
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 123 
 
 already stated, the conceptions of Socrates are in 
 such wise deepened, enlarged, and universalised, 
 that the ideal principle which Socrates sought to 
 introduce into morals is made the basis of a philosophy 
 of the universe. In accordance with this view we 
 find in the Phaedo a kind of transfigured rendering 
 of the fact, vouched for by Xenophon, that Socrates 
 at one period of his life had occupied himself with 
 the physical theories of the earlier philosophers, but 
 had finally turned away from them to investigate 
 the ethical principle by which the conduct of man 
 must be regulated. Plato accommodates this fact 
 to his own case, and makes Socrates turn away 
 from the theory of Anaxagoras — who, though he 
 had spoken of reason as the ordering principle 
 of all things, had nevertheless adhered to the methods 
 of explanation which were employed by the other 
 physical philosophers — to the principles and methods 
 of his own idealism. Thus the Platonic Socrates 
 tells U8 that there was a time when he was content 
 to explain all phenomena by physical causes, treating 
 e,g. the growth of animals as the result of some 
 interaction of heat and cold, and even the perception 
 and thought of man as due to the action of the 
 blood or the air on the matter of the brain. But 
 he soon began to find a difficulty in such explana- 
 tions ; for he found it impossible to understand how 
 the unity of life and mind should be produced by
 
 124 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 the combination and reciprocal influence of the 
 material parts of the body. He therefore began to 
 doubt what before had seemed a " self-evident truth, 
 that the growth of a man is simply the result of 
 eating and drinking, and that, when by the digestion 
 of food flesh is added to flesh and bone to bone, 
 the lesser bulk becomes larger and the small man 
 great." ^ 
 
 Socrates could not see how such a process would 
 explain the facts. Nay, he could not see how such 
 an hypothesis would explain any ideal unity what- 
 ever, not even that which is involved in the art of 
 arithmetic. " I could not satisfy myself that when 
 one is added to one, the one to which the addition 
 is made becomes two, simply by reason of the addi- 
 tion." ^ In other words, as Kant afterwards pointed 
 out, there is a synthetic principle involved even in 
 the operations of arithmetic, a principle of connexion 
 which mediates in the addition of one element to 
 another ; and we cannot say that the mere bringing 
 of the terms together will explain this process, 
 unless we can find some connective idea by means 
 of which they are reduced to unity. Plato thus, as 
 it appears,, opens up the general question of the 
 need of synthetic principles ; and that not only for 
 the explanation of life and mind, but wherever, in 
 thought or in things, we discover a real unification 
 
 1 Phaedo, 96 d. 2 pkatdo, 96 E.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 125 
 
 of elements which seem in the first instance to be 
 given as diverse. 
 
 Socrates then goes on to tell us that, while 
 troubled with this difficulty, he heard of a book 
 by Anaxagoras which seemed to promise such an 
 explanation of the universe as he wanted, a 
 book in which it was maintained that reason is 
 the disposer and cause of all things. " I was de- 
 lighted at this notion and I said to myself : ' if 
 mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all things 
 for the best, and put each particular thing in the 
 right place ' : and I argued that, if anyone discovered 
 the cause of the generation or distribution or exist- 
 ence of anything, he must find out what state of 
 being, doing, or suffering, was best for it: and there- 
 fore a man need only consider the best for himself 
 and others, and then he would also know the 
 worst, since the same science comprehended both."^ 
 In other words, Socrates expected to get from 
 Anaxagoras a teleological system of the universe, 
 which would solve the problem of ethics as a neces- 
 sary element in its general explanation of reality. 
 But when he read the book, he found that Anaxa- 
 goras had assigned for the causes and reasons of things 
 only the particular elements and their actions and 
 reactions upon each other ; and that he had not in 
 any way attempted to explain the universe, or indeed 
 ^Phatdo, 97 c.
 
 126 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 anything in it, as a whole, the elements of which 
 were united by one teleological principle. 
 
 "I might compare Anaxagoras to a person who began 
 by maintaining that mind is the cause of the actions 
 of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to ex- 
 plain the causes of my several actions in detail, 
 went on to show that I sit here because my body 
 is made up of bones and muscles ; and the bones, 
 as he would say, are hard and have joints that divide 
 them, and the muscles are elastic and they cover 
 the bones, which also have a covering or environ- 
 ment of flesh and skin which contains them : and 
 as the bones are lifted at their joints by the con- 
 traction and relaxation of the muscles, I am able 
 to bend my joints, and this is the reason why I 
 am sitting here in a curved posture : — that is what 
 he would say ; and he would have a similar ex- 
 planation of my talking to you, which he would 
 attribute to sound and ear and hearing, and he 
 would assign ten thousand other causes of the 
 same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, 
 which is that the Athenians have thought fit to 
 condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it 
 better to remain here and undergo my sentence : 
 for I am inclined to think that these muscles and 
 bones of mine would have gone off long ago to 
 Megara or Boeotia — by the dog they would, if they 
 had been moved only l)y their own idea of what
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 127 
 
 is best, and if I had not chosen the better and 
 nobler part, instead of playing truant and running 
 away, to endure any punishment which the State 
 inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of 
 causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, 
 indeed, that without muscles and bones and the 
 other parts of the body I cannot execute my pur- 
 poses. But to say that I do this because of them, 
 and that this is the way the mind acts, and not 
 from a choice of the best, is a very careless and 
 idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot 
 distinguish the cause from the condition, which the 
 many, feeling about in the dark, are always mis- 
 taking and misnaming." ^ 
 
 Socrates expected from Anaxagoras a theory of 
 the universe as an order based not merely upon 
 law but upon design, not upon efficient, but upon 
 final causes. He had expected that Anaxagoras 
 would reduce the order of the universe to a system 
 arranged in view of an absolute good : or, to put 
 it otherwise, that he would explain the world as an 
 intelligible world, the beginning and end of which were 
 to be found in the intelligence. But he soon perceived 
 that in his explanations of particular things Anaxa- 
 goras had really followed the same method as his 
 predecessors, the meLliod of physical causes ; that in 
 other words, he had dealt only with the particular 
 
 ^ Phaedo, 98 c. se,q.
 
 128 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 relations of things as they seemed to present them- 
 selves to the senses, and had sought only to 
 determine how they acted and reacted upon each 
 other. Now, this method, in Plato's opinion, was 
 doomed to failure : for, as he puts it, when we gaze 
 upon the world with the eyes of sense our minds 
 are confused and dazzled as by the sun in eclipse. 
 Hence it is not in this way that we can hope to 
 rise to the principle of unity in the universe, or 
 even to the principle of unity in any part of it. 
 Being thus disappointed in the high hopes which he 
 had entertained of Anaxagoras, the Platonic Socrates 
 is represented as turning, as a secondary resource, to 
 the theory of ideas and the method of dialectic ; ^ 
 that is, he is represented as turning to the Socratic 
 method of induction and definition as it had been 
 recast by Plato himself. That method, he thought, 
 would ultimately bring him in another way to the 
 result which he desired : for it would enable him, 
 in the first place, to attain to the definition of the 
 general predicates by which we characterise par- 
 ticular classes of things, and so to the discovery of 
 the principles which explain particular spheres of 
 reality ; and then, in the second place, if doubt 
 were thrown on any one of the principles so estab- 
 lished, it would enable him to make a further regress 
 upon some higher universal which he would endea- 
 
 1 See note at the end of this lecture.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 129 
 
 vour to define by the same method: and thus he 
 would proceed step by step till he reached a highest 
 principle by which he could explain all the others. 
 An ideal principle reached in this way would not be 
 a mere name — like the ordering mind in the system 
 of Anaxagoras ; it would be seen to be the one prin- 
 ciple of unity in which all the differences of things 
 found their reconcilement and solution. This con- 
 ception of a Jacob's ladder of science leading up to 
 the highest idea, which is indicated in the Fhaedo 
 only by a few pregnant words, is worked out more 
 fully in the BepuUic, where Plato gives his view 
 of the special sciences as preparing the way for the 
 final science of dialectic or philosophy. The sciences 
 — Plato speaks particularly of the mathematical 
 sciences which alone had been developed in his time 
 — are there described as each finding its principle in 
 some one idea which has to be separated from every- 
 thing irrelevant, and developed to all its conse- 
 quences. Each of these sciences deals with a whole 
 or sphere of reality which is only a part in the 
 greater whole of the universe, and its principle 
 is therefore a hypothesis which must rest upon 
 something else than itself. Hence to reach an 
 absolute principle we must take a synthetic view 
 of the principles of all the sciences, and seek for 
 the idea which is at the basis of them all ; for 
 only one who can see things in their unity is worthy 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 to be called a dialectician or philosopher. Thus the 
 true method is to go back from particulars to uni- 
 versals, and from these to still higher universals, 
 till we reach the highest universal, the principle 
 that binds them all together and has no principle 
 beyond it — the Idea of Good which is the light of 
 the intelligible, as the sun is the light of the sensible 
 world. 
 
 Now, without entering at present upon the dis- 
 cussion of Plato's Idea of Good as it is presented in 
 the Republic, let us consider the general contrast of 
 methods which he here sets before us. Plato rejects 
 the view of Anaxagoras because, though reason was 
 his nominal principle, he did not, on the basis of 
 it, work out a conception of the world as an in- 
 telligble, or, what is the same thing for Plato, a teleo- 
 logical system — an organic whole, in which the Good 
 which is the essential aim of reason is realised. On 
 the contrary, he feU back upon an explanation of 
 phenomena by the special relations of the parts of 
 the world, as acting and reacting upon each other 
 according to physical laws which might be discovered 
 by observation. Such a method could never, in 
 Plato's opinion, lead to a final explanation of things ; 
 nor, however far it was carried, could it verify the 
 assertion of Anaxagoras that the world is the mani- 
 festation of intelligence. But Plato thought that his 
 own method of ideas, the method of dialectic and
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 131 
 
 • 
 
 definition, if it were steadfastly pursued, would ulti- 
 mately lead to the desired result, would carry the 
 mind up from idea to idea till it reached the Idea 
 of Good, as the most comprehensive of all principles 
 from which all other principles might be deduced, 
 and would thus enable us to conceive the world as 
 a rational system. 
 
 Now, this scheme of Plato is apt to be regarded 
 as only an attempt to substitute the barren pursuit 
 of final causes for the fruitful ways of science. And, 
 in a sense, we must admit the truth of the charge. 
 Plato did not understand, and could not anticipate, 
 how much science was to gain by the method he re- 
 pudiates, the method which begins with isolated facts 
 or elements of reality and aims only at finding out 
 the laws of their action and reaction upon each other. 
 Further, we have to admit that it was impossible 
 for science to advance very far in the way which 
 Plato preferred, by the direct attempt to discover 
 formal or final causes. Not even in the case of 
 the organic world, where final causes have their 
 most natural application, could satisfactory results 
 be reached by such a method. Even there we must 
 begin with the use of lower categories, with the 
 second causes or conditions on which Plato looks 
 so slightingly. We must analyse the whole into its 
 parts, and try to discover the ways in which these 
 severed parts act and react on each other. To
 
 132 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 comprehend the living being as a whole or organism is 
 the last, and not the first, thing in science. In this 
 respect Plato's view is like that of Goethe, who objected 
 to the analytic work of science that it ' murders in 
 order to dissect,' and that in the end it leaves us 
 with the parts in our hands, while the spiritual 
 bond, that held them together and made them parts 
 of one living being, has disappeared in the process. 
 Yes, it may 'be answered, in the end we cannot 
 explain life by the action of the parts of the dead 
 body. But it is not less true that we must 
 begin by dissecting, we must analyse the organism 
 into its parts, else we shall never know much 
 about it. If, indeed, after we have dissected and 
 have the parts in our hands, we think that we 
 have done all that is required, or that we can 
 explain the animal fully by the mechanical and 
 chemical relations of its parts — still more if w^e 
 think we can explain mind on such a method — then 
 we shall deserve Plato's censure ; but, on the other 
 hand, he deserves ours, for his attempt at once to 
 attain the ultimate secret, and for his contempt of 
 the process of analysis which is the necessary pre- 
 supposition of any conclusive synthesis. Plato does, 
 indeed, introduce a saving clause ; for while, in the 
 passage just quoted, he declares that the mechani- 
 cal conditions of the actions of man or any other 
 being, are not the real causes of these actions,
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 133 
 
 he admits that they are conditions without which 
 the real causes would not operate. But if this be 
 true, these conditions also require investigation, and 
 it will not do to pass them over, or treat them as 
 something which may be taken for granted. Indeed, 
 it is only after we have mastered the nature of the 
 parts taken in isolation or as externally acting upon 
 each other, that it is safe to go on to recognise that 
 after all they are not isolated, nor is their relation 
 merely external. It is just when analysis has 
 done its work as completely as possible, that we 
 become clearly conscious that no final account of 
 such a being can be given, till we have discovered 
 the one principle that manifests itself in all its 
 differences, and binds them into one organic whole. 
 So far I have spoken of organic beings in the 
 narrower sense ; but Plato maintains that the same 
 thing is true of all forms of existence, and of the 
 universe itself. He maintains, in other words, that 
 we can never get an ultimate explanation of anything 
 by the method of the physical philosophers. For all 
 things, so far as they are independent realities, are in 
 a sense organic, i.e. they are systematic wholes, in 
 which we have to explain the difference from the 
 unity and not the unity from the difference, the parts 
 from the whole, not the whole from the parts. Even 
 in mathematics, we cannot explain the unity — say of 
 a geometrical figure — by a synthesis of parts which
 
 134 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 are external to each other; we must, on the con- 
 trary, first define the unity, and then deduce the 
 correlation of the parts from it. We cannot see e.g. 
 what a triangle is, unless we are able to deduce all 
 its distinctive characteristics from its definition. No 
 ultimate explanation of anything can be given, if we 
 accept the principles of Plato, except by the discovery 
 of its formal or final cause. 
 
 But admitting all this, we must still maintain that 
 no such reconstruction of the parts from the idea of 
 the whole can be attained without a previous investiga- 
 tion of the parts in their distinction and their external 
 relations. Teleology may not under all circumstances 
 be a barren study, but it must be barren to anyone 
 who is not prepared to go through the patient labour 
 of dissection and analysis. Plato's main defect is 
 that he anticipates the end or ultimate result of 
 philosophy, and that he does not realise the magni- 
 tude and slowness of the mining process of science 
 through which it is to be reached. And perhaps we 
 may add that it is just because of his hasty antici- 
 pation of the ultimate ideal view of reality which is 
 the goal of science, that his idealism finally remained 
 imperfect, and that both he and his great follower 
 Aristotle were obliged to recognise the existence of 
 something in the world which could not be ideally 
 explained. A philosophy that would be thorough 
 in its idealism, must stoop from the intuition of
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 135 
 
 the whole to the detailed investigation of the parts; 
 it must wait for the complete realisation of its ideal 
 principles till science has reduced the scattered 
 phenomena into a system of necessarily, though it 
 may be externally, related elements. The revolt of 
 science against a premature teleology was a necessary 
 step in the very history of the process by which 
 in modern times philosophy has been advancing to 
 a more complete teleological view of the universe. 
 
 NOTE ON PLATO'S EELATION TO ANAXAGOEAS. 
 
 The point of Plato's argument in this part of the dialogue 
 has, I think, been often misapprehended. The Platonic 
 Socrates tells us that he went to the book of Anaxagoras with 
 great expectations, because he had heard that Anaxagoras 
 maintained that reason is the principle of all things. He 
 found, however, on reading that book that Anaxagoras had in 
 the main followed the method of the physical philosophers, and 
 that in his explanations of phenomena he started with the 
 particular elements or existences given in sense, and only 
 sought to discover how they acted and reacted on each other. 
 In short, Anaxagoras had at once, as by an immediate intuition, 
 assumed a highest principle of the universe, but had then been 
 unable to make any scientific use of that principle. Socrates, 
 therefore, renounced such ambitious ways of philosophising, 
 and fell back, as a devrepos ttXoOs, on his own humbler ways of 
 speculation ; as one whose eyes had been blinded by gazing 
 directly at the sun during an eclipse, might turn to look at 
 its image in water, or some similar medium. "This," says 
 Socrates, " was what was in my ruind : I was afraid lest my soul 
 might be blinded altogether, if I continued to look at things 
 with my eyes, or tried to apprehend them by help of my 
 senses. I thought, therefore, that I ought to take refuge
 
 136 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 els Toi>s \6yovs (i.e. in his own method of explaining things by 
 ideal principles), and contemplate the truth of things in them." ^ 
 " Yet, perhaps," he goes on, " my metaphor is not very exact, 
 for I do not admit that he who contemplates things iv toTs 
 \6yoii is looking at mere images, any more than he who looks 
 at them iv rois ^pyois," i.e. who observes particulars and their 
 relations as they are given in sense, without rising above them 
 to the universal. 
 
 The meaning of this will become evident if we remember 
 that Plato is giving a new version of the fact stated by Xeno- 
 phon, namely, that Socrates turned away from the speculations 
 of earlier philosophy, which had been based upon observation 
 of the outward world, to practise his own method of seeking 
 for the definition of universals in the sphere of ethics.^ Plato 
 here makes two changes in the story in order to fit it to his 
 own case. In the first_^lace, he ignores the limitation of ihe 
 Sgcratic. philosophy tcL^ethicsj and, in the second place, he 
 conceives universals in the light of his own ideal theory 
 i.e. as principles _a^once_of_ knowledge and of reality. 
 Making these changes, Plato contrasts his own method of 
 referring things to universal principles by aid of the 
 intelligence, with that of Anaxagoras, who sought at a 
 single stroke to reach the highest principle, and yet, after 
 all, looked at the world only with the eyes of sense, which 
 could apprehend nothing but particular things and their 
 relations. It is a touch of Plato's humour that he speaks 
 of his own method, which rises gradually from the definition 
 of lower to the definition of higher universals, as a Se^epf^' 
 ttXoOs ; and, again, that he describes himself as dazzled, as by 
 the "sun in eclipse," when he looks at things with the eyes 
 of sense, and as, therefore, turning for relief to the reflexion 
 of things in thought. He has used nearly the same language 
 in a passage a little earlier in the dialogue (79 b), where 
 he declares that one who tries to apprehend reality by 
 means of the senses " is disturbed and distracted and staggers 
 like a drunken man," and contrasts with this the pure and 
 
 ^Phaedo, 99 e. ^Mem., I. 1, 11 seq.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 137 
 
 tranquil action of the intelligence, when it contemplates the 
 eternal ideas of things. Plato, we may be satisfied, would never 
 have spoken in earnest of his own dialectic as an inferior 
 method, though it was less ambitious than that of a philoso- 
 pher who at once asserted the absolute supremacy of reason 
 without working up to this highest universal through any 
 subordinate principles of unity. And, indeed, Plato takes care 
 to guard against such a mistake, when he declares that the 
 metaphor of reflexion does not hold good, and that we do 
 not see reality less directly ev tols \6701s than iv rois ?pyoi$, 
 i.e. through intelligence than through sense. In fact, he 
 believes the reverse of this ; he believes that we apprehend 
 the reality of things only as we rise above the particular 
 phenomena of sense and their immediate relations to each other, 
 to the universals or ideal principles of unity, which can only 
 be apprehended by the intelligence. The meaning of the whole 
 passage, then, is that in Plato's opinion we can by the per- 
 ceptions of sense reach, at the most, only the physical causes 
 or conditions of things, and that the final or formal causes, 
 which alone he thinks worthy of the name of causes at all, can 
 be grasped only by the intelligence. It will be observed that 
 Plato does not here dispute the theory that we can apprehend 
 particular things and their relations by sense alone, and there- 
 fore does not distinguish between sensation and opinion. A 
 different doctrine would result from the discussions of the 
 Tkeaetetus, but these seem to belong to a later stage of the 
 Platonic philosophy. 
 
 " Endeavouring to show the kind of cause I deal with," the 
 Platonic Socrates goes on, " I fall back upon those ideal prin- 
 ciples about which there has been so much talk, and I make 
 them my starting-point. In other words, I assume that there is 
 a beautiful in itself, a good in itself, and so on. And if you grant 
 me this, I find in it a sufficient basis for my argument." Plato 
 thus assumes that the ultimate cause or reason for any charac- 
 teristic of a particular thing, is to be found in some universal 
 or idea, and that " if there be anything beautiful but the beau- 
 tiful itself, it must be for no other reason than that it partakes 
 in the beautiful." ... "I know and can understand nothing
 
 138 THE NATURE OF IDEAS 
 
 of these other wise causes that are alleged, and if any one says 
 to me that the bloom of colour in an object, or its shape, or any 
 such quality of it is the source of its beauty, I leave all that, 
 and singly and simply and perhaps foolishly I hold to the con- 
 viction that nothing makes a thing beautiful, but the presence, 
 or participation, or communication — whichever you like to call 
 it — of the beautiful itself. For I am not prepared to speak 
 definitely of the nature of the relation between the beautiful 
 itself and the particular things we call beautiful, but only to 
 assert that it is from the beautiful itself that all particular 
 things derive their beauty." ^ 
 
 The ideas, then, are to be taken as constitutive principles of 
 reality within particular spheres of being, and their definition 
 is the only key to the distinctive characteristics of those 
 spheres. " Laying down, then, the principle," i.e. the definition 
 of a universal, "that seems to me to be surest, what agrees there- 
 with I set down as true, and what does not agree therewith, I 
 set down as untrue. . . . And if anyone assails ^ the principle 
 (uTTo^eo-ts) itself, you will not mind him or answer him, till you 
 have discovered as to all the consequences which followed from 
 it, whether they agree with each other " ; in other words, you 
 will try to work out a self-consistent view on the basis of a 
 particular hypothesis, and will not reject it except on the 
 ground that this cannot be done. But Plato does not stop here, 
 he requires that the philosopher shall rise beyond principles 
 that hold good within special spheres of being, to a highest 
 
 ^Phaedo, 100 d. 
 
 2 There is an obvious difficulty in getting this meaning out of ^xotTO, 
 but whatever the reading ought to be, the meaning seems assured by 
 what is said immediately afterwards about the Eristic who confuses the 
 discussion of a principle, taken by itself, with the discussion of its 
 consequences. The discussion of a principle in itself must mean the 
 enquiry whether it can be treated as an ultimate principle. Thus the 
 principle of a special science is that idea which furnishes a basis for a 
 self-consistent view of that sphere or aspect of reality. The idea of 
 number e.g. may furnish a sufficient basis for arithmetic, but we cannot 
 take it as an dwrroderos dpxv '• when we examine it for itself, we are 
 forced to carry it back to some more comprehensive idea.
 
 AND THEIR SYSTEMATIC UNITY 139 
 
 principle of unity. Hence he says : " When you are required 
 to give an explanation of the principle itself, you will go on 
 to set up a higher principle — the best you can discover 
 among those next in the ascending scale — and so on to one 
 that is higher still, till you reach one that is sufficient for 
 itself. And you will take special care not, like the Eristics, to 
 confuse the discussion of the principle itself, with that of the 
 consequences which follow from it : so only you can hope to 
 attain distinct results about that which really is." -^ 
 
 This, as I understand it, points to a hierarchical distribution of 
 ideas in which the highest idea is conceived as the ultimate 
 ground of all the others. Thus the dwirddeTos dpxv is that to 
 which we work back on the basis of what Aristotle calls the 
 IdLai dpxai, the latter being regarded as hypothetical in the sense 
 that they iind their ultimate ground or principle of explanation 
 in the former. This, however, is not worked out in the Fhaedo, 
 where Plato does not yet show that by his own method, he is 
 able to reach the Idea of Good as the principle of all knowing 
 and being. Here Plato confines himself to the lower ideas, 
 insisting specially on the point that we must proceed by 
 setting up definitions of special universals, and working out the 
 consequences of such definitions, to see how they cohere with 
 each other. The truth, so far, is to be tested by the coherence 
 or self-consistency of the view which our definition enables us to 
 take of the special sphere, or, as we should rather say, the 
 special aspect of reality included under a universal. In the last 
 resort, however, we must recognise that such universals are not 
 ultimate, and that every subordinate principle must be referred 
 back to some higher principle, and that again to one that is 
 still higher, till we reach that which is adequate, or, as we 
 should rather say, self-sufficient. 
 
 1 Fhaedo, 101 D seq.
 
 LECTUEE SIXTH. 
 
 THE STATE AND THE IDEA OF GOOD. 
 
 We have now reached the point at which Plato's 
 philosophy passes into theology, in so far as all the 
 ideas are made to centre and culminate in one 
 absolute ideal principle. This result is specially 
 associated with the RepuUic, that treatise of Plato's 
 manhood in which he sums up all the conclusions 
 he had then attained on morals and politics, 
 on metaphysics and religion, and endeavours to weld 
 them into a connected whole. It is impossible 
 within any moderate compass to give a complete 
 estimate of this great book, but for our purpose it 
 is only necessary to refer to one or two leading 
 features of it. Perhaps it might best_Jbfi__described 
 as a treat ise jon Educa.tK)n^_rec;arded as t he one gr eaj^ 
 hviRinf^ss of _Hfe_Jro m the begfinning to the end of.^ 
 it:^ But it lays emphasis on one aspect of this 
 education which had been quite secondary with 
 Socrates, and was altogether neglected by the Minor
 
 THE STATE AND THE IDEA OF GOOD 141 
 
 Socratics, namely, that it is the education of a social 
 being, and therefore must be realised, in the first 
 instance at least, through society. \ Plato, therefore, 
 tries to imagine a perfect community after the 
 highest type he knew, that of the Greek City-State. 
 As an organised society the State, in his view, is 
 founded neither on the force of the strong man, nor 
 on the conspiracy of the weak ; it is not the crea- 
 tion of arbitrary choice, even in the form of a social 
 contract between its individual members ; it origi- 
 nates not in the will of men at all, but in their 
 nature, as beings who are essentially parts of a whole, 
 each in himself fragmentary and incomplete, but find- 
 ing his necessary complement in the rest. For such 
 beings, to be isolated is to be weak and undeveloped, 
 to be united is to be strong and have their individual 
 capacities drawn out in the service of each other. 
 For such beings, therefore, the ideal of individualism, 
 the ideal of self-seeking and self-aggrandisement, 
 is suicidal and contradictory. It is only as they 
 give themselves up to the general good that indi- 
 viduals can possibly attain their own, and to seek 
 happiness merely for themselves is the way to lose 
 it. They must die to themselves that they may 
 live in the general life. In short, it is only in the 
 discharge of their social duty that they can be in 
 harmony with themselves ; and any attempt to make 
 the general life of the community subservient to
 
 142 THE STATE AND 
 
 their own, must lead to inner discord, disorganisa- 
 tion and misery. Thus the ideal which Plato sets 
 before us is that of a perfectly unified society, in 
 which each individual, confining himself strictly to 
 his own function, shall in that function be a pure 
 organ and expression of the general will. 
 
 Plato has thus risen to the organic idea of the 
 State, as a union of men which is based upon the 
 division of labour according to capacity, and in 
 which the citizen is united to the whole by the 
 special office he discharges. But in working out 
 this idea in the form of the Greek City-State, he 
 lands himself in two great inconsistencies. On the 
 one hand, sharing, as he does, in the Greek view 
 that the higher life is only for the few — for those 
 who are capable of intellectual culture, and in pro- 
 portion as they are capable of it — he is unable to 
 conceive the lower classes, those engaged in agricul- 
 tural or industrial labour, as organic members of 
 the State ; he is obliged to regard them as the 
 instruments of a society in whose higher advantages 
 they have no share. And, on the other hand, he is 
 so solicitous to exclude all self-seeking, and directly 
 to merge private in social good, that he deprives 
 even the favoured citizens of personal rights, and 
 destroys the family lest it should become the rival 
 of the State. He thus seems to secure the unity 
 of the State, not by subordinating the personal and
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 143 
 
 private interests of its members, but rather by pre- 
 venting any consciousness of such interests from 
 arising; and the result is that he reduces it to a 
 mechanical, instead of raising it to a spiritual or 
 organic unity. In the reaction against the indi- 
 vidualistic tendencies represented by the Sophists, 
 he finds no way to maintain order except by the 
 absolute suppression of individual freedom. 
 
 At the same time, this is not the whole truth, 
 and it could not be the whole truth for one taught 
 in the school of Socrates.S Plato, indeed, made a- 
 great change in the views of his master, when he_ 
 recognised that virtue cannot -^e&t primarily upon 
 scientific knowledge, but only upon what he calls 
 ■^ight opinionjjihat is to say, upon a moral senti- 
 ment which is in great part the result of social_ 
 training^ The virtue of the mass of men at all 
 times, and of all men in the earlier part of 
 their lives, must be the product, not of philosophic 
 reflexion, but of the unconscious influences under 
 which they grow up as members in a society, and 
 of a teaching which has no scientific character. Yet 
 Plato could not but hold that in its highest sense 
 'virtue is knowledge,' i.e. that it must rest upon 
 conscious principle; and that any other kind of 
 virtue — any virtue that is based upon rules whose 
 principle is not present to him who obeys them 
 — is inchoate and imperfect. If not for the mass
 
 144 THE STATE AND 
 
 of men, yet for the chosen few, there must be a 
 complete liberation from the life of mere use and 
 wont. Nor, indeed, can the life of use and wont 
 produce its highest results, unless it is regulated by 
 the providence of governors who have risen above if, 
 and have attained to philosophic insight into the 
 meaning and object of man's existence. The affairs 
 of men will never be perfectly ordered "unless philo- 
 sophers be kings or kings philosophers." What is 
 wanted for the perfecting of the moral life is not, 
 therefore, as Socrates taught, that all individuals 
 should be able to guide themselves by a clear re- 
 flective consciousness of the end of all human action 
 and of the means whereby it may be attained ; it is 
 only that there should be a few individuals in the 
 State — even one might be enough — who have such a 
 consciousness, and who are thereby fitted to become 
 shepherds of men, and to guide and mould the lives 
 of aU the others. These wise governors, like Car- 
 lyle's * hero-kings,' will have the duty of selecting for 
 each of the citizens the office which he individually 
 is suited to discharge, and giving to him the mental 
 and bodily training which he requires to discharge 
 it aright. They will have to keep away from the 
 lives of the citizens everything that is discordant and 
 inharmonious, and to surround them with what is be- 
 coming and beautiful, so that healthful and inspiring 
 influences may reach them from every quarter. They
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 145 
 
 will take the religion of the people under their care, 
 and will provide that the poetry and mythology — 
 the stories of gods and heroes through which truth 
 is first presented to the immature minds of the 
 young — shall be such as to suggest ideas of purity 
 and goodness ; and they will banish from the State 
 all profane and licentious tales such as pollute the 
 pages of even the greatest of the Greek poets. For 
 in the ideal city the philosophic legislator cannot 
 permit the poet to follow his own sweet will, but 
 must stand by his side and exercise a censorship 
 over his works, so that nothing unseemly or unlaw- 
 ful may reach the ears of the citizens. 
 
 ' Thus the demand of Socrates, that morality should 
 be based on a clear reflective consciousness of the end 
 
 j3factionj_is_ not renounced, but it is limited to the few 
 who stand at the head of the State. ' And no ques- 
 tion is raised as to the general doctrine, that the life 
 of society as a whole is to be guided by scientific 
 
 Jmowledge ; though it is admitted that in a private 
 station men may do with something less. In modern 
 times even this modified form of the Socratic doctrine 
 would be challenged. What we now expect from ethi- 
 cal theory is that it should analyse and explain the 
 moral consciousness of the past and the present, but 
 not — except to a very limited extent — that it should 
 furnish a guide for the future. We recognise that 
 morality is progressive, and that in this progress. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 146 THE STATE AND 
 
 the clear reflective consciousness of any form of life 
 is rather the last product of its development than 
 the beginning from which it starts. It is not given 
 to nations any more than to individuals to scheme out 
 the plan of their lives beforehand. What exists at 
 first is at most some intuitive perception which grows 
 clearer as it is brought into action, but which can be 
 fully understood only when it is completely realised. 
 And the attainment of definite knowledge — such 
 knowledge e.g. as Plato and Aristotle had of the 
 ethical basis of the Greek State — was an indication 
 that the work of that kind of State was all but ended, 
 and that men were advancing to other forms of 
 social and political life. 
 
 But neither Plato nor Aristotle could look at 
 the matter in this light. They were without the 
 general idea of progress, and to them the Greek 
 City-State was the irepag rfjg avrapKcia^, the abso- 
 lute form of man's ethical life, beyond which 
 nothing could be achieved. What seemed to them 
 possible was only that the lessons drawn from 
 the past experience of Greek politics might be used 
 to perfect the type, and produce a city in which all the 
 good points of Greek cities (especially of Athens and 
 Sparta) might be united, and all their mistakes 
 avoided. Plato perhaps faintly perceived that this 
 ideal State — this Sparta without its rudeness, this 
 Athens without its indiscipline — was a iroXireia ey
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 147 
 
 ovpavw, a pattern laid up in heaven and in the soul 
 of the philosopher. But neither he nor Aristotle 
 discerned that they were pouring new wine into old 
 bottles, and that, by the very fact that they were 
 able to theorise Greek political life so perfectly, they 
 were carried beyond it. They were putting more 
 into the framework of the City-State than it could 
 bear, and clothing a forecast of the future in the 
 forms of the past. 
 
 One of the points in which Plato's overestimate of 
 the practical power of theory, and his defective com- 
 prehension of its real place in development, are shown 
 most clearly, is in his scheme for remoulding Greek 
 mythology and purifying it of all the elements which 
 seemed to him to be immoral or irreligious. He sees 
 no anachronism in placing the philosopher, who has 
 meditated on all the problems of speculative theology, 
 side by side with the poet, who gives imaginative 
 form to the mythology of a nation, and sings the 
 fresh songs that express its inchoate religious ideas. 
 He fails to discern that the creation of a mythology 
 could not be the work of an age of reflexion; and 
 that, even if per impossihile the poets could produce 
 such a mythology, neither they nor any State 
 authority could ever make it an object of belief. 
 The conditions which call forth such deep and 
 far-reaching speculations as those of Plato and 
 Aristotle are altogether inconsistent with the creative
 
 148 THE STATE AND 
 
 spontaneity which gave rise to the legendary tales 
 of gods and heroes, and equally inconsistent with the 
 simple uncritical faith that accepted them as truth. 
 It was natural, indeed, that a philosopher, who saw 
 how much had been done by poetry to excite and 
 educate the mind of Greece in the era when conscious 
 reflexion was at its minimum, should express a pious 
 wish that this great service could have been per- 
 formed in a less ambiguous way, without the inter- 
 mingling of so many weakening, and even immoral, 
 elements : but to suppose that in any circumstances 
 the miracle of the first great spontaneous outburst 
 of Greek poetic production could be repeated, and 
 repeated under the guidance of a fully developed 
 philosophical criticism, was an obvious anachronism. 
 A mythology cannot be produced of malice prepense^ 
 or by those who do not believe in the gods whose 
 actions they describe. The law of development 
 will not permit us to have the flower along with 
 the fruit, for the simple reason that the decay of 
 the flower is the condition of the appearance of the 
 fruit. And just because philosophy is the further 
 product of a consciousness which has already 
 expressed itself in a mythology, it is impossible that 
 the two should flourish together; still more that 
 the former should preside over the genesis of the 
 latter. There is, no doubt, a kind of poetry that 
 belongs to an age of reflexion ; but it cannot be
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 149 
 
 like the simple spontaneous song of an earlier time, 
 nor can it create the kind of myths in which the 
 popular imagination finds the first satisfaction of its 
 spiritual needs. 
 
 Plato's discussion of the poetic mythology of Greece 
 is one-sided and inadequate. He seems to condemn 
 it in a body as immoral and misleading ; and he 
 makes no distinction between the crude and almost 
 savage stories which we find preserved in Hesiod, 
 and the bright picture of humanised divinities which 
 is set before us in Homer ; nor does he recognise 
 the great advance both in an intellectual and in 
 a moral aspect which is involved in the latter. He 
 sees only that in both cases the gods are re- 
 presented as doing deeds which, by the developed 
 conscience of his own time, would be accounted 
 discreditable ; and he demands that divine beings 
 should always be represented as perfectly good and 
 also perfectly unchangeable — not noticing that at 
 least the latter of these two demands is incon- 
 sistent with the very existence of mythology. On 
 the other hand, he regards it as the business of 
 art and poetry to present the truths of ethics and 
 religion in a form suitable to minds that are yet 
 unripe and unfitted for the reflective processes of 
 science. In particular, he thinks that it is the 
 office of mythology to inculcate a simple faith in 
 the omnipotence of goodness upon those who are not
 
 150 THE STATE AND 
 
 yet prepared to grapple with the problem of evil ; 
 and in this poetic teaching he would have all the 
 perplexing difficulties of life evaded, and all incon- 
 venient facts suppressed. " If they can be got to 
 believe us," says Plato, "we shall tell our citizens 
 that quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to 
 this time has there been any quarrelling among 
 citizens." 1 Evil is to be kept out of sight, and, so 
 far as may be, treated as an impossibility. Poetry 
 is to tell its 'noble untruth,' and no scepticism 
 or criticism is to be allowed to breathe a breath of 
 suspicion upon it. 
 
 Jjow, it may be true, as Plato thinks, that faith^ 
 i5.-.-G-Qdrrr-a^iaith_.tJti_at good is _g.tronger than e.Yil,. 
 ^gd even that it is all-powerful — is the necessary 
 basis of our higher life, and that without some 
 such faith morality js__apt_ to shrink into a hopeless 
 striving after an unattainable ideal, -and must, there- 
 fore, cease to exercise its highest inspiring power. 
 To hold that what we regard as best and highest 
 is also the ultimate reality — the principle from 
 which all comes and on which all depends — is the 
 great religious spring of moral energy. Even from 
 early times the social union finds its consecration 
 in the idea that it is a union of men based on 
 their common relation to a god, who is the guardian 
 of the destinies of his people. On such a faith Plato 
 1 Rep., 378 c.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD l5l 
 
 would found his State. But his difficulty was that 
 the first form of the religious faith of Greece was, 
 in an ethical point of view, so imperfect, and that, 
 such as it was, it was rapidly disappearing before 
 the widening knowledge of men, and the loosening 
 of social bonds that went therewith. The civic State, 
 torn by faction, no longer rested securely on the 
 belief in its protective deities ; and even if the 
 State had remained what it was, the sympathies of 
 men had begun to reach beyond it. For this condi- 
 tion of things there seemed to be only two possible 
 remedies : either that the old ideal life of citizenship — 
 with all its wholesome narrowness of view, with all 
 the religious beliefs on which it rested — should be 
 restored, and that thus the thoughts and aims of 
 men should again be confined within the limits of 
 the microcosm of the city ; or, if this were impossible, 
 then philosophy must face all the wider problems 
 suggested by the knowledge and experience of the 
 new time, all the difficulties that had arisen out of 
 the hard facts of life, and especially out of the 
 existence and prevalence of evil, and it must find 
 some way of explaining them in consistency with 
 the idea that good is the ultimate reality. Either 
 the course of civilisation must be turned backward, 
 so as to revive the 'good old times' of the fighters of 
 Marathon, as was the dream of Aristophanes ; or else 
 — as a pupil of Socrates might rather be expected
 
 152 THE STATE AND 
 
 to hold — philosophy must take account of the reasons 
 upon which pessimistic views of life may be based, 
 and must find its way to an optimism that has an 
 answer for them all. 
 
 Now, Plato — and this is what constitutes the 
 pecuhar characteristic of the view which he presents 
 in the Republic — does not adopt one of these 
 alternatives to the exclusion of the other, but in 
 a way accepts them both : the former for the 
 benefit of the citizens in general, the latter for the 
 philosophic rulers. For the many, he would restore 
 in a higher form the order of the Greek municipal 
 State, in which the citizen, disciplined in civic 
 virtue and patriotic self-devotion, inspired by a 
 purified mythology, and surrounded by beautiful 
 forms of art — aesthetic types of goodness and purity — 
 should live a life of faith, sheltered from all doubt 
 and intellectual difficulty. And, on the other hand, 
 for the philosophic few who had outgrown the stage 
 of culture in which the mind can be fed with 
 imaginative pictures, he would endeavour to provide 
 a higher kind of education, in which all the secrets of 
 science and philosophy should be revealed. Further- 
 more, the men thus educated were to take the place of 
 kings or governors of the State, and to find in their 
 contemplation of the intelligible universe the exemplar, 
 after which, so far as possible, they should mould 
 the life of the conmiunity over which they ruled.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 15S 
 
 For, in Plato's view, he who has grasped the supreme 
 principle of truth, which he calls the Idea of Good, 
 is by it carried beyond all the contradictions of 
 ordinary experience, and has become able to regard 
 the confused and shadowy world of appearance from 
 a higher point of view. He has become possessed 
 of a divine pattern, by means of which he can 
 bring order into the transitory life of men in this 
 world. 
 
 Plato, then, makes a sharp division between an 
 earlier stage ol religious development of his citizens, 
 _in which they are to be kept out of sight of moral 
 and religious difficulties, and taught simply that all 
 things are ordered for the best by perfectly good 
 'gods, and a later stage of it, in which they are to 
 face all the problems of existence, and to endea- 
 Srour to solve them by the aid of philosophical 
 reflexion. At the same time, he is deeply conscious 
 of the difficulties of the transition from the first to 
 the second of these stages ; or, in other words, of the 
 dangers of that period of doubt and criticism with 
 which philosophical enquiry must begin. In the 
 seventh book of the Repitblic, he illustrates these 
 dangers by the image of a youth who is brought up 
 to reverence certain persons as his parents, and who 
 is protected from temptation by his belief in their 
 rightful authority over him, but who suddenly learns 
 that they have no such natural claim to his obedience.
 
 154 THE STATE AND 
 
 and is tempted in consequence to disregard all 
 the commands they have laid upon him. In like 
 manner, as Plato would indicate, the young man 
 who is prematurely initiated into the dialectical 
 methods of philosophical criticism, will learn to detect 
 the illusion of his first faith in those mythological 
 divinities whom he has been taught to regard as 
 the authors of the ethical rules under which he has 
 hitherto lived ; and he will therefore be in danger of 
 falling into a fatal scepticism, and losing his hold 
 upon all ethical rules whatever. Hence Plato urges 
 that this initiation, even in the case of those who 
 are fitted for it, should be delayed till the character 
 has been thoroughly confirmed in the love of what 
 is good and the hate of what is evil; and that, in 
 the case of the great body of the citizens, it should 
 not take place at all. 
 
 Now, as we have already seen, there is a great dif- 
 ficulty in admitting the conception of such a division 
 between two classes of citizens in the same State — a 
 division in which the higher class possesses for itself 
 the esoteric truth of philosophy, while the lower class 
 is fed with mythological fables. There is, indeed, at 
 all times, a certain difference between the ordinary 
 consciousness which is content with half-pictorial 
 modes of thought, and the reflective spirit of science 
 which cannot be satisfied with anything but exact 
 definition and clear logical connexion : but it is impos-
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 155 
 
 sible to draw any definite line of separation between 
 two classes of human beings, not living in different 
 ages, but at the same time, and as members of the 
 same society. Still more impossible — if there are 
 grades in impossibility — would it be, in an age of 
 reflexion, to push men back into an earlier stage of 
 culture and save them from all the dangers of doubt. 
 In such an age, the sphere of opinion cannot be 
 sharply divided from that of science ; nor is it possible 
 by any artificial barriers such as Plato proposes, to 
 secure men from the disturbing power of a dialectic, 
 which detects the * noble untruths ' of poetry. The 
 idea of a class of philosopher-kings who are to keep 
 the keys of knowledge for themselves, and act as 
 a kind of earthly providence to other men, sins, 
 like Carlyle's conception of hero-worship, against 
 the solidarity of humanity. A secret doctrine of 
 philosophy is almost a contradiction in terms: for 
 philosophy cannot live, and refuse to communicate 
 itself to anyone who is capable of receiving its lessons. 
 Something like it we may find in early stages of 
 civilisation, as among the Egyptian priesthood, or in 
 a modified form in the divided society of the middle 
 ages. But such exceptions prove the rule : for in 
 both cases philosophy was enslaved by tradition and 
 smitten with barrenness. It was not the free evolu- 
 tion of thought which alone Plato would have thought 
 worthy of the name.
 
 156 THE STATE AND 
 
 In the case of the few who are admitted to the 
 higher training in dialectic, Plato thinks that philo- 
 sophy is able to replace the optimism of faith by 
 a higher optimism, which is not, like the former, 
 attained by a mere evasion of difficulties — by refus- 
 ing to admit the reality of that which is ignoble 
 or evil, or by taking refuge in the pure heaven of 
 art — but which is to look all such problematical 
 phenomena in the face, and to explain them in con- 
 sistency with the absolute reality of the good. Now; 
 it is manifest that philosophy can do this only in 
 one of two ways : either by showing that what we 
 call evil may itself from a higher point of view be 
 resolved into a means to good, or into a phase in its 
 development; or, at least, by showing that evil has 
 only a secondary and transitory existence, which is 
 incidental to the realisation of good in this phe- 
 nomenal world. I here put these two alternatives 
 in contrast; for they point to two paths of idealistic 
 philosophy of which we shall have much to say in 
 the sequel, and which, therefore, it is well to have 
 before us from the first. I say, then, that the 
 difficulties and contradictions that seem to attach to 
 the facts of our earthly existence, and especially the 
 problem of evil, may be met by philosophy in two 
 possible ways. On the one hand, philosophy may 
 admit that there is some resistant element, or negative 
 characteristic, in the phenomenal world, by reason of
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 157 
 
 which the highest good cannot be reaUsed in that 
 world; but, at the same time, it may maintain that 
 this element becomes secondary and accidental in 
 our eyes, when we turn to the permanent ideal 
 being which gives even to the world of phenomena 
 all the reahty to which it can lay claim. Or, on 
 the other hand, in the spirit of a more thorough- 
 going idealism, philosophy may maintain that evil 
 exists only in the part when w^e isolate it from the 
 whole, or only in the particular phases of existence 
 when we separate them from the complete process 
 to which they contribute. Which of these solutions 
 Plato adopted, we must presently consider. In the 
 meantime we have to note that the religio philo- 
 sophi, to which we advance in the second part of 
 the BepuUic, centres in the Idea of Good, as a prin- 
 ciple of unity on which ' aJLthinking things ' and 
 * all_ objects of all thought ' are dependent. 
 
 In the contemplation of this idea, the philosopher 
 is "carried beyond the State, and the morality of use 
 and wont which is bound^ up with its existence, 
 to the contemplation of the whole system of the 
 universe, in comparison with which the State is a 
 very little thing. For the philosopher, in Plato's 
 ideal picture of him, is onje^ whose thought, in the 
 first instance at least, is directed away from all 
 that is particular, finite and transitory to that which 
 is universal and eternal. He is a " spectator of all
 
 158 THE STATE AND 
 
 time and existence," and he cannot be chained down, 
 either in thought or action, to any particular finite 
 object or interest. He has freed himself from the 
 narrow ambitions and desires of his transitory life 
 as a mortal man, and is therefore perfectly generous 
 and fearless : all mean cares and grudges have 
 been taken out of his heart. The vision of absolute 
 
 • reality reconciles him to the universe, and to all 
 things and beings in it, at the same time that it 
 lifts him above the tendency to attribute too great 
 importance to any of them, and above the passionate 
 impulses which are the consequence of such over- 
 estimate of the finite. " Such cr/uLiKpoXoyla," such a 
 tendency to ascribe excessive value to the little things 
 of time, says Plato, " must least of all be the 
 characteristic of a soul that seeks to grasp the 
 whole compass of reality human and divine."^ 
 As it is expressed in the parallel words of Spinoza, 
 " love towards that which is eternal alone feeds the 
 soul with unmingled joy," so that no room is left 
 for disturbance about finite and transitory things. 
 
 f^"^ There is something that looks like a contradiction 
 in the fact that Plato, who has hitherto been carefully 
 building up the system of the State as a social and 
 
 I political ideal to be realised in the immediate life 
 of man, now seems suddenly to soar away from all 
 such practical considerations, and to regard all 
 ^Rep., 486 a.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 159 
 
 earthly existence as " less than nothing and 
 vanity." And an ingenious, though somewhat one- 
 sided German writer, has even maintained that 
 there is an absolute opposition between the two 
 parts of the Republic — an opposition which, indeed, 
 runs through all ideal views of life, and which 
 cannot be in any way solved or bridged over. 
 " Here," he declares, " we find a great rift in 
 Platonism. It was as the moralising follower of 
 Socrates that Plato drew the first sketch of the 
 ideal State, but it is as the metaphysician — who looks 
 beyond the changing appearance to the real being 
 of things — that he completes it. These two ten- 
 dencies meet in conflict, yet neither can free itself \ 
 from the other. The^ reformer, who would heal the 
 disease of^his people, must believe in the usefulness 
 of his own art; but_tli£L_speculative thinker must 
 contemn the fleeting foxma of life in view of the 
 substantial reality ,Jhat underlies them. This rift 
 in Platonism is, however, the rift that rends the 
 life of all noble spirits. They work in the present 
 with their best energy, yet they know that the 
 present is but a fleeting shadow." ^ 
 
 ^Krohn {Der Platonische Staat, p. 103), quoted in edition of the 
 Republic by Jowett and Campbell, Vol. IT. p. 9. Compare the 
 remarkable passage in the Laws (803 b), eart 87] roivvv ra tG}v apOpuTrojp 
 irpdyfiaTa iJ.€yd\T)s fxkv (nrovdijs ovk d^ia, dvayKoiov ye [xtjv (xirov^d^eLV. 
 In the context it is said that " man was made to be the puppet or 
 plaything of the gods, and that, truly considered, is the best of
 
 160 THE STATE AND 
 
 Krohn here seems to suppose that the last word 
 of Plato, and indeed of philosophy, is that there is 
 an absolute division in our spiritual life, and that 
 morals and metaphysics are essentially contradictory. 
 But there is, surely, no essential contradiction in reject- 
 ing the claim of the particular objects and interests of 
 our ordinary experience to be real in themselves and, 
 as it were, in their own right, and yet asserting their 
 relative reality, when they are regarded as the 
 manifestation of the one principle which is absolutely 
 real. Nor is there any inconsistency in condemning 
 the actual state of the world as at discord with itself 
 and unstable, in so far as it suggests an idea of 
 which it falls short, and, at the same time, thinking 
 of it as a step in the realisation of that idea. It 
 is only in so far as Plato holds, not merely that 
 there is " something in the world amiss " which " will 
 be unriddled by and bye," but that there is something 
 in it essentially unideal and irrational, that we can 
 find in his philosophy such an ultimate contradiction 
 as Krohn alleges. But with this point we are not 
 yet prepared to deal. 
 
 him." Bruns {Plato's Gesetze) draws attention to the contrast of 
 this with many other passages where the acquisition of virtue is 
 spoken of as the most earnest work of life {e.g. 770 d). He argues 
 on this and other grounds that the whole passage (803a-804b) is 
 due to Philippus, the editor of the Laws. It is possible that there is 
 a shade of pessimism in the passage which is not Platonic, but the 
 general alternation of the two points of view is already found in th^ 
 Bepuhlic.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 161 
 
 Meanwhile let us consider what it is that Plato 
 finds in his Idea of Good. There are three ways 
 in which he endeavours to answer this question. 
 
 rin the first place, as is indicated by the very name 
 of the Good, it is the chief and final satisfaction for 
 which% our souls are always looking, which they 
 anticipate from the first and for the sake of which 
 they desire everything elsejj yet it is the last thing 
 they come clearly to understand. From this point of 
 view the Bepublic exhibits to us a series of stages in 
 the process of defining it. In the first book, it is 
 represented, as Socrates had represented it, as the 
 goal of the individual life, which each man has to 
 discover for himself by a consideration of his nature as 
 a man and of the work for which it fits him. Then, 
 at the next stage of Plato's argument, man is shown 
 to be essentially social, essentially a member of a 
 State, so that he can find his good, only as he dis- 
 covers his proper place in the social organism, i.e. the 
 place_for v/hich his special tendencies and capacities 
 fit him. But even here Plato cannot stop : for the 
 
 V social organism itself has to be regarded sub specie 
 aeternitatis; and, so viewed, it is found to be a 
 microcosm, a little world in itself, but one which can 
 only attain the perfection of which it is capable, 
 when it is moulded after the similitude of the 
 macrocosm. Hence it is the philosopher — who lives iiu 
 the contemplation of the universe, and appiiehends the 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 162 THE STATE AND 
 
 j»rinciple of order that is manifested in it — and Jie 
 alone, who can give to the State its true or ideal 
 constitution. He alone can make all things " after 
 the patterns howed him in the Mount." Thus 
 ethics and politics find their ultimate basi s in a 
 theology which contemplates the world as a teleo^ 
 logical system, and of this system the Idea of Good ) 
 is the end and principle. 
 
 The next step is taken by means of an analogy : 
 which is really more than an analogy, since the object 
 used as an image is declared to be the ' offspring ' or 
 product of that which it is taken to illustrate. In 
 other words, the material world, from which the 
 image is drawn, is not for Plato an arbitrary 
 symbol of the ideal reality ; it is its manifestation 
 or phenomenal expression ; and, therefore, the 
 principle of unity in the one is essentially akin to 
 the principle of unity in the other. Now, what is 
 the principle of unity in the material world ? It is, 
 Plato suggests, the sun ; for the sun, as the source 
 of the heat which is essential to growth, may be re- 
 garded as the cause of the existence of the objects 
 we see ; while at the same time, as the source of 
 light, it reveals the forms and colours of those 
 objects, and enables us to see them. In like 
 manner, Plato bids us regard the Idea of Good as 
 at once the cause of existence to all things that 
 exist, and of knowledge to all minds that know
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 163 
 
 them. It is thus ' beyond existence ' and * above 
 knowledge'; as it is that in which they both originate, 
 and by which they are united to each other as 
 elements in one whole. By the aid of this analogy, 
 therefore, Plato carries us beyond the conception of 
 a principle of unity in the objective world, and 
 suggests to us the thought that, if the Idea of Good 
 is the ultimate cause or reason of the universe, it 
 must be also the principle of unity in the con- 
 sciousness of man, the principle that constitutes his 
 intelligence and makes knowledge possible to him. 
 
 The third and last point in Plato's exposition 
 of the Idea of Good is derived from its relation to 
 the other ideas. In the Phaedo, as we saw in the 
 last lecture, he had already spoken of a regressive 
 method that goes back from one idea to another 
 till it reaches a principle which is ultimate and 
 self-sufficient. Here he speaks of a similar method 
 by which the intelligence advances from the special 
 sciences to philosophy. Each of the special sciences 
 is shown to have some organising idea which gives 
 order, self-consistency and systematic connexion to 
 our view of a special sphere of reality, and thus 
 lifts us above the empirical co-existences and 
 sequences of phenomena within that sphere. But, 
 as the w^orld is one world, and all special spheres 
 of reality are parts of one great all-inclusive sphere, 
 it is impossible for the intelligence to be satisfied
 
 164 THE STATE AND 
 
 with the results of the special sciences. The 
 principles of these sciences are hypothetical, in the 
 sense that they are not ultimate but find their 
 basis in something deeper and more comprehensive 
 than themselves. The true dialectician is ' one who 
 sees things in their unity,' who is unable to rest in 
 any fragmentary and incomplete view of things, but 
 must feel insecure till he has found one all-embracing 
 principle, which enables him to view the universe 
 as a systematic or organic whole. Having found 
 such a principle of principles he will be able to give 
 their proper place tg all the investigations of the 
 special sciences.^ uThe Idea of Good, then, is the 
 
 ^ In spite of all that has been said by Mr. Adam in his edition 
 of the Republic (Vol. II. p. 156 seq.), I am not convinced that the 
 doctrine attributed by Aristotle to Plato — that the objects of 
 mathematical science constitute a separate kind of existence which 
 stands midway between the ideal and the sensible — is to be found 
 in the Republic. It is true that the mathematical sciences are 
 spoken of as objects, not of vovs, but of dLavoLa, and that they 
 are regarded as constituting the first stage in the ascent of the 
 mind above sensible phenomena. It is true also that they are 
 said to stand in the same relation to the objects of pure in- 
 telligence, in which the objects of sense stand to them. Still, 
 the special characteristic by which Aristotle distinguished ra 
 fxadrifiaTLKa from ideas is not mentioned, and Plato has as j'et 
 no hesitation in speaking of ideas of quantity. And he can 
 hardly have considered them disparate from the Idea of Good, 
 since he reaches that Idea by viewing them in their unity, 
 6 yap (rvfOTTTiKos diaXcKTiKds {Rep., 537 c). This, I think, supports 
 Jowett's rendering of the words : Kairoi vo-qrQiv 6vt(j}v /xer' dpxv^ : 
 " when a first principle is added to them, they" — i.e. the sciences — 
 "are cognisable by /^ovs," as distinguished from Stdi'oia.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 165 
 
 teleological principle of Socrates, as__applied not 
 to the individual life but to the universe. \ It_is 
 the final end of all -things^ not as something^ 
 external to them^,. but as immanent in thena; iL 
 iSj_ therefore, beyond all the differences of thm 
 finite,^ and especially it transcends the distinction 
 of knowing and being, the distinction between thfiL 
 intelligence and the reality which is its object. 
 Lastly, it is the principle on which all other 
 principles rest, and in which all science finds its 
 unity. I 
 
 If we gather together these different aspects of 
 the Idea of Good, I think we can see what is 
 Plato's true purpose and meaning, and at the same 
 time we can guard against the misconceptions of 
 many of his professed disciples. Thus, taking hold 
 jof^ those expressions in which he separates the Idea 
 of Good from all others, and especially of his de- 
 claration that it is /beyond bein^g' and„labDve know- 
 ledge,' the ISTeo-PIatonists identified the Good with a 
 unity which we cannot define or express, a unity 
 which we can only experience in an ecstasy wherein 
 all thought and even all consciousness is extinguished. 
 They did not observe that Plato reaches his con- 
 ception of it, not by abstraction, but by synthesis, 
 not by turning away from all the special prin- 
 ciples of knowledge, but by 'thinking them 
 together,' that is, by finding the one principle which
 
 166 THE STATE AND 
 
 shall determine the place and relations of all the 
 others. Nor did they attach sufficient weight to 
 the passages in which the good is spoken of as a 
 unity which is always presupposed, though never 
 distinctly reflected upon, in our ordinary conscious- 
 ness of the world. For Plato the Idea of Good is 
 so far from being unintelligible that it is that which 
 constitutes the intelligence. 
 
 There is, however, a real difficulty in the question 
 which is not sufficiently met by such general 
 statements. For how is it possible to characterise a 
 principle of unity which is beyond all the differences 
 of the finite, and, in particular, beyond the difference 
 of being and knowing ? If we seek to define the 
 unity of the whole in terms of any of its parts, we 
 seem to be committing an obvious paralogism. But it 
 is not less illogical to define it by simply putting the 
 different parts together, as if the infinite were a 
 collection of finites. Hence we seem to be driven to 
 the resource of defining it not positively, but negatively, 
 that is, by denying of it everything that we assert of 
 its parts. But we are brought in this way to the 
 result of the Neo-Platonists, who argue that, because 
 the Good is ' beyond being ' and ' above knowledge,' 
 it cannot be characterised by any terms derived from 
 either: which means that it cannot be characterised 
 at all. 
 
 This difficulty is a real one, and it has often driven
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 167 
 
 men into Agnosticism ; for it seems as if our 
 minds were forced to make a demand which yet it 
 is impossible for them to satisfy. On the one hand, it 
 is a necessity of thought to regard the world as a 
 self -consistent whole. We cannot conceive the possi- 
 bility of there being two worlds, which are not 
 parts of the same universe, because to do so would 
 make all our thinking incoherent. In all our intel- 
 lectual life we go upon the hypothesis that the universe 
 is one ; and that everything in it has its definite place 
 in relation to the whole, by ascertaining which we can 
 define it. We go upon this hypothesis, indeed, for 
 the most part without thinking of it at all ; but it is 
 the essential business of philosophy to realise it, and 
 to carry back all subordinate principles to it as the 
 ultimate presupposition of the intelligence. Yet the 
 moment we try to define this unity, we are met with 
 the dilemma just mentioned, that either w^e must give 
 up the attempt to characterise the whole at all, or else 
 we must characterise it in terms of one or all of its 
 parts. All definition seems to rest upon the distinc- 
 tion of one object from another within the whole, and 
 therefore the whole itself and its principle of unity 
 seem to be beyond definition. Or if we define it in 
 terms of one of its parts, we carry up into the whole 
 the limitations of that part. Thus to say that the 
 ultimate reality is matter as opposed to mind, or mind 
 as opposed to matter, seems to involve a denial of the
 
 168 THE STATE AND 
 
 real existence of the alternative we reject, or to reduce 
 it to an illusion. Is not the Idealist forced to de- 
 clare, as Berkeley declared, that matter is a mere idea 
 or subjective existence, and the Materialist to maintain 
 that mind is really a quality or phase of matter, 
 which by some illusion we treat as independent ? Or, 
 on the other hand, if we say that the Absolute is a 
 tertium quid, which is neither mind nor matter, though 
 it is the source of both, how are we to define this 
 tertium quid, or avoid reducing it to the Unknowable 
 of Mr. Spencer ? 
 
 The key to this problem is to observe that the 
 distinction of mind and matter, or of knowing and 
 being, like all other distinctions we make, is a 
 distinction within the intelligible world, a distinction 
 in consciousness, which presupposes a unity beyond 
 the difference. It is not, therefore, a distinction 
 between two terms which stand on the same level, 
 as if we had knowledge on the one side and reality on 
 the other— each given altogether independently of the 
 other — and had then to seek for something to mediate 
 between them. To suppose such a dualism would be to 
 assert the complete separation of two things, which are 
 never presented in our experience except in relation to 
 each other. It would be to deny thought its essential 
 character as consciousness of an object, or reality its 
 essential character as the object of thought. For we 
 do not — as might seem from some psychological
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 169 
 
 theories — first know ourselves, and then infer the 
 existence of objects from the nature of certain of our 
 thoughts; but it is only in distinguishing ourselves 
 from, and relating ourselves to an objective world 
 that we know the self within us at all. On the other 
 hand, it is equally true — and it was a large part of the 
 work of Kant to prove it — that objective reality is in 
 essential relation to the conscious subject, and that it 
 is impossible ultimately to think away this relation 
 from it. Furthermore, so intimately associated in our 
 experience are object and subject, that it might easily 
 be shown that we cannot enlarge our inner life or 
 deepen our self -consciousness, except by widening our 
 experience and knowledge of the objective world ; 
 and that we cannot widen our experience of the 
 world, except by a process that draws out the 
 capacities and enriches the inner life of the self. 
 Hence to ask how we get from the subject to the 
 object, or from the object to the subject, or from 
 their difference to their unity, is to put the question 
 in such a way that it cannot be answered ; for, if 
 we could suppose them to be primarily unrelated, 
 it would be impossible to pass from the one to the 
 other, or, even if we had both, to discover their 
 unity. 
 
 The problem, however, takes a very different aspect 
 when we realise that in all our conscious life the unity 
 of both terms is the presupposition of their diff'erence.
 
 170 THE STATE AND 
 
 and that it is simply due to the self-ignorance of the 
 ordinary consciousness — to its want of reflexion upon 
 its own nature and conditions — that it fails to 
 recognise the fact. Thus, in our natural dualism, we 
 begin by taking the two terms, the mind and its 
 ol3Ject, as independent of each other. Then, as 
 reflexion advances, we seek for some tertium quid 
 which shall furnish a link of connexion between them. 
 Lastly, as we become aware of the impossibility of 
 finding any such tertium quid, we are apt to fall 
 back on the paradox of Mysticism — that we know 
 there is a unity of which we know nothing, and to 
 which we approach only as we empty our minds of all 
 positive contents. The truth is that, as the unity of 
 the intelligence and the intelligible world is the first 
 presupposition of all experience, it is not to be reached 
 by abstraction, but rather by correcting the abstraction 
 of our ordinary consciousness ; by realising that unity 
 which is always with us — underlying all our thought, 
 though not directly apprehended by it — and only 
 needing to be brought to light by reflexion. As 
 Plato says of the definition of justice, we have been 
 seeking for it far away while it was lying close at our 
 feet. But we need not to search in the heights above 
 or in the depths beneath for ' that which is in our 
 mouth and in our heart.' If it is 'beyond reality,' it is 
 because it is the substance of which all reality is the 
 manifestation ; if it is ' above knowledge,' it is only
 
 THE IDEA OF GOOD 171 
 
 in the sense that we must go beyond experience to 
 realise what experience is. 
 
 The question has often been asked, whether 
 the idea of Good is equivalent to the idea of God. 
 I think we must answer that the unity of being 
 and knowing, if we take it positively, cannot be 
 conceived except as an absolute self-consciousness, a 
 creative mind, whose only object is a universe which 
 is the manifestation of itself. This aspect of the idea 
 is not emphasised in the Eqnihlic, but it is obviously 
 implied in it. Plato seems, in the first instance, to 
 have regarded his ' ideas ' mainly as olijective realities 
 — the word ' idea ' itself at first suggesting a form or 
 figure which we see, and then being transferred to 
 the essence of the object as grasped by a thought 
 which goes beyond its appearances. But here in the 
 EcpuUic Plato formulates a truth — which, no doubt, 
 was very near him from the . first, though not 
 distinctly formulated — that the object is not com- 
 plete apart from the thought which grasps it ; 
 and the term ' idea ' is henceforth used by him 
 to express this unity. Plato does not, like most 
 moderns, begin with the subjective consciousness, 
 and ask for an object corresponding to it : he begins 
 with the object and goes on to realise that it is 
 essentially an ' o1)ject thought,' an intelligible object. 
 But when this point is reached the impersonal ' idea ' 
 begins to approximate to a consciousness or mind, and
 
 172 THE STATE AND THE IDEA OF GOOD 
 
 we pass beyond idealism to spiritualism. Thus ' the 
 Idea of Good' is only a step removed from the idea of 
 a supreme intelligence, the vov^ Oeio^ of which Plato 
 speaks in the PMlebus} We may therefore fairly say 
 that, with the sixth book of the Hepublic, Plato has 
 extended to the universe the Socratic conception of 
 moral life, and has thereby become the founder of 
 speculative theology. 
 
 ^FhU., 22 c, 28 D.
 
 LECTUEE SEVENTH. 
 
 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY 
 OF IDEAS. 
 
 In the HepuUic Plato puts the coping-stone upon his 
 ideal theory by asserting not merely the existence of a 
 number of independent ideas, but the systematic unity 
 of all ideas under one supreme principle, a principle at 
 once of all reality and of all thought. But, with this 
 conception of the ultimate unity of all things with each 
 other and with the mind, Plato's philosophy seems to 
 enter upon a second stage of development, which 
 carries him still farther away from the abstract 
 idealism commonly attributed to him. For hitherto 
 he has looked upon the idea mainly as a unifying 
 principle — a principle which we need not, indeed, take 
 as a mere abstraction, but which is so far abstract as 
 it leaves out many of the aspects of the manifold and 
 changing phenomena, and has no differences or deter- 
 minations but such as flow from its own nature. There 
 is, however, a great danger of misunderstanding when
 
 174 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 such almost exclusive emphasis is laid upon the unity 
 of the idea, as if it had no distinction of elements 
 within itself at all ; and this misunderstanding might 
 go still farther in view of what Plato says as to the 
 idea of good being 'beyond being' and 'beyond know- 
 ledge,' if this were taken as excluding its immanence 
 in both. 
 
 It is, therefore, noticeable that in the dialogues 
 which follow the Republic Plato begins to change his 
 point of view, and to speak of it as the business 
 of philosophy, not only to rise from diiTerence to 
 unity, but also to trace the way downwards from 
 unity to difference and multiplicity. Already in 
 the Republic, where the dialectician is primarily 
 characterised as one who ' thinks things together,' 
 it is indicated that, after he has reached the highest 
 idea, he must seek to develop all the other ideas 
 from it. But in the Phaedrus the two processes of 
 synthesis and analysis, crvvaywyr} and Sialpea-ig, are 
 distinctly put on a level ; and only he who is aljle 
 rightly to perform them both is thought worthy of the 
 name of a dialectician. He must be able, Plato declares, 
 " to take a comprehensive view of the multitude of 
 scattered particulars and to bring them under one 
 form or idea, for the purpose of defining the nature of 
 the special subject which he wishes to discover." But 
 he must also " be able to divide into species, carefully 
 attending to the natural joints by which the parts are
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 175 
 
 severed and connected, and not breaking any part, like 
 a bad carver." " Of these processes," says the Platonic 
 Socrates, " I have always been a lover, seeking by their 
 means to make myself able to speak and to think. 
 And if I can find anyone who is thus able to see up 
 to the one and down to the many, I am ready to 
 follow in his footsteps as if he were a God." ^ 
 
 Plato illustrates this view by a criticism of the 
 teaching of rhetoric by some of the leading orators 
 of the day, as resting upon a number of empirical 
 rules about the use of words, about figures of speech, 
 or about the commonplaces of argument, and not 
 based upon any comprehensive view of the nature 
 and object of oratory, and of the different elements 
 and conditions that go to the making of an effective 
 speech. In discussing the nature of anything, we 
 must, he declares, first enquire whether it is simple 
 or multiform ; and, if it is simple, we must ask what 
 capacity it has of acting upon other things and being 
 acted on by them ; while, if it has more forms than 
 one, we must determine how many they are, and what 
 capacity of acting or being acted on belongs to each 
 of them. Without such a preliminary analysis, our 
 procedure will be like the groping of a blind man. 
 Now, as rhetoric has to act on the souls of men, we 
 must begin in this case by asking what is the nature 
 of the soul, and whether it is simple or multiform like 
 
 1 Phaedrus, 266 B.
 
 176 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 the body. Then we must enquire how it, or any part 
 of it, acts or is acted on, and by what agencies. And, 
 lastly, we must classify the different kinds of argument, 
 as well as the different kinds of soul and the affections 
 of which they are susceptible ; and we must fit the 
 several arguments to the several mental constitutions, 
 and show how such and such souls are necessarily 
 wrought upon by such and such discourses. If we 
 proceed on this method, our rhetorical art will be not 
 a collection of unconnected empirical rules, but a real 
 scientific system ; and any speech we construct in 
 accordance with its prescriptions will be not an 
 aggregate of unconnected arguments and exhortations, 
 but an organised whole. In Plato's own words : 
 " This, I think, you will admit, that every speech 
 ought to be composed like a living being, which has a 
 complete body of its own, and is neither without head 
 nor without feet ; in other words, it ought to have a 
 beginning, middle, and end, all in harmony with each 
 other and with the whole." ^ 
 
 This conception of the equal importance of distinc- 
 tion and relation, of analysis and synthesis, dominates 
 all the later dialogues. Science is henceforth presented 
 to us as an organised system of parts, which are clearly 
 distinguished from each other, yet essentially bound 
 together by the one idea or principle which is realised 
 in them. In Plato's exposition of this view, however* 
 
 » Phaedru6, 264 c.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 177 
 
 we find something of the same ambiguity which lay in 
 his first account of the ideal theory. And, as there it 
 was sometimes doubtful whether the idea was to be 
 regarded as merely the abstraction of some common 
 element in the particulars, or as a principle which 
 explained their differences ; so here, it is not quite 
 clear whether Plato is merely referring to the division 
 of a genus into subordinate species according to some 
 arbitrarily chosen principium divisionis, or whether he 
 means that the higher idea is to be taken as itself 
 supplying the principle of its own division, and the 
 subordinate ideas as having a necessary intercon- 
 nexion, such that each implies and is implied in all the 
 others. As, therefore, in the former case, we had to 
 ask whether the idea is an abstract or a concrete 
 universal, a common element or a principle which 
 explains a certain compass of differences ; so in the 
 latter case, we have to ask whether the relations of the 
 parts that fall under the idea is that of co-ordinate 
 species which do not stand in any essential relation 
 to each other, or whether it is that of parts which 
 cannot be conceived except as belonging to one whole. 
 Is Plato, after all, only aiming at a mere classification 
 of different existences from an arbitrarily chosen point 
 of view, or is he seeking to comprehend the intelligible 
 world, and every distinct part of it, as a system of 
 members which are in organic unity with each 
 
 other ? 
 
 VOL. I, M
 
 178 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 It is not easy to solve this problem ; indeed, it 
 cannot be solved by a simple ' yes ' or ' no.' For, in 
 the first place, before we deal with it at all, we have 
 to separate two questions which Plato does not always 
 clearly distinguish — the question as to the Koa-juLog 
 i'0}]T6g, the system of ideas when viewed in themselves, 
 and the question an to the objects of the phenomenal 
 world, which are said to participate in these ideas. 
 In regard to the latter, it is abundantly evident that, 
 according to Plato, particular phenomenal existences 
 are subsumed under ideas without being completely 
 determined by them. Indeed, it is the primary 
 characteristic of the world of sense and opinion that 
 the ' many ' in it is not completely determined by the 
 * one ' ; or, in other words, that its differences and 
 its changes are not the pure manifestation of ideal 
 principles, but in many ways fall short of them. Of 
 this relation of the phenomenal to the ideal world, I 
 shall have to speak in a later lecture ; for the present 
 we have to consider the pure relation of ideas as 
 elements in the intelligible world. 
 
 But, even from this point of view, the intention of 
 Plato is not without some ambiguity, especially when 
 we consider the way in which he employs the method 
 of division in the S(yphist and the Politicus. For in 
 these dialogues he seeks to define an object simply 
 by taking a large genus in which it is included, and 
 dividing it into two species by any principle of
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 179 
 
 division that suggests itself ; then, subsuming the 
 object nnder one of the species, he proceeds again 
 to divide that species by another arbitrary 'prin- 
 cipmm divisio7iis ; and so on till he reaches an injima 
 species which cannot be further divided. We can, 
 however, hardly suppose that Plato means us to 
 take this method quite seriously : indeed, the six 
 examples of division by which the Eleatic stranger 
 reaches the definition of the Sophist seem rather 
 intended to exhibit tlie defects of such an arbitrary 
 process, and to illustrate the fallacy which Aristotle 
 points out when he says that division is a ' weak 
 inference.' And we have to observe that in the latter 
 part of the dialogue Plato directs all his efforts to 
 illustrate a view of ideas and their relations, which 
 is entirely opposed to this. Indeed, the aim of the 
 whole remarkable group of dialogues which includes 
 the Theaetetus, the Sophist and the Farmenides, 
 seems to be just this — to develop the doctrine that 
 universals are not abstractions but concrete principles 
 of unity in difference ; and that they have a com- 
 munity with each other, which we can only express 
 by saying that each contains or involves all the 
 others. 
 
 This view of ideas seems to have arisen in Plato's 
 mind in connexion with a careful study of the con- 
 flicting views of the earlier Greek pliilosophers which, 
 till this period, had not received much attention from
 
 180 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 him.^ The controversy between the two great schools, 
 that of the Eleatics who insisted upon the unity and 
 permanence of objects, j,nd that of the Heracliteans who 
 insisted exclusively upon their multiplicity and change- 
 fulness — suggested to Plato the idea that neither ^f 
 them could be regarded as adequate, and that the 
 truth must lie in some tertium quid, which should at 
 once transcend and combine them both. Hence he 
 i declares in the Thcaetetus that it is above all necessary 
 for us to examine carefully the two opposite theories 
 of those who set everything in flux and of those who 
 would make all reality immovable. And then he 
 adds that " if we find that neither of these schools 
 has anything reasonable to say, we shall be absurd 
 enough to think that we, poor creatures, are able to 
 suggest something to the purpose, while we reject 
 the views of ancient and famous men." ^ If, therefore, 
 the ideal theory were to vindicate its claims, it must 
 show itself able to unite the 'one' and the 'many,' and 
 to prove that they are not absolutely opposed but 
 rather require each other. Accordingly in these dia- 
 
 ^ Aristotle (Metaph., I. 6) says that the development of the ideal 
 theory was due to a combination of the Socratic view of miiversals 
 with a conception of sensation and its objects due to the philosophy 
 of Heraclitus. But we do not find this connexion of Sensationalism 
 with the Heraclitean philosophy refen-ed to except in the Theaetetus, 
 and the earlier development of the ideal theory in the Meno, Gorgias, 
 Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic does not appear to be connected 
 M'ith any direct Heraclitean influence. 
 
 2 Theaetetus, 181 b.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 181 
 
 logues Plato seeks to prove, on the one hand, that the 
 views of these two schools are one-sided and self- 
 contradictory, and, on the other hand, that the ideal 
 theory is able to take up into itself the elements of 
 truth that are in both. And it is important to 
 notice that he directs his criticism both against the 
 objective aspect of these philosophies, as theories of 
 being, and against their subjective aspect, as theories 
 of knowing ; and that from this point of view he 
 identifies the Heraclitean philosophy with Sensation- 
 alism, and the Eleatic philosophy with an abstract 
 Idealism which might find some support in his own 
 earlier statement of the ideal theory. 
 . Thus, in the Theaetetus Plato deals at once with the 
 \ Protagorean doctrine that finds— tha-.measure of all 
 things in the sensatioiuof the individual, and with 
 the doctrine of Heraclitus that all things are in 
 . flux ; and he attempts to show that, both severally and 
 I together, they lead to the result that nothing exists 
 or can be known. For if the Heraclitean view be 
 true, and everything is in continual process, ever 
 becoming other than itself, no determination either 
 of quality or quantity can remain even for a moment, 
 and nothing can be said even to be. If there be 
 nothing permanent, there is no reality in anything. 
 And this, again, implies that no knowledge is pos- 
 sible ; for, ex hypothesi, there is nothing left to char- 
 acterise the object as one thing rather than its
 
 182 .FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 opposite ; and that which is always changing in 
 every aspect of it, can not be known even as changing. 
 Again, looking at the question from the side of the 
 subject " pure Sensationalism is speechless " ; for we 
 can neither distinguish one sensation from, nor 
 identify it with another, unless our thought goes 
 beyond the sensation itself. " There is, therefore, 
 no knowledge in the impressions of sense, but only 
 in the discourse of reason in regard to them." ^ 
 
 In the So2yhist, again, the same results are shown 
 to follow from the opposite doctrine, that is, from 
 the abstract Eleatic assertion of the absolute unity 
 and permanence of being ; for, if no difference be 
 admitted in the aspects of the One, we cannot say 
 anything about it. Even to affirm that ' the One 
 is,' implies some distinction between being and 
 unity. Every predication, in short, if it means 
 anything, involves a relative difference between the 
 subject and the predicate, and bare identity means 
 nothing at all. Similar reasons make it impossible 
 to give any meaning to a permanence which is with- 
 out change, movement or activity. Neither absolute 
 motion without rest nor absolute rest without motion 
 can be conceived, but only the union of the two — 
 that which combines motion and rest, or which 
 
 ^ Theaet., 186 D. du fxev dpa rots irad-qjiaaLv ouk evt iiTLCFT-qix-q, ev be Tcp 
 Trepi iKilviov <xvX\oyicr/j,(^. Of course, byllogism has not yet its technical 
 sense.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 183 
 
 rests in one point of view and moves in another.^ 
 But if in this way pure unity and permanence, 
 and pure diversity and change be proved to be 
 each of them unintelligible, if they can neither be 
 nor be known, what is the necessary inference ? It 
 is obviously that the only thing that can either be, 
 or be known, is the one-in-the-many, the permanent- 
 in -change. The Eleatic and the Heraclitean theories 
 equally failed, because they attempted to divorce 
 two elements which are inseparably united. 
 
 This result Plato immediately applies to the ideal 
 theory. By its aid he sets aside the ordinary con- 
 ception of ideas as self-referent abstractions, which 
 are without any difterence in themselves and without 
 any relation to each other — a conception which 
 had derived some support from the language of 
 Plato himself in his earlier dialogues. Even in 
 the Republic, he had spoken as if any community 
 or connexion between different ideas would be a 
 source of confusion as to their real nature.^ But 
 now he points out that, if ideas are to be conceived 
 as principles of being and of knowledge, they can- 
 not be taken as abstract identities without differ- 
 ence, or as unmoved types unrelated to each other 
 and to the mind. As principia cssendi, they must 
 be unities of differences, and each of them must 
 have a definite place in the system of the whole, 
 ^Sophist, 249, 3. ''BeiJ., 476 a.
 
 184 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 differentiated from the others and yet related to 
 them ; and as 2^'>^i'f^oipia cognoscendi, they must have 
 community or relationship with the mind, and they 
 must be conceived as forms of its activity as 
 well as of the activity of the object. 
 
 In the Pa/nmmides, this view is confirmed by anj 
 examination of the ideal theory with special refer- 
 ence to the problem of the one and the many. 
 Plato begins the discussion by casting contempt 
 on the easy dialectical tricks of the sophists and 
 rhetoricians, who proved that the one is also many, 
 only by pointing out that the same individual in 
 spite of his identity has many parts or attributes. 
 But the true question of the one and the many 
 relates to the difference and unity of these ideas in 
 themselves, and not as they may be accidentally 
 combined in one subject. " If, then, any one should 
 attempt to show that the one and the many are 
 the same, taking for his illustration the case of 
 stones or trees and the like, we shall say that he 
 shows, indeed, that something is at once one and 
 many, but not that the one itself is many, or the 
 many one. Thus he does not tell us anything 
 worthy of wonder, but only what anyone can see for 
 himself. But if, as I have just said, he were first 
 to divide such pairs of ideas and set each idea by 
 itself — say, the ideas of similarity and dissimilarity, 
 of the one and the many, of rest and motion — and
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 185 
 
 should then show that these opposites are capable 
 of being combmed and separated, I should be 
 greatly surprised." ^ Parmenides, however, proceeds 
 to show that this result at which Socrates would 
 wonder so much, can be actually realised : firstly, by a 
 criticism of the theory of ideas, viewed as abstract 
 universals ; and secondly, by following out the hypo- 
 theses of the existence and of the non-existence of 
 both of the one and of the many, in all the 
 various senses in which these hypotheses can be 
 taken. 
 
 In the first part of this investigation Plato 
 shows the difficulties of the ideal theory, so long as 
 ideas are taken as the common elements in various 
 particulars, and yet at the same time as independent 
 _substances. For then, he asks, what can be meant 
 by saying that many things participate in the same 
 ideas ? If the idea be an independent substance, 
 like a sail drawn over many objects,^ it is impossible 
 that it should be wholly in each of the things that 
 participate in it : yet it would be absurd to suppose 
 that it was divided among them ; for, in that case, it 
 would cease to be one idea, and would thus lose all 
 its meaning. Again, if the idea corresponds merely 
 
 ^ Parmenides, 129 d. It might be suggested that by putting this 
 into the mouth of Socrates, Plato was acknowledging that there was 
 a time when it applied to himself. 
 
 "^Farm., 131 b.
 
 186 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 to the common element in many particular subjects 
 which in other respects are different from each other, 
 it will not be essentially related to these subjects, 
 and cannot explain their existence. It will only be 
 accidentally present in them along with their other 
 qualities ; or if it be essentially bound up with 
 them, it must be throudr some third idea.^ But, 
 again, if that third idea be only a common element in 
 the first idea and the particular subjects brought under 
 it, it will only be accidentally related to both, and 
 a fresh idea will be required to establish connexion 
 between them ; and so on ad infinitum. Nor will 
 it alter the case if we suppose that the idea is an 
 abstract type, and the subjects are merely like it ; 
 for if likeness requires an idea to explain it, we 
 again fall' back into the same processus in infinittcm. 
 It appears, then, that we can explain nothing parti- 
 cular by means of an abstract universal. 
 
 There is obviously no way out of these difficulties, 
 so long as the idea is taken simply as a common 
 element in a number of species and individuals, and 
 not as a principle which manifests itself in their 
 difference and binds them together into one systematic 
 whole. Such an organic principle alone can be 
 conceived as whole in all the parts brought under 
 
 '^Parm., 132 a. This is the rptros dj/^pw7ros argument, which is 
 so often mentioned by Aristotle, though he ti\kes uo notice of the 
 discussion of it in the Parmenidta.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 187 
 
 it, and, therefore, as needing no tertium quid to 
 unite it with them. Now, looking to the way in 
 which, both in the Theaetetus and the Sophist, 
 Plato seeks to carry us beyond the abstract theories 
 of the earlier schools, we cannot but suppose that 
 his intent is to bring us to this conclusion, that 
 is, to make us accept the doctrine that the true 
 universal or idea is a concrete or organic prin- 
 ciple, which is one with itself in all the diversity 
 of its manifestations ; though, as is often the case, 
 his dialectic is negative rather than positive, and 
 he leaves us to draw the inference for ourselves. 
 
 Still more important is the application of the 
 same method to the relation between ideas and the 
 mind. If ideas be taken as objective principles, 
 complete in themselves apart from any relation to 
 our thought, Plato argues that they can be nothing 
 for us ; and the objects of knowledge, though 
 called by the same names as the ideas, will have 
 no relation to them. They will be completely 
 transcendent and removed from our consciousness ; 
 and, if there be any consciousness which grasps 
 them, it will have no community or connexion 
 with our minds. Yet, on the other hand, if we 
 reject this hypothesis, and take ideas merely as our 
 thoughts, which, as such, exist only in our minds, 
 they will be reduced to subjective affections ; and it 
 will be impossible to explain how through them we
 
 188 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 can know anything objective. It is, however, absurd 
 to regard thoughts in this way, as mere subjective 
 states of an individual consciousness. " Why," asks 
 Parmenides, " must not a thought be a thought of 
 something ? And, if so, must it not be the thought 
 of one definite object ? And must not this object 
 be an ideal form, which remains the same in all 
 cases in which it is realised ? " ^ In other words, 
 Plato points out that the conceptualist hypothesis 
 here suggested will not help us out of any of the 
 difficulties involved in objective idealism ; and that, 
 indeed, it involves an ignoratio elenchi. For ideas 
 or universals cannot be taken as mere states ol 
 mind referring to nothing beyond themselves. But 
 if not — if through universals we know anything — this 
 implies that in some sense they are in the objects 
 known through them, as well as in our minds ; and, 
 indeed, that they are just the principles that give 
 definiteness and unity to these objects, and make 
 them capable of being known. 
 
 But if we can neither say that ideas are real 
 principles without relation to mind, nor yet reduce 
 them to states of mind, if, in other words, we can 
 neither treat them as purely objective nor as purely 
 subjective, what follows ? Obviously the only re- 
 maining alternative is that the distinction between 
 thought and reality, subjective and objective, must 
 
 1 Farm., 132 c.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 189 
 
 be regarded as a relative difference — a distinction 
 between factors in a unity, which imply each other 
 and which cannot be separated. On this view 
 reality cannot be conceived except as the object of 
 thought, nor thought except as the consciousness of 
 reality. On the one hand, to take reality as com- 
 plete in itself apart from thought, or as only 
 accidentally related to thought, is essentially to 
 misconceive its nature ; for every characteristic by 
 which objects are determined as such, can be shown 
 to involve their relation to a conscious subject; and 
 the attempt to abstract from this relation would 
 compel us to treat them as unknowable — as something 
 external to the life of the subject, and which, 
 therefore, the consciousness of the subject cannot 
 reach. Indeed, it would be impossible on this 
 hypothesis to explain how even the imagination of 
 such objective reality should ever present itself to 
 consciousness at all. On the other hand, it is 
 equally irrational to take thoughts as mere states of 
 the subject without reference to reality ; for it is in 
 such objective reference that all their meaning lies. 
 Indeed, apart from such reference, we could not 
 apprehend them even as states of the subject. 
 /^ We must, then, regar d an idm . in the Platonic. 
 ;' sensCj as a principle which transcends the distinction 
 '; of subject and ol>jeot, of thought and reality, and 
 V which ma nifest s itself in both. We are not,
 
 190 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 indeed, required to deny that there is an accidental, 
 or merely subjective aspect of knowledge — as realised 
 in a finite individual and under the special conditions 
 of an individual life ; but we can never take the con- 
 sciousness of an object as a mere state or quality of the 
 individual subject, as determined by such conditions. 
 We must regard such consciousness, however partial 
 and inadequate it be, as the manifestation in an 
 individual form of the one principle which is the 
 source of all being and all thought. While, therefore, 
 we uphold the relative distinction of thought and 
 reality, we must be careful not to elevate it into 
 an absolute difference ; for this would leave us with, 
 on the one side, an idea which is merely a state 
 of the subject, and, on the other side, a reality 
 which is unknowable. We must repel the Berkeleian 
 tendency to dissolve objects into ' mere ideas ' ; but 
 at the same time we must remember that as objects 
 they are relative to the subject ; for reality as 
 intelligible implies the intelligence, and the intel- 
 ligence, on its part, is nothing except as conscious of 
 reality. We cannot understand either the process 
 of being or the process of thought, unless we realise 
 that they are only different aspects or stages of the 
 same process ; and that, in their utmost divergence, 
 they are held within the unity of one principle or, 
 as Plato expresses it, of one idea. 
 
 But when we adopt this view of ideas, we are led
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 191 
 
 to a further result, which also is recognised by Plato. 
 As we have seen, Plato requires us to conceive the 
 idea as the unity of the opposite principles of the 
 Eleatics and the Heracliteans, and, therefore, as com- 
 bining in itself unity and difference, permanence 
 and change. This, however, means that an idea must 
 be conceived as a self -determining or active principle ; 
 since only that which is self-determined can be said 
 to transcend these oppositions, to maintain its unity in 
 difference and its permanence in change. It alone 
 can combine movement with rest, because its activity 
 has its source and end in itself. But where are 
 we to find such a self-determined principle ? It is 
 obviously a conception which can find its realisa- 
 tion, or at least its adequate realisation, only in 
 a mind. Hence we do not wonder to find Plato 
 declaring that " Being in the full sense of the 
 word (to TravreXwg 6v) cannot be conceived without 
 motion and life, without soul and mind."^ In other 
 words, ideas, merely as such, are deposed from the 
 highest place as principles of thought and reality 
 and the place is taken by souls or minds. Accord- 
 ingly, in the Phacdrus, in a passage to which we 
 shall have to return, the soul is spoken of as tlie 
 one principle which is immortal and unchangeable, 
 because it alone is self-moved or self-determined 
 and, therefore, the cause of all determination or 
 
 I Sophist, 248 F,.
 
 192 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 change in other things. ^ And it is obviously 
 impossible to admit such a conception of soul or 
 mind without depriving ideas, as such, of the posi- 
 tion which they have hitherto occupied. 
 
 But with this a new difficulty arises : for, if 
 " reality in the full sense of the word " be only 
 found in souls or minds, what are we to make 
 of other objects ? Are we to say that they are un- 
 real appearances ? Then we shall have escaped the 
 paradox of subjective idealism — that the only objects 
 we know are our ideas as states of our subjectivity — 
 only to fall into what we may call the paradox of 
 objective idealism, that the only objects which we 
 can recognise as such are minds. This difficulty 
 does not escape Plato ; and accordingly we find him 
 arguing in the Farmenides that, if things participate 
 in ideas, and ideas are thoughts, we are reduced to the 
 dilemma, either that * all things think,' that is, that 
 all things are minds : or, that " they are thoughts 
 which exist without being in any mind that thinks 
 them." 2 But, if we reject the second alternative as 
 absurd, we seem to be driven to the conclusion that 
 nothing has real existence except minds and their 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 245 c. It is to be noted that the dialogue in which 
 Plato first speaks of the soul as self-moving and immortal is also the 
 dialogue in which he first asserts that dialectic is a process both of 
 analysis and sj'uthesis, and that its object is to attain to a systematic 
 view of things. 
 
 "^ Farm., 132 C. vo-qfiara 6vTa dvdrjTa elvai.
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 193 
 
 states, and that all other existence is an illusory 
 appearance. Can this conclusion be taken as in any 
 sense reasonable ? And, if so, what is Plato's attitude 
 towards it ? 
 
 Now, there is a sense in which every idealist must 
 admit that the only object of mind is mind. Every- 
 one who holds that the real is relative to mind, and, 
 therefore, that the difference between mind and its 
 object cannot be an absolute difference, must acknow- 
 ledge that whatever is real, (and just so far as it is 
 real,) has the nature of mind manifested in it. 
 Eeality cannot be alien to the subject that knows 
 it, nor can the intelligence comprehend any object 
 except as it finds itself in it. In other words, 
 objects can be recognised as real, only if, and so 
 far as, the y have t hat unity in difference, that per- 
 maiieiice in change, that intelligible individuality, 
 which are the essential characteristics of mind.^ At 
 least we can regard an object as an independent 
 and substantial existence only in so far as it pos- 
 sesses such characteristics. 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to infer from this 
 that every object, which is in any sense real, * thinks,* 
 or is a conscious subject ; for we do not need to 
 take reality as a simple predicate, which must be 
 attached to everything in exactly the same sense. 
 We may, and, indeed, we must admit that there are 
 
 ^ Rep, 477 A. TO Traj/reXcDs '6v iravTeKCot yviaarbv, 
 VOL. I. N
 
 194 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 what My. Bradley calls differences of degree, or what 
 might perhaps even be regarded as differences of 
 kind, in reality. In its highest sense the term 'real' 
 can be predicated only of a res completa, of that 
 which is complete in itself, determined by itself, 
 and, therefore, capable of being explained entirely 
 from itself. But this does not involve the denial of 
 reality even to the most transient of phenomena, if it 
 be but as a phase of something more substantial 
 than itself. There is a certain gradation in the 
 being of things, according to the measure of their 
 independence. From this point of view, every 
 systematic whole must stand higher in the order of 
 reality than an aggregate of unconnected, or exter- 
 nally connected parts ; and a living being in its 
 organic individuality would be regarded as more real 
 than any inorganic thing. In the sphere of the 
 organic, again, we may find many grades of being, 
 from the simplest vegetable cell up to the highest 
 and most complex of animals. But while all such 
 beings are conceived as in a sense substantial, in so 
 far as their existence is referred to a centre in 
 themselves, it is only in man that we find that 
 permanent self -identity, that unity with himself in all 
 difference and change, which is needed fully to satisfy 
 our conception of substantial reality. He only can 
 be properly said to have a self, since he only is 
 fully conscious of it. And it is only as self-conscious
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 195 
 
 that he is ahle to refer all things to himself and so to 
 generate a new world for himself; or, if we prefer 
 to put it so, to reconstitute the common world of 
 all from a fresh individual centre. Even here, how- 
 ever, we cannot stop ; for no finite spirit is complete 
 in itself. As finite, he is part of a greater whole, 
 the member of a society which itself is but one phase 
 of humanity, conditioned by all the other phases of 
 it, and, indeed, by all the other elements that enter 
 into the constitution of the universe. We can, 
 therefore, find that which is absolutely real or sub- 
 stantial only in a creative mind, from whom all 
 things and beings must be conceived as deriving 
 whatever reality or substantiality they possess. 
 
 Now, if we adopt this point of view, it is possible 
 to regard all objective reality as kindred with the 
 intelligence, without going on to assert that nothing 
 exists except minds and their states. In other words, 
 it is possible to maintain that every intelligible object 
 is a partial form or expression of the same principle 
 which is fully expressed in the intelligence, without 
 denying the relative reality either of the inorganic or 
 the organic world, and without, on the other hand, 
 treating every mind as an absolutely self-determined 
 being. 
 
 We cannot, however, without much qualifica- 
 tion, attribute any such conception to Plato. Plato, 
 indeed, speaks of grades of being, but only in
 
 196 FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 connexion with the theory of metempsychosis; that 
 is, he speaks only of the grades of elevation or 
 degradation through which the individual soul may 
 pass. All organised beings, or rather we should 
 say all animals — for nothing is said of plants — are 
 conceived by Plato as having in them a principle 
 of self-determination to which he gives the name of 
 a soul; and all souls are treated as fundamentally 
 identical in nature. But this nature is shown in 
 its purity only in the Divine Being; or, if in men, 
 only in those men in whom the intelligence reaches its 
 highest development; and, pre-eminently, in the philo- 
 sopher who has grasped the central idea of good, and, 
 therefore, beholds all things sub specie aeternitatis. 
 And while the soul thus can rise to the highest, it 
 can also sink to the lowest, becoming more and more 
 immersed in the body, till the life of intelligence is 
 lost in the obscure animal motions of sensation and 
 appetite. So far, therefore, all real or substantial 
 objects are conceived by Plato as souls or minds, in a 
 more or less elevated or degraded condition. The 
 doctrine of metempsychosis, in fact, enables him to 
 hold that, in the strict sense of the word, reality is 
 confined to souls or minds, without thereby denying 
 that it belongs to every being that has life, or at least 
 animal life, in it. On the other hand, when we 
 descend further in the scale of being, this mode of 
 explanation fails him, and Plato, it would seem, must
 
 THE THEORY OF IDEAS 19^ 
 
 be driven either to regard all inorganic objects as mere 
 appearances, or else to imagine that they are some- 
 how living and organic. And the latter alternative he 
 would be obliged to reject; for, as the body is con- 
 ceived as obscuring and thwarting the life of the 
 soul, it cannot be referred to the same principle with 
 that life; and its existence, even as an appearance, 
 becomes a difficult problem. We are therefore 
 compelled to recognise that at this point Plato's 
 idealism^ passes into dualism; and it becomes neces- 
 sary for us to enquire into the exact form which his 
 •dualism finally took — a question which must be 
 answered mainly from the Philebus and the Timaeus. 
 
 Before, however, we can deal with this subject, we 
 have to consider more fully Plato's doctrine of the 
 soul, and, particularly, his treatment of the question of 
 immortality.
 
 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL AND THE 
 IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 In the last lecture I endeavoured to show how Plato 
 was led by a consideration of the opposing theories of 
 the Eleatic and Heraclitean schools, to develop and 
 correct his own theory of ideas. In his earlier 
 account of that theory he had dwelt, with somewhat 
 one-sided emphasis, on the contrast between the 
 relative and shifting character of phenomena and 
 the absolute unity and permanence of the ideal objects 
 of knowledge. He had sometimes even spoken as 
 if each of these objects was an independent and 
 unchangeable unity, which was to be apprehended by 
 itself, apart from all relation to the others. It is 
 probable, however, that such statements were intended 
 by Plato only to bring out clearly the difference 
 between knowledge and opinion; and their inadequacy 
 was partly corrected by the way in which all the ideas 
 were referred back to the one central Idea of Good.
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 199 
 
 Still the difficulty was not removed till, by the conflict 
 of the earlier schools, Plato was led to realise the 
 equal importance of analysis and synthesis, and-to 
 define the idea^as the unity of; identity and difference,) 
 of rest and motion! When this step was taken, the 
 vague consciousness of the unity of all ideas with each 
 other through the Idea of Good, which had been 
 expressed in the EepuUic, at once developed into 
 the conception of a community or connexion of ideas, 
 as distinct yet organically related elements of one 
 intelligible whole. 
 
 At the same time, another process is going on in the 
 mind of Plato. His early idealism had been essen- 
 tially objective. The idea was primarily that which is 
 absolutely real in the objective world as contrasted 
 with the appearances of sense. It was the permanent 
 essence of the thing which the name designated ; in 
 Plato's own words, it, was ' the_good_itself/ ' the 
 beautiful itself,' j the_ equal itself ' ; and the fact that 
 it was recognised as such by the mind was secondary 
 and derivative. But already in the Republic more 
 attention is drawn to the subjective aspect of the 
 intelligible reality, and^tjie Idea of Good is regarded 
 as__aiL^nce and co-ordinatelx_.the _pTiiiGip_le_of_know- 
 ing and the principle of being. And in the Phaedrus 
 and the Sophist this change is carried still farther, 
 and soul or mind is treated as itself the principle of 
 all thought and reality.
 
 200 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 \y Now, these stages in the development of Plato's 
 thought are clearly reflected in his argument for the 
 immortality of the soul, an argument which does not 
 remain stationary, but is extended, modified, and 
 developed through a succession of dialogues. In its 
 earliest and most imperfect form, it is an attempt to 
 prove the immortality of the soul through the special 
 nature of its idea ; but this gradually passes into an 
 endeavour to show that the soul is immortal in its 
 own right. Thus souls or minds come to be regarded^ 
 not as beings whose substantial reality has to be 
 proved by anything else, but as beings which contain 
 in themselves the principle of all reality, and therefore 
 of all proof. Finally, there is a still farther regress, by 
 which all individual minds are referred back to one 
 supreme intelligence, who is the ' first mover ' of all 
 things, and who communicates life and intelligence to 
 all other minds or souls. It is, therefore, essential to 
 a comprehension of Plato's idealism, or rather, as we ^ 
 may call it, his spiritualismy 4;hat we should carefully i 
 follow out the different phases of this argumeiit. 
 
 In the beginning of the Phaeclo the immortality of 
 the soul is conceived as involving, and involved in, its 
 pre-existence ; and the proof of both is derived from 
 the somewhat mythical conception of knowledge as 
 reminiscence, a conception of which I have already 
 spoken in an earlier lecture. As the knowledge of 
 universals is drawn out of the soul, and not simply
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 201 
 
 put into it by direct experience or by teaching, it is 
 attributed to the memory of a former state of exist- 
 ence, a memory which has become dulled and obscured 
 by the descent of the spirit into the world of sense./ 
 This memory may be revived by reflexion an(i 
 dialectic, though it cannot be completely restored till 
 death liberates the soul from the body and its 
 affections. The soul, therefore, is to be conceived as 
 remaining unchanged in its essential nature through 
 all the processes of birth and death; as being many 
 times born into the sensible world and departing from 
 it again, but ever maintaining the continuity of its life, 
 and carrying with it, in a more or less explicit form, 
 all the knowledge it ever possessed. 
 
 This suggestive poetic conception has been used 
 by a modern poet for the same purpose. In his 
 great " Ode on Intimations of Immortality from 
 Eecollections of early Childhood," Wordsworth, like 
 Plato, connects the idea of immortality with that of 
 pre-existence, and finds the proof of both in those 
 'shadowy recollections' of something better, which 
 haunt us from our earliest years : in 
 
 "Those first afi'ections, those shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, 
 Are yet the master-light of all our seeing, 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of an eternal silence."
 
 202 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 There are, however, two great changes in the Words- 
 worthian reproduction of the Platonic myth. In the 
 first place, Wordsworth seems to say that the child 
 is nearest to its heavenly origin, and most clearly 
 remembers it, and that, as we go on in life, 
 
 " the vision dies away, 
 And fades into the light of common day." 
 
 Plato, on the other hand, has no sentiment about 
 childhood, but holds that the soul at its first coming 
 into the body is crushed and overwhelmed by its 
 mortal nature, and loses all memory of the higher 
 life in which it has partaken ; but that, as it grows 
 to maturity, reminiscences of its past glories may be 
 re-awakened in it. They may be re-awakened, in the 
 first place, in a sensuous imaginative form, by beautiful 
 objects which are " a shadow of good things, but not 
 the perfect image of those things " : and then again 
 in a more distinct and self-conscious way, they may 
 be recalled by philosophical reflexion, which enables 
 us to apprehend the truth in its own universal or 
 ideal nature. And from this follows the second point 
 of difference between Wordsworth and Plato, namely, 
 that for Wordsworth the highest consciousness to 
 which the soul can attain, is connected with certain 
 vague imaginative suggestions or intuitions which 
 cannot be defined or reduced to any distinct form : 
 
 "Those obstinate questionings 
 Of sense and outward things,
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 203 
 
 Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realised, 
 High instincts, before wbicli our mortal nature 
 Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." 
 
 By Plato, on the other hand, all such symbolic and 
 imaginative modes of consciousness are regarded as a 
 mere foretaste and anticipation of knowledge, — a 
 preparatory stage, in which the mind is satisfied 
 with what is at best a ' noble untruth ' ; whereas 
 the pure truth of things, as they really are, can only 
 be apprehended by the reflexion of the philosopher, 
 who grasps the universal and defines it, and who by 
 it is enabled to gather all the different aspects of 
 reality into a systematic unity. 
 
 With this half-mythical idea of reminiscence, how- 
 ever, Plato immediately associates the more pregnant 
 conception that, in rising to the universal, the mind 
 is not so much going back into the past as going 
 deeper into itself. The intelligence that grasps 
 tjie universal must have something in itself that^s 
 kindred thereto ; it must have something of that per- 
 manent and substantial reality, that simplicity and 
 unity with itself, which belongs to the ideal object it 
 apprehends. It is, therefore, estranged from itself 
 so long as its thought is turned only to that which is 
 sensible and particular ; and, in awaking to that which 
 is spiritual and universal, it is, as it were, coming to 
 itself again. Nor can it be touched by death : for
 
 204 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 death only breaks its connexion with the world of 
 sense, and so delivers it from that " muddy vesture 
 of decay," which obstructs its vision of the eternal, 
 and prevents it from recognising its kinship there- 
 with. Here, as elsewhere in the Phaedo, Plato seems 
 to yield to the mystic tendency to exaggerate the 
 opposition between the intelligible and the sensible, 
 and to dwell upon that aspect of universals in 
 which they appear as pure ideal unities freed from 
 all the accidents of finite existence. And his 
 argument is simply that the soul, in so far as it 
 is capable of grasping such ideas, must be, like 
 them, lifted above time and change. Plato, there- 
 fore, is not yet prepared to maintain that the 
 soul in its own right is immortal, still less to assert 
 that it is the self-determining principle which 
 determines all other things, the substantial being 
 that underlies and gives origin to all other reality. 
 He still treats it as a particular existence, which 
 must be proved to be immortal through its special 
 relation to the ideal and eternal. 
 
 Nor does he go much beyond this point of view 
 even in the curious argument which concludes the 
 dialogue, and which he seems to regard as its most 
 important result. The^idea-joi- thft...soul, he there 
 contends, presupposes the Jdea of life ; and, it cannot 
 be separated from life, any more than the idea jof 
 evenness can be separated from the number ^fcwf), or
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 205 
 
 / the idea of oddness from the number three. Hence, 
 just because the idea of life is involved in the idea 
 of the soul, the soul must live for ever. 
 
 We have here a close parallel to the ontological 
 argument for the being of God — the argument that 
 God necessarily exists, because existence is involved 
 in the conception of Him as a perfect being. And 
 both arguments seem open to the same objection. 
 To the ontological argument it is objected that we 
 cannot pass from thought to existence by means of 
 another thought, but only by means of some 
 tertium quid, if such can be found, which shall 
 connect thought with existence. What is wanted is 
 to prove that a being corresponding to the idea of 
 perfection exists ; and it is an obvious evasion of 
 the point to say that this requirement is satisfied 
 because the idea of existence is included in the 
 idea of perfection. And equally fallacious is it to 
 attempt to bridge the gulf between the idea of the 
 soul and its eternal existence by saying that life is 
 essentially involved in that idea. Hence Teich- 
 miiller contends with good reason that all that 
 Plato has proved is that the idea of the soul — 
 that ideal reality of which all souls partake, but with 
 which none of them is identified — is immortal and 
 eternal like all other ideas. In other words, he 
 contends that Plato only gives us a relation of 
 ideas; and that, even if we grant to him that ideas
 
 206 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 are eternal principles, yet he has himself taught us 
 that the same does not hold good of their particular 
 embodiments. And it is a mere quibble to say that 
 this case is an exception, because the idea in ques- 
 tion is the idea of life ; for, ex hypothesis an idea 
 is distinguished from particular existences, just by 
 the fact that it is eternal, while they are ever 
 changing, ever becoming and passing away. 
 
 Now, there is a way of repelling the objection 
 to the ontological argument for the being of God; 
 though only, it must be confessed, by inverting it, 
 or challenging the presuppositions on which it was 
 originally based. That argument, as it is usually 
 stated, starts with the assumption of an essential 
 division between thought and being in general, and 
 then seeks for some special means of transcending 
 that division in the case of the idea of God. But, 
 instead of assuming such a dualism to begin with, 
 we may ask on what grounds it can be asserted. 
 In other words, we may ask on what grounds 
 existence is separated from thought, and thought 
 from existence. When we look at the question in 
 this way, as I tried to show in dealing with the 
 Idea of Good, it becomes clear that the distinction 
 of thought and reality is not an absolute one. It 
 corresponds, indeed, to a real difference, but that 
 difference presupposes an identity which is beyond 
 it. There is an ultimate unity between thought
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 207 
 
 and reality, which is postulated in the very act of 
 opposing them, and without which that act itself 
 would be meaningless ; for consciousness always 
 presupposes a relation between the elements it dis- 
 tinguishes, and therefore a unity which transcends the 
 distinction. If the subject asserts his own existence 
 in distinction from the existence of the objective 
 world, he ipso facto presupposes the unity of the 
 whole, in which both subjective and objective are 
 factors. And the principle of that unity must be 
 recognised by it as the principle at once of knowing 
 and being ; that is, it must be recognised as the Divine 
 Being. Thus, if we assert the existence of the mind 
 that knows in opposition to the world that is known, 
 we must also assert the existence of God. We 
 must recognise the absolute Being who transcends 
 the distinction of self and not-self, as a principle 
 apart from which neither the one nor the other 
 can have any reality or meaning. While, therefore, 
 we cannot argue from the thought of God to His 
 existence as an object, we can make a regress from 
 the opposition of thought and reality to God as 
 the unity implied in that opposition. 
 
 Is it possible to make a similar transformation 
 of Plato's argument for the immortality of the 
 soul ? And, if so, does Plato himself make it ? 
 It is at once obvious that, in order to do so in 
 the case of the soul, Plato must transcend that
 
 208 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 absolute opposition of the universal and the in- 
 dividual, which Teichmiiller and others have regarded 
 as the essential characteristic of his philosophy. 
 He must conceive the soul as possessed of what 
 might be called a ' universal individuality/ i.e, an 
 individuality which is one with its idea, and 
 which, therefore, partakes of the eternity that be- 
 longs to the idea. Now, the argument by which, 
 in the Fhaedo, Plato endeavoured to secure an ex- 
 ceptional position for the soul, is certainly fallacious 
 as he has there stated it ; but we find that, in later 
 dialogues, he gave it another and less ambiguous 
 form. For there we find him maintaining, not that 
 the soul is immortal because it partakes in the 
 idea of life, but that the ultimate principle of life, 
 as of all substantial reality, is the soul. We may 
 clearly trace the development of this thought in 
 the Republic and the Fhaedrus. 
 
 In the BepuUic Plato lays down the principle 
 that a thing can be destroyed only by its own 
 evil, by that which specially mars and corrupts its 
 own nature. Hence the soul cannot be injured by 
 the diseases of the body or destroyed by its death, 
 except in so far as these bring with them evils 
 that directly affect the soul itself, namely, the evils 
 of injustice and intemperance, folly and ignorance. 
 But can the soul be destroyed even by these its own 
 diseases ? On the contrary, we often find that its
 
 AND Tffi IDEA OF GOD 209 
 
 vitality, the intense activity of its life, shows itself 
 just in and through its vices. " The injustice, 
 which will murder others, keeps the murderer alive — 
 aye, and well awake too ; so far removed is her 
 dwelling-place from being a house of death." If, 
 then, the soul cannot be destroyed even by its own 
 peculiar and characteristic evils, it is absurd to 
 think that it can receive any vital injury from 
 the death of the body, which is not in itself con- 
 nected with such evils. As no one can say that 
 the decay of the body makes us more unjust, 
 there is no reason to believe that the soul is 
 affected by its death. Hence Plato contends that 
 the soul is an absolutely permanent substance ; that, 
 therefore, the number of souls must always remain the 
 same, neither increased nor diminished; and that aJl 
 that_jtheir connexion with mortal bodies can do is^r 
 a time to obscure and dim their brightness. But, he 
 goes on, " in order to see the soul as she really is, 
 not as we now behold her marred by communion 
 with the body, we must contemplate her with the 
 eye of reason in her original purity ; for, as she is 
 now, she is like the sea-god Glaucon, whose original 
 image can hardly be discerned, because his natural 
 members are broken off and crushed and damaged 
 by the waves, and incrustations have grown over 
 them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he 
 is more like a monster than his natural form," 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 210 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 But " we must regard her high er nature as shown 
 in her love of wisdom, and in her yearning for the 
 divine to which she is akin." ^ 
 
 Now, if we translate this into more modern terms, 
 
 I think we can see that Plato means that the 
 
 ' soul, in so far as it is capable of intellectual and 
 
 moral life, has a universal principle, or perhaps we 
 
 should say, the universal principle in it. Hence 
 
 no influence can come to it from without which 
 
 ,is capable of destroying it. No calamity which 
 
 affects only its body or its mortal individuality 
 
 can be fatal to its own life. For though, in one 
 
 aspect of it, it is a particular finite being, subject 
 
 to all the accidents and changes of mortality, there 
 
 is that within it which lifts it above them all. We 
 
 might add — though this perhaps would be going 
 
 beyond what Plato says in this place and putting 
 
 positively what he puts only negatively — that it can 
 
 not only rise above them, but can also turn them 
 
 into the means of its own development. Outward 
 
 \ misfortune and even death, as Socrates had shown, 
 
 \^ can treat with indifference, and even use them as 
 
 Vl an opportunity for the exercise and manifestation of 
 
 '•?y '\ its own spiritual energy. And as regards what Plato 
 
 ' calls its own proper evils, though undoubtedly the 
 
 soul may be divided against itself and weakened by 
 
 vice and folly, yet even they cannot penetrate to 
 
 1 Hep., 611 D.
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 211 
 
 the deepest principle of its spiritual life ; they can- 
 not destroy its self-conscious or rational nature, 
 and therefore they cannot be incurable. Nay, the 
 universal principle of spiritual life enables it to 
 turn even its own failures and sins into ' stepping- 
 stones ' upon which it may ' climb to higher things.' 
 If this is going beyond Plato's exact words, it seems 
 to be a natural inference from the principle he here 
 lays down, that the soul cannot be destroyed by its 
 own evil, much less by any other kind of evil. 
 
 The more positive expression of the same idea, 
 however, is found in the Phaedrus. In that dialogue 
 Plato gives us a myth in which the soul of man 
 is described as a charioteer, driving a chariot with 
 two horses — which of course represents the reason 
 in its control over the higher and lower impulses, 
 0fyao9 and iiriOv/uLia. The soul-chariot follows the pro- 
 cession of the gods in their journey round the 
 universe, and tries like them to rise above the apex 
 of heaven to the vision of ideal reality, the vision 
 of essential truth and goodness and beauty : but its 
 wings often fail to carry it high enough. And when 
 they fail, it sinks downward to the earth, and becomes 
 the tenant of a mortal body. In connexion with 
 this wonderful symbolic myth on which Plato lavishes 
 all the treasures of his imagination, he suddenly turns 
 from poetry to philosophy, and argues that th ensoul, 
 as such, is immortal, because it is self-moved or
 
 212 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 self-determined : " Soul in every case is immortal," he 
 contends, " for what is ever in motion is immortal, 
 but that which moves another and is moved by 
 another, in ceasing to move, ceases also to live. 
 Only the self-moving, as it never abandons itself, 
 never ceases to move, and is the fountain and begin- 
 ning of motion to all that moves beside. Now, a 
 beginning or principle cannot have come into being 
 at any time, for that which comes into being 
 must have a beginning or principle from which it 
 comes, but the principle itself cannot come out of 
 anything else : for if the principle came out of 
 anything else, it would show itself not to be a 
 principle. But, again, what never begins to be 
 must also be indestructible : for, if the principle 
 were destroyed, it could not rise into being out of 
 anything else, nor anything else out of it, since 
 all things must come from a principle. The begin- 
 ning or principle of motion must, therefore, be 
 found in that which moves itself, and it can itself 
 have neither death nor birth ; otherwise the whole 
 universe and the whole process of creation would 
 collapse and be brought to a stand, and no path 
 back into motion and existence would remain possible. 
 If, however, we say that that is immortal which is 
 moved by itself, we need have no scruple in asserting 
 that this is the very essence and idea of the soul. 
 For any body which has the principle of its motion
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 213 
 
 outside of itself is ' soulless,* while that which has 
 its principle of motion within and from itself, is 
 'possessed of a soul,' — implying that this is the very 
 nature of soul. But if it be granted that that which 
 moves itself is soul, then of necessity the soul is 
 unbegotten and immortal." ^ 
 
 This idea of the soul as the first mover is a very 
 important one in the history of philosophy and 
 theology, and we shall have to discuss it more fully 
 hereafter in connexion with the views of Aristotle. 
 Here I need only say what is necessary for the 
 explanation of its place in the system of Plato. In 
 this view, we have, in the first place, to remember 
 that the term ' motion ' is used by Plato in a wider 
 sense than we commonly attach to it, as meaning not 
 only change of place, but activity in general. For 
 in the former sense motion always implies the action 
 of one thing upon another, and absolute self-move- 
 ment is a contradiction in terms. What Plato means, 
 therefore, is that the soul has in itself an original 
 principle of activity, a principle of self-consciousness 
 and self-determination. He thus carries the idea 
 suggested in the Republic a step farther : for, while 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 245 c. The great difficulty in translating this passage 
 is that in it Plato's language is in the very process of changing from 
 figure to thought, or, as a German would express it, from the Vorstel- 
 lung to the Begriff. He is in the act of making philosophic terms 
 out of words in common use. Thus apxn is just passing from ' be- 
 ginning ' to 'principle,' y^vecri^ from 'birth' to 'becoming' in 
 general, and Kiurjais from ' motion ' to ' activity ' in general.
 
 214 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 in that dialogue we have the negative thought, that 
 the soul cannot be destroyed by any evil derived 
 from another than itself, in the Phaedrus we have 
 the positive counterpart of this, that it is determined, 
 and can only be determined, by itself. It has a 
 universal nature and, therefore, it transcends all limits 
 or hindrances that can be put upon it by other 
 things. They cannot affect it, or they can affect 
 it only indirectly through its own action. Even its 
 confinement in a mortal body is represented as the 
 result of its own fall from its previous high 
 estate ; and the nature of the body in which it is 
 imprisoned, as well as its whole lot in this world, 
 is said to be fixed by its own inner state. " The 
 soul is form and doth the body make " : it creates 
 its own environment, and in successive births it 
 rises and falls in its outward estate, according to 
 the goodness or badness of its actions: alria eXo/j-cpov, 
 6609 avaiTiog} It is then Plato's doctrine in the 
 Phaedrus that ' all soul ' — and here he makes no 
 distinction between different grades of souls or even 
 between the divine being and other souls — is self- 
 moving or self-determined, and has a spring of eternal 
 energy in itself; and that, though its spiritual life 
 may be darkened and obstructed, it can never be 
 destroyed. For soul is the principle of all reality 
 both in itself and in all other things. " The soul 
 
 ^ Rep., 417 E.
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 215 
 
 in i ts totality," he declares/ " has the care of all 
 inanimate or soulless being everywhere, and traverses 
 the whole universe, appearing in divers forms. When 
 it is perfect and its wings have fully grown, it soars 
 upward and orders the whole world ; but when it 
 loses its wings, it sinks downward, till it reaches the 
 solid ground and takes up its abode in an earthly 
 body, which seems to move of itself but is really 
 moved by the soul. And this compound of soul and 
 body is called a living and mortal creature : for 
 immortal no such union can be believed to be, 
 though our sensuous imagination, not having seen or 
 known the nature of God, may picture him as an 
 immortal creature having a body and a soul which 
 are united through all time." 
 
 It appears, then, that in the Phaedrus the soul 
 / is taken as the principle of all things, to which all 
 j movement — all activity and actuality — must ultimately 
 I be referred. It is the one absolutely universal, and 
 therefore absolutely individual existence, which deter- 
 mines itself and is not determined by anything else, 
 and which for that reason is immortal and eternal. 
 Thus souls seem to attract to themselves the charac- 
 teristics of ideas, or, at least, to take the place 
 of ideas, as ultimate principles of being and know- 
 ing. Further, Plato seems to attribute soul in 
 this sense, not only to men, but to all living 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 24G b. 
 
 /
 
 216 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 creatures. At least he regards them all as alike 
 in the fundamental principle of their being, how- 
 ever the manifestation of it may be obstructed 
 by the kind of body with which it has become 
 associated. In short, as I have before explained, 
 all life for Plato is the life of intelligence, more 
 or less adequately realised. While, therefore, in 
 all souls that are incarnated in bodies, there is 
 ipso facto a finite and perishable nature which can- 
 not survive the crisis of death, there is also in them 
 a principle which is altogether independent of the 
 accidents of their mortal part. Hence the individual 
 who is capable of moral and intellectual activity — 
 who, in spite of the narrow conditions of mortal 
 life, can become a 'spectator of all time and exist- 
 ence,' and who, in his practical efforts, is guided by 
 a consciousness, or at least a foretaste and prophetic 
 anticipation, of the universal good — such an indivi- 
 dual is essentially self-determined. He has in him 
 a universal principle of activity or life, and nothing 
 can be imposed upon him from without which is 
 not accepted from wdthin. In this way Plato 
 could maintain the originality and independence of 
 every spiritual being, as such, even in his lowest 
 degradation — even when, in his subjection to sense 
 and appetite, he sinks below humanity : for in all 
 its transmigrations the soul is conceived as remain- 
 ing one with itself. There is, indeed, always a
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 217 
 
 certain mythic element in Plato's statement of this 
 view; and we are not able to say how far he 
 means what he says of the pre-natal and the 
 future states to be taken literally. But there 
 cannot be any reasonable doubt that he attributes 
 a self-determined and therefore immortal existence 
 to the soul — or, perhaps we should rather say, 
 to the reason or spirit ; for, in his later and more 
 definite statements, the soul is taken as the prin- 
 ciple that connects the pure reason with the mortal 
 body ; and it is only to the spiritual part of man's 
 being that the attribute of immortality is assigned. 
 
 It is obvious, however, that Plato could not stop 
 at this point. As he could not rest in the thought 
 of a multiplicity of ideas without referring them 
 back to the one Idea of Good, so neither could he 
 be content with the conception of a multitude of 
 self-determined and immortal souls without referring 
 back to one divine reason, as the source and end 
 of their spiritual life. Hence in the Philebus we 
 find him speaking of a " divine intelligence," which 
 is the ultimate cause of all order and organi- 
 sation in the mixed and imperfect nature of man 
 and of his world. And the same thought is ex- 
 pressed in the mythical language of the Timaeus, 
 \ wliere Plato declares th at the so uls of the gods and 
 the higher element in the souls of men are the 
 ■ direct work of the Creator : they are, therefore.
 
 218 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 incapable of being destroyed except by him who has 
 created them, and he cannot will to destroy what 
 he has himself made.^ Thus, in place of a num- 
 ber of independent spiritual beings, each immortal 
 in his own right, we have the idea of a kingdom of 
 spirits, who all, indeed, partake in the divine nature, 
 and are therefore raised above time and change, but 
 who, nevertheless, have a dependent and derived 
 existence and are immortal only through their rela- 
 tion to God. It is in accordance with this that in 
 the Laws, where Plato repeats the argument of the 
 Phaedrus that the soul is immortal, because it is 
 self-determined, he applies it only to the divine 
 Being. God only is the first mover, the source of 
 life and activity in all other beings. He is the 
 sovereign will, who has ordered the world as an 
 organic whole in which each individual has the 
 exact part to play for which he is fitted.^ If man be 
 immortal it is not in his own right as an individual, 
 but because the divine life is communicated to him. 
 In other words, we have to prove his immortality 
 on the ground that the universal principle of reason, 
 which is the presupposition of all being and of all 
 knowledge, is the principle of his own life ; and 
 that all beings, in whom this principle is realised, 
 must have this nature manifested in them. We 
 must prove it, in short, because in the language of 
 
 1 Tim., 41 A : cf. Lerjes, 904 A. ^ L^g^^ 993 b.
 
 AND THE IDEA OF GOD 219 
 
 the New Testament " God is not the God of the 
 dead, but of the living." And perhaps this is the 
 one argument for immortality, to which much weight 
 can be attached. 
 
 It appears, then, that Plato's proof of the 
 immortality of the soul ultimately resolves itself 
 into the ontological argument for the being of God ; 
 or rather, we should say, that it is what that argu- 
 ment becomes when freed from its dualistio pre- 
 suppositions. In other words, it is a regressive 
 argument, which carries us back to an ultimate 
 unity, prior to all difference, and especially to the 
 difference of thought and being. Further, Plato 
 maintains that this unity must be conceived as 
 a supreme intelligence, which, as such, stands in 
 a peculiar relation to all beings who have the 
 principle of intelligence in them. These, and these 
 alone, are regarded as partaking in the divine life, 
 and, therefore, as lifted above change and death. 
 All other things are, in comparison with them, only 
 appearances, which are continually changing and pass- 
 ing away to make room for others. But they — though 
 for a time they become denizens of this world of 
 birth and death, of growth and decay, and may pass 
 through many transitory forms in the rise and fall 
 of their spiritual life — do not essentially belong to it, 
 and their real nature cannot manifest itself clearly 
 until they are liberated from it.
 
 ^20 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 Plato, then, though in his later dialogues he 
 
 gets beyond the abstract antagonism between the 
 
 ideal and the sensible worlds, ends by restating 
 
 that antagonism in a new form. He has shown 
 
 that ideas are not to be conceived as excluding all 
 
 difference and relativity, but as elements in an 
 
 intelligible world, each of which has its distinct 
 
 character, while yet it is essentially bound up with 
 
 all the rest. In the second place, he has turned 
 
 this idealism into a spiritualism by treating soul or 
 
 intelHgence as the only thing that can be regarded 
 
 as active or self-determined, the only thing that 
 
 can be taken as actual or real in the full sense of 
 
 the word. Finally, he has suggested that all souls 
 
 are to be viewed as derived from, or dependent on, 
 
 one divine soul or spirit, who manifests himself in 
 
 and to them, so that, in the words of Schiller, 
 
 "Aus dera Kelch des Seelen-reichs 
 SchaUmt ihm seine Unendlichkeit." 
 
 But this ideal or spiritual world, which is in per- 
 fect unity with itself through aU its difference, is 
 still conceived as standing in sharp antithesis to 
 the world of phenomenal appearance, in which differ- 
 ence becomes conflict, and conflict produces endless 
 mutation of birth and death. And the last problem 
 of the Platonic philosophy or theology is to de- 
 termine the relation of these two worlds to each 
 other.
 
 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 THE FINAL EESULTS OF THE PLATONIC 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In the last two lectures I attempted to show the 
 nature of the transition by which Plato passes from 
 the general doctrine that the idea or universal is 
 the real, to the doctrine that the ultimate reality 
 is to be found in mind. Absolute Being, ' that which 
 is in the highest sense of the word,' must be a 
 principle which transcends the opposition, maintained 
 by the earlier schools, between being and becoming, 
 between the one and the many; and which also 
 transcends the new opposition, which was brought 
 into view by Socrates, between the subject and the 
 object. It cannot be conceived as rest without 
 motion, as permanence without activity ; but as 
 little can it be conceived as an objective ideal 
 principle without consciousness or intelligence ; or, on 
 the other hand, as a mere subjective thought or 
 state of consciousness without objective reality. If it 
 is intelligence, it is not intelligence as separated by
 
 222 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 abstraction from the intelligible world, but as pre- 
 supposing and including it. It is ' divine reason/ as 
 the ultimate unity of all the ideas of things, and 
 so as the principle at once of knowing and of being. 
 
 But this involves another transition. If mind 
 be the principle of the universe, we cannot con- 
 template all the parts of the universe as equally 
 far from it and equally near to it. There are 
 ideal principles in all things, but the principle of 
 life and consciousness raises the beings that partake 
 in it above other beings or things ; for all soul is 
 divine and " has the care of all inanimate or soul- 
 less being, and traverses the whole universe," ^ 
 taking one form at one time and another at another. 
 Every soul, as such, is a self-determining being, 
 whose life cannot be overpowered or destroyed by 
 anything external to itself. It is thus immortal, 
 and above the power of death and time. And if, 
 in any sense, it be made subject to them, it must 
 be by its own act. 
 
 This at once brings us to a problem which 
 greatly exercised the mind of Plato in the latest 
 period of his life, as is shown by the Philebus and 
 the Timaeus, the problem of the relation of the 
 ideal to the phenomenal world. In one way this 
 problem had now become much more complex and 
 difficult for him ; for he could no longer be 
 
 1 Phaedrus, 246 B,
 
 THi: PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 223 
 
 content, if he ever were content, with the broad 
 contrast between the permanent and the changing, 
 the one and the many, seeing that he had recognised 
 that the ideal world contains both these elements. 
 The supreme principle could not now be conceived, 
 if it ever were conceived, as an abstract unity 
 resting in itself ; it is now definitely recognised as 
 the keystone of a system, and as one with itself in 
 all the ideas which it binds into a whole. It is a 
 conscious and active principle, whose activity mani- 
 fests itself in every element and part of the 
 universe. It " lives through all life, extends through 
 all extent, spreads undivided, operates unspent " ; 
 but in a higher sense it reveals itself only in the 
 individual souls who partake in its immortality. 
 
 But, though in this way the ideal world appears 
 to take up into itself all the characteristics by 
 which the phenomenal world was at first dis- 
 tinguished from it, Plato does not give up the 
 fundamental contrast of the two. The multiplicity 
 and movement that belong to the ideal world have 
 still to be distinguished from the multiplicity and 
 movement which are found in the world of genesis 
 and change, the world of space and time. When 
 we pass to the phenomenal, that transparent unity 
 with itself through all its differences which be- 
 longs to the pure intelligence, is obscured and 
 disturbed, and its resting identity with itself in
 
 224 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 all its activities is broken up and lost in opposition 
 and contradiction. " The light shineth in darkness, 
 and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Thus, in 
 spite of the progress which Plato made towards a 
 thorough-going idealism, in which the abstract 
 antagonisms of earlier philosophy were overcome, he 
 was never able to escape from the dualism implied 
 in his original contrast of science and opinion. 
 
 We might perhaps regard this as due in part to 
 a mistaken ^/iew of the abstraction which is necessary 
 for science. Every science selects some aspect or 
 sphere of reality, and isolates it from all other spheres 
 or aspects of it, in order that it may thoroughly 
 elucidate that which it has chosen as the object of its 
 investigation. Every science thus rejects an immense 
 variety of detail with which its peculiar object is 
 surrounded, as being for it accidental and irrelevant. 
 And, though what is irrelevant and accidental for one 
 science may not be so for another, yet, however far we 
 go in this direction, there seems to be much in objects 
 and in their coexistences and successions, which can- 
 not be explained by any science. Further, even if 
 philosophy can grasp some Idea of Good — some principle 
 which unites all the sciences, because it transcends 
 their limited points of view — yet it must always 
 be impossible for us to trace the operation of this 
 principle in the endless detail of changing phenomena 
 which make up our daily life. The utmost knowledge
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 225 
 
 we can attain still leaves the ordinary course of the 
 world for us a mass of contingencies, of accidental 
 juxtapositions and successions, of which we can only 
 say that it is, and not why it is, still less that it is for 
 the best.^ Hence our philosophy is too apt to become 
 an effort to find our way to an ideal world in which 
 we may take refuge from the confusions of the world 
 of sense, even though we may acknowledge in words 
 that it is this ideal world that gives to the world of 
 sense all the order, significance, and reality which it 
 possesses. Now, it is just here that Plato seems to 
 take up his position, recognising what we may call the 
 ideal kernel of existence, which gives to this world all 
 the intelligible reality it possesses, but unable to see 
 that in any sense or from any point of view it can be 
 regarded as a pure manifestation of the ideal. Hence 
 his optimism, in the strict sense of the word, is 
 reserved for this ideal kernel, and in regard to every- 
 thing else he is forced to lower his tone, and to declare 
 that it is not the best but only as good as it can 
 
 ^In the Philehtis (16 d) Plato urges that in the descent from the 
 unity of the idea to the multiplicity of phenomena, we should 
 endeavour to carry division by intelligible principles as far as 
 possible, subdividing till "the unity with which we began is seen 
 not only to be one and many and infinite, but also a definite number; 
 the infinite must not be suffered to approach the many until the 
 entire number of the species intermediate between unity and infinity 
 has been discovered — then, and not till then, we may rest from 
 division, and without further troubling ourselves about the endless 
 individuals, may allow them to drop into infinity." 
 VOL, 1. F
 
 226 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 possibly be in a phenomenal world ; since in that world 
 the ideal is present only as reflected upon the sensible, 
 as a " likeness of good things, but not the perfect 
 image of those things." Hence also there is in Plato 
 a strange fluctuation, both of thought and feeling, 
 in regard to the phenomenal world. Sometimes it is 
 almost exalted to the ideal from which it is derived, 
 and sometimes it is contemned as a phantom world 
 of shadows which hardly redeems itself from non- 
 existence. The phenomenal world for Plato is so far 
 real and divine, as it is a reflexion of the divine 
 intelligence ; but it is undivine and unreal, because it 
 is only a reflexion of it. 
 
 It is in the Philehus and the Timaeus that this view 
 of the universe gets its fullest expression. In the 
 former of these dialogues, Plato contrasts the divine 
 intelligence which is one with itself in all its action, 
 and so raised above all change and conflict, above all 
 pleasure and pain, with the complex world of genesis 
 and decay, of formation and dissolution, where a 
 principle of order, which is derived from the divine 
 intelligence, has to maintain itself in an element of 
 chaos, and more or less successfully to reduce it to a 
 cosmos. All finite existences, even finite spirits, are a 
 kind of compromise between what Plato calls the limit 
 and the unlimited, between a law which would regulate 
 all things and confine them within definite bounds, and 
 a vague indeterminate material or basis of phenomenal
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 227 
 
 existence, which has no law in itself, and therefore 
 must receive its determination from without. And, 
 as that which is determined from without can never 
 be perfectly determined, so this material ^ is ever ready 
 to escape from the limitations to which it is subjected, 
 and to return to the lawlessness from which it has 
 been redeemed. If it could exist by itself, it would 
 swing unchecked from excess to defect, from defect to 
 excess, and the ' golden mean ' could only partially 
 and for the time be established in it. It is like the 
 marble of the sculptor, which always has some flaw or 
 imperfection in it that makes it a less than perfect 
 embodimxent of his idea ; or like the forces of nature, 
 which can be subjected to man's design, but have no 
 direct affinity with the purpose they are made to serve 
 and never exactly conform themselves to it. This 
 disconformity shows itself in the continual passing 
 away of everything finite, in the defects that attach 
 to all natural existences, above all in the continual 
 division and conflict of human life. In man this 
 contrast of tlie material with the ideal which realises 
 itself in it, appears as the opposition of mind and 
 sense, of the intelligence that apprehends and seeks 
 the good with the impulses which, left to themselves, 
 tend to any object that promises pleasure without 
 asking whether, or how far, the good is realised in it. 
 
 ^ I use this word as a convenient expression, though it suggests 
 something more definite and substantial than Plato's direioou.
 
 228 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 The ideal of man's life is that it should exhibit in 
 itself "an immaterial principle of order maintaining 
 a noble sovereignty over a living body " ; ^ and this 
 involves not only the subordination of the natural 
 to the spiritual, but also the most perfect order 
 and gradation of all spiritual aims, and the restriction 
 of enjoyment to pleasures that are simple and pure — 
 pleasures that accompany the highest activities of the 
 soul and do not disturb them. But such an ideal 
 can never be completely realised in the 'mingled' and 
 divided nature of man. 
 
 The same contrast is expressed in another way in 
 the Timaeus, where Plato gets over some of its diffi- 
 culties by adopting a mythic form of expression. 
 " We must first," he declares, " make a distinction of 
 the two great forms of being and ask : What is that 
 which is and has no becoming, and what is that which 
 is always becoming and never is ? The former, which 
 is apprehended by reason and reflexion, is changeless 
 and ever one with itself; the latter, which is appre- 
 hended by opinion through irrational sensation, is 
 ever coming into being and perishing, but never 
 really is. Now, everything that begins to be, must be 
 brought into being by some cause ; for without a cause 
 it is impossible for anything to be originated. But 
 whatever things have been produced by the Creator, 
 moulding the form and character of his work after the 
 
 1 Phihhus, 64 b.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 229 
 
 pattern of that which is ever the same, are of neces- 
 sity beautiful ; while those things which he has 
 produced after the pattern of that which has come 
 to be — a pattern which is itself not original but 
 created — cannot be beautiful. Now as to the whole 
 sphere of heaven, the ordered universe, or whatever we 
 please to call it, our first enquiry in this as in every 
 other subject must be, whether it always existed and 
 had no birth or origination from anything else than 
 itself, or whether it came into being and had a begin- 
 ning in something else. It did begin to be, I reply; for 
 it is visible and tangible, and it has a material body ; 
 and of all sucli sensible things, which are apprehended 
 by opinion with the aid of sense, we must say that 
 they are in process of becoming and are the results of 
 such a process ; hence we must needs say that it had 
 a cause." 
 
 "Now the Maker and Father of this universe is 
 hard to find, and even if we had found him it would 
 be impossible to reveal him to all men. There is, 
 however, an enquiry which we may make regarding 
 him, to wit, which of the patterns he had in view 
 when he fashioned the universe, — the pattern of the 
 unchangeable, or of that which has come to be. 
 If the world indeed be beautiful and its artificer 
 good, it is manifest that he must have had in 
 view the eternal as his model and pattern ; but if 
 the reverse be true, which cannot be said without
 
 230 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 blasphemy, then he had in view the pattern which 
 has come to be. Now anyone can see that he looked 
 to the eternal as his pattern ; for the world is the 
 most beautiful of creatures, and he is the best of 
 causes. Having, then, come into being in this way, 
 we may say that it- has been created in the image 
 of that which is apprehended only by reason and 
 intelligence, and which eternally is. The universe, 
 then, it appears, is a copy and not an original." 
 
 " Now in every discussion it is most important to 
 make a beginning which agrees with the nature of the 
 subject of which we treat. Hence in speaking of a 
 copy and its original, we must see that our words are 
 kindred to the matter which they have to express. 
 When they relate to the abiding _and unchangeable 
 reality which is apprehended by reason, they must he 
 fixed and unchanging, and, in so far as it is possible for 
 words to be_sp^.they must be incapable of refutation 
 or alteration. But w^hen they relate to that which 
 is an image, though made in the likeness of the 
 eternal, they need only have likelihood and make 
 such an approach to exactness as the case admits ; 
 for trut h stflTids \,^ hp.liAf as being ^Q_ jggQ^pg- 
 If, then, amid the many opinions about the gods 
 and the generation of the universe, we are not able 
 in every respect to render all our ideas consistent 
 with each other and precisely accurate, no one need be 
 surprised. Enough, if we are able to give an account
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 231 
 
 which is no less likely than another; for we must 
 remember that I who speak, and you who judge of 
 what I say, are mortal men, so that on these subjects 
 we should be satisfied with a likely story, and demand 
 nothing more." ^ 
 
 In this passage Plato makes a broad division 
 between the eternal reality of things, and the world 
 of becoming and change, and a corresponding division 
 between the faculties of the soul by which they 
 are severally apprehended, the former being the 
 object of the pure intelligence and of knowledge, 
 the latter of opinion, or, in other words, of a judg- 
 ment directly based on sense. And it is to be 
 noticed that by this he does not mean merely that 
 opinion is a kind of knowledge which is imperfect by 
 reason of the weakness of our minds. He means 
 that this imperfection lies in the nature of the case ; 
 for no changing finite existence can be the object 
 of the pure intelligence, which always contemplates 
 that which absolutely is.*** The phenomenal world 
 can be pictured by the imagination but, strictly 
 speaking, it can never be understood. It is seen 
 under the form of time which is the moving image 
 of eternity and breaks up the eternal ' now ' into 
 past, present, and future. The ' is,' which is the 
 only tense of science, loses its highest sense in the 
 dubious region of phenomena which are continually 
 
 ^ Timaeus, 27 e seq.
 
 232 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 changing. It is true that there is something like 
 the unity and permanence of absolute being in 
 the recurrent movement of the heavenly bodies, 
 which, passing through long cycles of change, are 
 supposed ever to return again to their original 
 order and to resume their courses. And in another 
 way we have the same return of the time-process 
 upon itself in the course of animal life, which, as 
 Plato says, imitates eternity by the continual repro- 
 duction of the species in new individuals, who go 
 through the same cycle of change.^ In this world 
 of generation and decay, however, we find no 
 substantial existence, no permanent reality that 
 ever remains one with itself : for, even if we go 
 down to the four original elements, we find them 
 also changing into one another. Nothing, therefore, 
 that we know or experience in this world, seems to 
 have a substantive reality of its own, or to be more 
 than, so to speak, an adjective or passing phase of 
 existence. And, if we ask v/hat is the substance of 
 which such adjectives are predicated, we are obliged 
 to say that it is a thing of which in itself and 
 apart from these adjectives, we can say nothing. 
 
 " Suppose an artificer who has given all sorts of 
 shapes to a piece of gold, to be incessantly remoulding 
 it, substituting one shape for another ; and suppose 
 somebody to be pointing to one of them, and to ask 
 
 ^ Symposium, 207 d.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 233 
 
 what it is : the safest answer that could be made 
 would be, that it was gold ; but as to the triangles 
 and other shapes the gold had taken, it would be 
 best not to speak of these shapes as if they really 
 existed, seeing that they change even while we are 
 making the assertion. . . . Now the same argument 
 applies to the universal nature that receives all 
 bodies. It must be always regarded as the same, as 
 it never departs from its own nature. For, while 
 receiving all indiscriminately, it never itself assumes 
 a form like any of those things that enter into it. It, 
 indeed, is the original recipient of all impressions, 
 and is moved and transformed by them, and appears 
 different from time to time by reason of them : 
 but the things that go in and out, are but 
 imitations of realities, modelled after their image 
 in a way hard to explain, which we shall discuss 
 hereafter." ^ 
 
 Plato then goes on to say that this receptive nature, 
 being itselt formless though it receives all forms,Js 
 hard to define, but that the admission of its reality 
 is forced upon us by the necessity of providing a 
 substratum in which the change to which all things 
 are subjected may take place ; and that in spite of 
 the fact that its changes are so complete that they 
 seem to leave nothing at all behind which can be 
 regarded as constituting such a substratum. And 
 
 ^ Tim. , 50 A seq.
 
 234 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 he sums up his whole doctrine as to the real, the 
 phenomenal, and its basis or substratum in the 
 following passage which contains in it the germs of 
 much later speculation. " We must agree that there 
 is one kind of being which is always the same, 
 uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything 
 into itself from without, nor itself going out to 
 any other, but invisible and imperceptible by sense, 
 and of which the perception is granted to intelligence 
 alone. And there is another kind of being which 
 bears the same name with this and is similar to it, 
 a created being which is always in motion, coming to 
 be in a certain place and again perishing out of it, 
 and which is apprehended by sense and opinion. 
 And there is a third kind of being, namely, space, 
 which is eternal and indestructible but provides 
 a seat for all the changeful forms of existence, and 
 which is apprehended without the aid of sense by 
 a kind of spurious reason and is hard to believe in. 
 Looking to this tertium quid as in a kind of dream, 
 we say of all existence that it must be somewhere 
 and occupy a space, and that that which has no place 
 either in earth or in heaven, cannot be anything at 
 all. And such is the power of this dream of ours 
 that it makes us unable when we wake to realise 
 the truth, to wit, that an image, or reflexion — seeing 
 that by its essential nature and function, it has no 
 basis in itself but is the Hitting shadow of something
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 235 
 
 else — must have something else than itself, in which 
 it is and by means of which it lays hold upon 
 existence : otherwise it will be reduced to nothing 
 at all. On the other hand, in order to vindicate 
 the reality of the real we must call in the aid of 
 the following accurate rule of reason, namely, that 
 if there be anything which has two different con- 
 stituents, it is impossible that one of these consti- 
 tuents should inhere in the other in such a way 
 that they shall form a self -identical unity in spite 
 of their difference." ^ 
 
 The train of thought here is a little difficult to 
 follow. In the first place, Plato maintains that 
 that which changes, as such, cannot be absolutely 
 real, cannot have that permanent reality which 
 science seeks to grasp. And as this change extends 
 to all the qualities which we recognise in the phe- 
 nomenal object, we are driven, in seeking for 
 permanent reality, to look beneath the qualities for 
 something which is equally receptive of them all. 
 This common basis is then taken as the quasi-sub- 
 stance of things sensible, while yet, as absolutely 
 indeterminate, it is not a proper substance at all. 
 To Plato a true substance must be a perfectly 
 definite and determined object of knowledge, and, in 
 
 ^ Tim., 52 A seq. Plato means that the phenomenal, as a com- 
 bination of an image with that which is its substratum, has not 
 unity with itself, and therefore cannot be regarded as a substantial 
 reality.
 
 236 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 this point of view, the qualitative states through 
 which the substratum passes are more like substances 
 than the supposed substratum itself ; yet they cannot 
 be taken as substances, because they change and pass 
 away. Such, then, is the strange puzzle of pheno- 
 menal existence. "We know it under distinct pre- 
 dicates which are definable, but which in it are 
 continually changing; and on the other hand, the 
 substance, to which we seem obliged to refer these 
 predicates, turns out to have no intelligible character. 
 It is something which we are driven to assert as real 
 by what Plato calls a *' spurious and illegitimate 
 reasoning," that is, by the argument that, as every par- 
 ticular kind of existence has a material out of which 
 it is formed, so all the forms of existence, as they 
 change into each other, must have a substratum in 
 which the change takes place. Of this substratum, 
 however, we are able to give no account, except that 
 it is the seat of everything else — that to which we 
 refer when we say that everything must be some- 
 where : in other words, it seems to be one with the 
 condition of being in space, to which all sensible 
 existence is subjected. Yet we are not able to con- 
 ceive empty space as a substance, in which qualities 
 inhere and changes take place. This riddle of phe- 
 nomenal existence, however, is partially explained 
 when we recognise that phenomenal existence is 
 essentially an image or reflexion of something else
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 237 
 
 than itself, and that, therefore, we are obliged to think 
 of it as a reflexion in something else than itself. 
 Thus the image in one way looks to the ideal reality 
 as its substance, and in another way to that in 
 which it has, so to speak, its local habitation. It 
 is characteristic of the phenomenal that it can be 
 presented to us only through this curious combina- 
 tion of metaphor and analogical inference, but no 
 such ambiguous nature could possibly belong to that 
 which is real in the full sense of the word. 
 
 But we cannot leave the matter at this point. 
 If Plato be right in saying that we fall into an 
 illegitimate way of thinking when we attribute in- 
 dependent substance to the phenomenal, he cannot 
 be right in saying that such a way of thinking is 
 necessary. He is, in fact, attempting to find a 
 way between the two horns of a dilemma. He is 
 trying to conceive the ideal as manifesting itself in 
 the phenomenal, and yet at the same time, as having 
 an absolute reality which is complete in itself with- 
 out any manifestation. Conversely, he would like to 
 treat the phenomenal as if it were nothing at all, 
 or at least a ' mere appearance ' which adds nothing 
 to the ideal reality. Yet he cannot deny that even an 
 appearance or image has a kind of reality of its own, 
 and that it needs to be accounted for. Hence, when 
 he abandoned the simple method of Parmenides, who 
 denied that phenomena have any reality at all, he
 
 238 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 was obliged to treat them as an illegitimate kind of 
 substances — which yet are no true substances, be- 
 cause they do not belong to the ideal or intelligible 
 world. The only possible escape from this logical 
 impasse, would have been to set aside altogether the 
 abstract opposition of the ideal world and the world in 
 space and time, and to substitute for it the conception 
 that they are correlative factors in the one real world. 
 If Plato had adopted this course, he would have 
 done justice equally to the distinction and to the 
 unity of these factors ; and he would have avoided 
 the opposite dangers of an abstract monism and of 
 an irreconcilable dualism. He would have conceived 
 the intelligible reality, or the divine intelligence 
 which is its central principle, not as resting in 
 itself, but as essentially self -revealing ; and he would 
 have treated the world in space and time as its 
 necessary manifestation. Are there any traces of 
 such a view in Plato ? 
 
 Before answering this question, let me first refer to 
 the fact that Plato here identifies the substratum of 
 phenomena with that which attaches spatial condi- 
 tions to them, so that every one of them must be 
 somewhere. We must remember, however, that this, 
 whatever it is, has already been represented by Plato 
 as also attaching temporal conditions to them ; so that 
 every one of them must be in a ' now,' which is only a 
 state of transition from what it was to what it will
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 239 
 
 be.^ Plato's thought, then, seems to be that the world 
 in space and time is a sort of disrupted and distorted 
 image of the intelligible world, in which the organic 
 unity and eternal self- consistency of the ideal loses 
 itself in dissonance and change. For, as reflected into 
 space, the pure unity of ideas with each other through 
 all their differences, is exchanged for the combination 
 of parts which are external to each other and without 
 unity in themselves ; and, as reflected into time, the 
 ideal movement of the intelligence, which remains one 
 with itself in all its activity because it grasps its 
 whole system in every idea, is turned into the 
 vicissitude of an external sequence in which one thing 
 is continually passing away to make room for another. 
 With this Plato combines the further conception, 
 that that which is essentially self-external, as in 
 space, and essentially in flux, as in time, must be 
 
 ^ It would involve a long discussion to explain all that Plato says 
 on this subject. We may agree with Baiimker [Problem der Materie 
 in der Griech. Phil., p. 184 seq.) that Plato is led by Pythagorean 
 influence to identify matter with space, and that, consequently, he 
 gives a purely mathematical explanation of the four elements as 
 figures formed by the combination of planes. But it is to be noted 
 that Plato immediately proceeds to speak of it as the 'nurse of 
 genesis,' and to trace the continual change of sensible things to the 
 inequality of the determination of different parts of space by differ- 
 ent figures, which are, therefore, continually conflicting and passing 
 into each other. They are, as it were, shapes which appear for a 
 moment and vanish to make room for others. The idea of exter- 
 nality is thus immediately connected in Plato's mind with the ideas 
 of conflict and of the consequent flux of becoming. And both seem 
 to imply something analogous to the AristQteliap vX-q.
 
 240 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 externally determined in all its changes. Hence the 
 phenomenal is contrasted with the intelligible world, 
 or, what is the same thing, with the intelligence, as 
 that which is moved by another with that which is 
 moved by itself ; or, in other words, as that which 
 is under the sway of necessity with that which is 
 self-determined or free.^ But though primarily and 
 in itself the phenomenal world is the sphere of neces- 
 sity, even in it Plato holds that actually necessity 
 is subjected to a higher principle, which, however, 
 never completely does away with it. " All these 
 things, constituted as they are by the necessity of 
 nature, the Creator of what is best in the world of 
 becoming took to himself at the time when he was 
 producing the self-sufficing and most perfect God ; ^ 
 and while he used the necessary causes as his 
 ministers in the accomplishment of his work, it was 
 by his own art that he realised the good in all the 
 creation. Wherefore we must distinguish two kinds 
 of causes, the necessary and the divine ; and, so far 
 as our nature admits, we must make the divine in 
 
 ^ It is to be observed that Plato views that which is moved by 
 another as entirely passive, and that he has no idea of any reaction 
 involved in the transmission of motion. The abstract contrast of that 
 which is self-moved with that which is moved by another, i.e. pure 
 activity with pure passivity, is what makes the union of mind and 
 body so accidental and external with Plato. 
 
 2 Tim. , 68 E seq. The universe as an organic whole, as we shall 
 see in the sequel, is conceived by Plato as a * second God,' who is as 
 like as possible to the tirst.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 241 
 
 all cases our end and aim ; but we must seek the 
 necessary causes for the sake of the divine, consider- 
 ing that, without them and isolated from them, it 
 is impossible for us to know or attain or in any 
 way share in those highest things which are the 
 objects we really desire." 
 
 Eeason, in short, realises its designs in the world 
 only so far as necessity will permit ; it rules, in Plato's 
 metaphor, by * persuading necessity ' ; and necessity 
 can never be completely persuaded. Hence, in our 
 enquiry into the nature of the world, as Plato had 
 already pointed out in the Phaedo, we have to study 
 both the causes of things, i.e. both the ends realised in 
 them, and the conditions sine quibus non, imposed 
 upon their realisation by the material in which they 
 are realised. But we can never bring these two 
 together, or conceive the necessity of nature as 
 anything more than an external and partly recal- 
 citrant means whereby the purposes of reason have 
 to be realised. 
 
 We end, therefore, with a conception of the 
 phenomenal world as the resultant of two kinds of 
 causation, which cannot be brought to a unity; for 
 we cannot in any way bridge over the gulf between 
 the actus purus of reason and the mere passivity of 
 corporeal existence, which is supposed to be able to 
 receive and transmit motion or action, but not to 
 originate it. The only way, therefore, in which the 
 
 VOL. 1. Q
 
 242 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 two can be united is by the external subjection of the 
 one to the other ; and this subjection, just because it 
 is external, can never be complete ; for, where the 
 means are not inherently related to the end, the end 
 can never be perfectly achieved. It does not occur 
 to Plato to ask whether either of the abstractions 
 between which he has divided the world — the 
 abstraction of pure activity or the abstraction of 
 pure passivity — is intelligible by itself, or can be 
 regarded as representing any reality. On the con- 
 trary, he treats the former as that which alone is 
 absolutely real and intelligible ; and his only problem 
 is to explain how the latter can exist, or be thought 
 at all. This problem he seeks to solve by the 
 externality or spatial character of all corporeal 
 existences ; for, as realised in space, the ideal forms are 
 torn asunder from each other and even from them- 
 selves, and their difference shows itself as disharmony 
 and conflict. And, finally, when he has to meet 
 the difficulty of conceiving extension or space as a 
 substance, he finds his escape in the conception that 
 the phenomenal world is a world of images which, as 
 such, cannot be made intelligible and cannot therefore 
 be regarded as absolutely real, yet which cannot be 
 denied all reality. This baffling ambiguity of nature 
 withdraws it from the cognisance of science, and 
 assigns it to the sphere of opinion. On the other 
 hand, it is the nature of the ideal reality of things
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 243 
 
 to be transparently one with itself in all its differ- 
 ence ; as it is the nature of the pure intelligence to 
 comprehend such reality, apart from all the confusions 
 of the appearance. We are left, therefore, with a 
 dualism which is at once subjective and objective ; 
 nor is it anywhere admitted that there is a principle 
 which can dissolve the contradiction and reduce the 
 two worlds to one. 
 
 Yet, while we say this, we must at the same 
 time notice that Plato does supply us with a sug- 
 gestion which might have removed this difficulty, if 
 only he had fully developed its consequences. For, 
 after all, Plato does not accept the doctrine that 
 the relation of the real to the phenomenal is 
 an altogether external or accidental relation. On 
 the contrary, he not only refers the phenomenal to 
 the ideal, as its cause, but he finds in the latter a 
 kind of necessity for the former. 
 
 In the first place, let us look at what he says of 
 the reason for the existence of the world. " Let me 
 tell you why nature and this universe of things was 
 framed by him who framed it. God is good ; and in 
 a perfectly good being no envy or jealousy could ever 
 exist in any case or at any time. Being thus far 
 removed from any such feeling, he desired that all 
 things should be as like himself as it was possible 
 for them to be. This is the sovereign cause of the 
 existence of the world of change, which we shall do
 
 244 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 well to believe on the testimony of wise men of 
 old. God desired that everything should be good 
 and nothing evil, so far as this was attainable. 
 Wherefore, finding the visible world not in a state 
 of rest but moving in an irregular and disorderly 
 fashion, out of disorder he brought order, thinking 
 that in every way this was better than the other. 
 Now it is impossible that the best of beings should 
 ever produce any but the most beautiful of works. 
 The Creator, therefore, took thought and discerned 
 that out of the things that are by nature visible, 
 no work, destitute of reason, could be made, which 
 would be so fair as one that possessed reason, set- 
 ting whole against whole. He saw also that reason 
 could not dwell in anything that is devoid of soul. 
 And because this was his thought, in framing the 
 world he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, 
 that he might be the maker of the fairest and 
 best of works. Hence, taking the account of things 
 that has most likelihood, we ought to affirm that 
 the universe is a living creature endowed with soul 
 and intelligence by the providence of God." ^ 
 
 Even making some allowance for the mythic form 
 of this statement, we can see that Plato finds in 
 the goodness of God the reason for the creation of 
 the world. The ideal reality, which in its ultimate 
 conception is one with the divine intelligence, is 
 1 Tim., 29 E seq.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 245 
 
 not conceived as indifferent to all that is outside of 
 it, but as by the necessity of its nature going beyond 
 itself, and manifesting itself in the universe. Yet, 
 on the other hand, this necessity is conceived as a 
 conditional one, implying the previous existence of 
 something else external to the divine being, some- 
 thing which has no order in itself, and therefore 
 must receive order, must be turned from chaos to 
 cosmos, by the operation of the divine intelligence. 
 And, just because of this, the universe, though 
 the * best of all possible worlds,' is not conceived 
 as in itself essentially good. It is good so far as 
 the nature of the case admits, or so far as the 
 material to be used is capable of goodness. But 
 this material is in itself formless, and even when 
 it is brought under form, it never is completely 
 subjected thereto. It, therefore, brings division, con- 
 flict and change into the life of the created universe ; 
 or, putting it in another way, it makes that universe 
 phenomenal and unreal, or real only with the partial 
 reality of an image, which has no substance in 
 itself, but only in that which produces it. Thus, 
 just because the divine intelligence is not conceived 
 as essentially self-manifesting but as manifesting 
 itself only in relation to something given from 
 without, Plato's pregnant conception of the goodness 
 of God loses its meaning, and the phenomenal and 
 the real are again divorced from each other.
 
 246 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 We must, however, call attention to a second 
 attempt of Plato to bridge the gulf between the 
 eternal intelligence and the transitory world of 
 sense, namely, by means of the idea of the soul as 
 an intermediate or mediating existence. It is, in- 
 deed, quite in the manner of Plato to introduce a 
 middle term between extremes which he is unable 
 directly to unite. Thus the soul itself is described 
 as compounded of the elements of ' the same ' and 
 ' the other,' i.e. of the self-identical unity of the 
 idea and the unmediated difference of space, w'hich 
 are held together by an ova-la, or essential being 
 that contains both these elements.^ But such an 
 expedient only raises the same difficulty in a new 
 form. For, if the extremes be absolutely opposed 
 to each other, the middle term that connects them 
 will itself require another middle term to unite its 
 discordant elements. Now, in the present case, the 
 intelligence and the bodily nature are conceived as 
 essentially disparate, and the soul, which partakes 
 of both, cannot be regarded as transcending or 
 reconciling their difference. Hence neither for the 
 connexion of the divine intelligence with the world, 
 nor for the connexion of the intelligence of man 
 with his body, can we find a mediating principle 
 in the soul. And in the soul itself the pure 
 principle of thought breaks away from the powers 
 ^ Timaeus, 35 a.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 247 
 
 of sensation and appetite which are connected with 
 the bodily existence ; nor is it possible to discover 
 any link of connexion between them, either in the 
 discursive reason, or in those higher desires which 
 are summed up by Plato under the name of Ov/mog. 
 
 And this leads to a further result in relation to the 
 question of immortality. For that which is essen- 
 tially connected with the body must share its fate. 
 But if none of the powers of the soul are to survive 
 the body, in what sense can it be said that man as 
 an individual has any permanent being which is not 
 touched by death ? That which abides can only be 
 a pure universal intelligence, without memory or 
 individual consciousness, which can hardly be dis- 
 tinguished from the divine intelligence. Indeed, 
 even the idea of God as an individual Being seems 
 to disappear when he is conceived as a purely con- 
 templative intelligence, who is complete in himself, 
 apart from any manifestation in the world. These 
 results of his dualistic view were not, indeed, realised 
 by Plato, but they begin to show themselves in the 
 metaphysic of Aristotle, Meanwhile they were held 
 in check by other tendencies of Plato, and especially, 
 as I have already indicated, by his conception of 
 the goodness of God, as leading to the communica- 
 tion of good to all his creatures. 
 
 Closely connected with the idea of the mediation 
 of the soul, is another doctrine of which we find
 
 248 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 considerable traces in the Philehus and the Timaeus, 
 but which we know mainly through the Aristotelian 
 criticism of it. Aristotle tells us that Plato in 
 his later years laid great emphasis upon the con- 
 ceptions of number and measure, and, indeed, that 
 he represented the quantitative determinations of 
 things with which mathematical science has to deal 
 as a special kind of existences, which lie midway 
 between the ideal and the sensible, differing from 
 the latter by their generality, and from the former 
 by their multiplicity ; for we can have many identical 
 repetitions of the same numbers or figures, but there 
 cannot be two identical ideas. We may suspect 
 that in the statement of this theory Aristotle, with 
 his usual tendency to insist on differences, has fixed 
 and hardened the distinctions of Plato, and thereby 
 given them a somewhat strange and unnatural ap- 
 pearance : but what we actually find in the Platonic 
 dialogues enables us partially to understand what is 
 meant. In most of his works, indeed, Plato does not 
 hesitate to speak of ideas of number and quantity; 
 but in the later dialogues we can trace a growing 
 tendency to regard such conceptions, not as ideas, but 
 as conditions of the manifestation of the ideas in 
 the sensible or phenomenal world. Already in the 
 Bepyhlic the mathematical sciences are referred to 
 the discursive reason, as distinguished from dialectic 
 which is referred to the pure or intuitive intelligence ;
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 249 
 
 though the main difference between them which is 
 distinctly stated is that these sciences do not go back 
 to first principles, but are based upon hypotheses 
 which have only a relative generality. 
 
 In the Philebus, however, the divine cause of all 
 things, the ideal principle of all reality, is clearly 
 distinguished from what is called * the limit ' {to 
 irepaq) ; that is, from the measure or quantitative 
 determination, to which in the phenomenal world 
 ' the unlimited ' element {to aireipov) is subjected, in 
 order to bring within bounds the endless possibility 
 of increase and diminution which is characteristic 
 of that element. The pure unity of the ideal or 
 intelligible reality, in which the whole is present, 
 in every part — or, what is the same thing in 
 another aspect, the absolute self -identity of the 
 divine intelligence, which is one with itself in all 
 its activity and therefore combines in one the 
 attributes of rest and motion — this pure unity and 
 identity has to manifest itself in the sensible 
 world as a law which determines the quantita- 
 tive relations of the elements of each particular 
 existence, and the order and extent of its changes. 
 And the same mediating principle of measure 
 can be observed also in the soul of man, in so 
 far as there is an order and harmony of the 
 inner life, which maintains itself in all the endless 
 vicissitudes of states due to its association with the
 
 250 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 body. Thus the good of man consists in the due 
 regulation of all the elements of his nature, or, as 
 Plato expresses it, in the " rule of an immaterial order 
 over a living body " ; and this is clearly distinguished 
 from the absolute Good, which has in it no dis- 
 tinction of parts, and in which, therefore, there is 
 no need for one part to contiol another. Thus the 
 pure organic unity of the ideal translates itself in 
 the sensiljle world into the quantitative proportion 
 of different elements, as determined by laws which 
 maintain themselves, not absolutely but with rela- 
 tive constancy, amid all the difference and change 
 of nature and of the soul of man. This might be 
 otherwise expressed by saying that the good in its 
 manifestation becomes the beautiful ; for beauty is 
 dependent on symmetry and proportion.^ 
 
 The same fundamental conception is repeated in the 
 Timaetcs, where ' the unlimited ' of the Philehus is iden- 
 tified primarily with space and secondarily with time. 
 In the Timaeus, therefore, it is represented that the 
 ideal, as reflected into the dispersion of space and 
 the flux of time, is partly infected by the character- 
 istics of these forms ; but it recovers itself in so 
 far as the externality of spatial existence is brought 
 under the unity of definite geometrical figures, and 
 its changes are determined to a definite order of 
 succession. Further, this succession is conceived as 
 1 Philehus, 64 e.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 251 
 
 constantly repeating itself, so that, through a long 
 cycle of movement, everything is brought back again 
 and again to the same point. We are thus able to 
 understand how it was that the mathematical rela- 
 tions became for Plato the expression of the ideal 
 in the sensible, and in what sense Aristotle could 
 justly attribute to him the doctrine that they form 
 a kind of 'intermediates' (ra iJ^era^v) between the 
 two. But it is manifest that this doctrine fails in 
 the same way as the doctrine of the mediation 
 of the soul ; for time and space are simply pre- 
 supposed or assumed as existing external to the 
 reality and the ideal; nor is there anything in its 
 nature, as Plato has described it, which can supply 
 a rationale for its being reflected into space and 
 time, so as to give rise to the phenomenal world. 
 In both cases we see Plato endeavouring to escape 
 from the difficulties of an absolute division by the 
 introduction of a middle term — an expedient which 
 for reasons already given must necessarily fail. For 
 no mediation between two extremes is possible, unless 
 we can find a higher principle which transcends them 
 both and reduces them to different forms or expres- 
 sions of its own unity. 
 
 There is, however, still one other form of expres- 
 sion, by which Plato seeks to escape the difficulties 
 of dualism; and it is one which deserves special 
 attention, because of its influence upon Christian
 
 252 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 theology. The phenomenal world — which, as we have 
 seen, is conceived by Plato as a living being with 
 a soul and a body — is represented in the Timaeus 
 not only as the image or reflexion of the intelligible 
 world, but also as a ' second god.' Thus, though it has 
 only a derived existence, it is regarded as possessing 
 a relative completeness and self-sufficiency, which 
 entitle it to be called divine, in contrast with all 
 other creatures which draw from it their being and 
 well-being. Furthermore, this ' second god ' is called 
 the ' son ' and even the ' only-begotten son ' of the 
 first God. This idea is expressed in the concluding 
 words of the Timaeus : " All our discourse about 
 the nature of the universe hath here an end. Having 
 received all living beings, mortal and immortal, into 
 itself and being therewith replenished, this world 
 has come into existence in the manner explained 
 above, as a living being which is itself visible and 
 embraces all beings that are visible. It is, therefore, 
 an image of its maker, a god manifested to sense, 
 the greatest and best, the most beautiful and per- 
 fect of all creatures, even the one and only-begotten 
 universe." With this idea of the sonship of the 
 phenomenal universe — which is conceived as a living 
 and conscious individual embracing all other creatures 
 in itself — Plato seems almost to cross the border 
 that separates the dualistic philosophy of Greece 
 from the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. But,
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 253 
 
 after all, it remains with him simply a strong 
 metaphor, conveying indeed the idea of the near- 
 ness of the derivative to its original, but still 
 excluding the thought of any unity that really 
 transcends the difference. All we can say is, that 
 the ambiguous nature of the phenomenal world makes 
 Plato at one time exalt it almost to the ideal, and 
 at another time set it in almost absolute opposition 
 thereto; and that here, in his final utterances, we 
 find him dwelling more on the positive than on 
 the negative aspect of the relation.^ 
 
 We seem, then, in the Timaeus, which may be 
 regarded as the last word of Plato's theology, to be 
 brought to a somewhat ambiguous conclusion, a sort 
 of open verdict, which may be interpreted in two 
 opposite ways according as we emphasise one or 
 the other of the aspects of his thought. On the one 
 hand, if we lay stress upon Plato's synthesis of 
 
 ^I have not said anything of the two souls, the good and the 
 evil soul, of which Plato speaks in the Larvs (896 e), as principles to 
 which the origin of things is to be referred. The idea of an evil 
 soul is directly excluded by the Politicua (270 a), and it is difficult 
 to see how Plato's principles could possibly admit of it. We 
 may explain the admission of it by the popular character of the 
 Laws or by the tendency to pessimism which was characteristic 
 of its editor. And we may observe that though the hypothesis 
 of two souls is admitted for the moment, no use is made of the 
 idea of the evil soul in the sequel, in which Plato seems to refer 
 the whole universe to a good principle, and that without suggest- 
 ing the existence of any opposite principle, like the direipov of the 
 Philehus.
 
 254 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 opposites, upon his attempted reconciliation of Par- 
 menides and Heraclitus, upon his conception of mind 
 as a self-moving principle which produces motion 
 in all other things, and lastly, upon his conception 
 of God as a goodness which communicates itself and 
 therefore is the cause of being and w^ell-being to 
 all his creatures, we seem to be brought within sight 
 of an absolute idealism, which transcends all distinc- 
 tions, even the distinction of the material and the 
 spiritual. On the other hand, if we lay stress upon 
 the sharp contrast which he draws between intelli- 
 gence and necessity, between that which is the self- 
 moving and self-determined and that which is moved 
 and determined by another, between the unity through 
 all difference and the permanence through all activity 
 which belong to the real or intelligible w^orld, and 
 the self -externality and endless flux which are 
 characteristic of the phenomenal, we shall find in 
 the Platonic writings a scheme of doctrine which is 
 essentially dualistic, and even, as regards the world 
 of sense, pessimistic. It is only if we keep all 
 the threads together that we can understand the 
 loftiness of his idealism, and the way in which he 
 often seems to reject its consequences. Thus he 
 holds that this is the ' best of all possible worlds,' 
 the image of the invisible, the manifestation of the 
 goodness of God, and even that it is a ' second 
 god ' : yet at the same time he is able to declare,
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 255 
 
 that " evils can never pass away ; for there must needs 
 exist something which stands opposed to the good. 
 They have no seat among the gods, but of necessity 
 they cling to the nature of mortal creatures, and 
 haunt the region in which we dwell." ^ In like 
 manner, Plato's absolute confidence in philosophy 
 as the supreme gift of God to man, does not pre- 
 clude an almost agnostic tone in many places of 
 his writing, as when he declares that " the Father 
 and Maimer of this universe is hard to find out," 
 and that even if we could find him, it would not 
 be possible to communicate what we know to other 
 men. We know God, Plato seems to say, through 
 the world which is his reflexion ; but it is a world 
 of genesis and decay in which the divine can only be 
 imperfectly adumbrated ; and we ourselves, though 
 rational and so partakers of the divine nature, are 
 in another aspect of our being only fragmentary 
 and imperfect existences — parts of the partial world, 
 who can never completely gather into their minds 
 the meaning of the whole. " It is hard to exhibit 
 except by analogies, any of the things that are 
 most important : for each of us seems to know 
 everything as in a dream, and, again, in waking 
 reality to know nothing at all."^ This strange 
 alternation between the consciousness of absolute 
 knowledge as his portion, and the sense that what he 
 1 Thea^H. 176 a. 2 politicm, 277 d.
 
 256 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 knows is only a foretaste of something greater, is, 
 however, not such a paradox as it seems. As the 
 religious man says : " I believe, help thou mine un- 
 belief," so the great idealistic philosopher feels it 
 no contradiction to say : " I know," while yet he 
 can hardly find expressions strong enough to char- 
 acterise his ignorance. He knows, we might say, 
 simply because he can, like Socrates, measure his 
 ignorance. He has an idea of the whole, as an 
 outline which he cannot fill up, though his whole 
 life is a progress in filling it, and the goal he seeks 
 is assured to him from the beginning. As man and 
 as philosopher, Plato is conscious that he is born 
 to be " a spectator of all time and existence," and 
 he never thinks of the highest reality as inacces- 
 sible to the intelligence. It is, as I have shown, an 
 extreme misunderstanding of the words which he 
 uses about the Idea of Good when the Neo-Platonists 
 attribute to him the notion of an absolute unity, 
 in which all distinction is lost, and which therefore 
 cannot be apprehended except in an ecstasy in which 
 thought and consciousness are annihilated. On the 
 contrary, it is his fundamental thought that that 
 which is most real is most knowable, and that which 
 is most knowable is most real.^ It is not, therefore, 
 in the silence and passivity of the spirit, but in its 
 highest and most perfect activity, that it comes 
 
 ^ Hep., 477 A.
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 257 
 
 nearest to the divine ; and it is only because this 
 activity is obstructed and weakened by our mortal 
 nature, that we do not know God fully and as he is. 
 
 There has been much discussion among theologians 
 about the immanency or transcendency of God, but 
 it is not quite easy to determine what is meant by 
 these words. If by the transcendency of God be 
 meant that there is in the principle of the in- 
 telligible world something not intelligible, we cannot 
 speak of it without contradicting ourselves. The 
 assertion of such transcendency is an attempt to 
 reach a highest superlative, an attempt which over- 
 leaps itself, and ends by saying nothing at all. God 
 is a word that has no significance, unless by it we 
 mean to express the idea of a Being who is the 
 principle of unity presupposed in all the differences 
 of things, and in all our divided consciousness of them. 
 In this sense, then, we must think of God as essentially 
 immanent in the world and accessible to our minds. 
 But from another point of view, the principle of unity 
 in the world must necessarily transcend the whole of 
 which it is the principle ; and every attempt to 
 explicate this principle into a system of the universe, 
 made by those who are themselves parts of that 
 system, must be in many ways inadequate. The 
 microcosm can apprehend, but cannot fully comprehend, 
 the macrocosm. In trying to realise the unity of the 
 whole we seem only to advance from part to part, 
 
 VOL. 1. R
 
 258 THE FINAL RESULTS OF 
 
 from finite to finite, so that " the margin fades for 
 ever and for ever as we move." The articulation 
 of knowledge always lacks something which the self- 
 involved religious sentiment seems to possess ; though 
 on the other hand, that sentiment, if it be not 
 continually explicating itself, soon becomes abstract 
 and empty. For a unity that does not go out into 
 diversity, and cannot therefore return upon itself from 
 it, is no real unity. Thus religion, in one aspect of 
 it, is apt to become opposed to science and also to 
 practical morality, as a contemplative consciousness 
 that is beyond all the discourse of reason and all 
 the deliberative action of the practical understanding. 
 And even philosophy seems to be an enemy to religion, 
 because, in spite of its striving after unity, it is 
 obliged in the first instance to proceed by analysis, 
 to work out every difference to its utmost conse- 
 quences, and only to return to unity of principle 
 through the reconciliation of opposites. Further, as 
 this return is always being made, but never is 
 made finally, conclusively and once for all ; so there 
 always seems to be a gap between the effort to 
 recognise and realise God in the world, and the 
 religious intuition of piety which takes that recognition 
 and realisation as complete. And that gap may be 
 supposed to imply, on the one side, the transcendency 
 of God, and, on the other, the failure of the intelligible 
 universe to realise, and of our intelligence to under-
 
 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 259 
 
 stand Him. Thus an imperfect consideration of the 
 relation of different aspects of the truth may seem to 
 drive us to the alternatives of mysticism or dualism. 
 It is the great achievement of Plato that he makes 
 us clearly see both horns of the dilemma, as it 
 is his failure that he is not able to discover any 
 quite satisfactory way of escape from it. Hence 
 he could not attain to that end after which he 
 was constantly striving, a complete reconciliation 
 of the opposite lines of thought which meet in his 
 philosophy. I think, however, that it will be evident 
 even from the sketch of his philosophical theology 
 I have given, that he did more than anyone before 
 or since to open up all the questions with which 
 the philosophy of religion has to deal.
 
 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM PLATO TO ARISTOTLE. 
 
 The saying that " every one is born a Platonist or an 
 Aristotelian " can be taken as true, if at all, only in a 
 very general sense. It can only mean that men are 
 roughly divided into two classes, those whose prevail- 
 ing tendency is toward synthesis and those whose 
 prevailing tendency is toward analysis; those who seek 
 to discover unity among things that present them- 
 selves as diverse and unconnected, and those who 
 seek rather to detect differences in things that present 
 themselves as similar or even identical. But it is 
 obvious that these two characteristics can never be 
 entirely isolated from each other. Distinction implies 
 relation, and relation distinction ; and he who sees 
 clearly the one cannot be altogether blind to the 
 other. Least of all can we admit such blindness in 
 the case of two great systematic writers, like Plato 
 and Aristotle, who may be admitted to have a 
 certain bias of mind, but who cannot be conceived
 
 FROM PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 261 
 
 as one-sided dogmatists or men of one idea. Aris- 
 totle's philosophy, indeed, is not the contradictory, 
 but rather the opposite counterpart, of that of 
 Plato; and though the former may be disposed to 
 dwell with greater emphasis on the points that 
 separate him from his master than on those which 
 they hold in common, yet it may safely be asserted 
 that there are no two philosophers who are so closely 
 akin in the general scheme of their thought. Thus — 
 to name only the points that are of greatest import- 
 ance — they are in thorough agreement in maintaining 
 an idealistic or spiritualistic view of the ultimate 
 principle of thought and reality ; and they agree also 
 in holding that, in the world of our immediate ex- 
 perience, this principle realises itself under conditions 
 which are not in harmony with it, and which in 
 some degree disguise and obstruct the manifestation 
 of its true nature. But, while they thus coincide 
 in the ultimate results of their philosophy, they 
 start from opposite points of view, and their general 
 agreement is apt to be hidden from us by continual 
 collisions on almost every secondary question. 
 
 We may, then, describe Aristotle's general relation 
 to Plato in the following way : He is the most 
 faithful of Plato's disciples, a disciple who developed 
 his master's doctrine to a more distinct and defmite 
 result, and who gave it a more systematic form ; and 
 he is, at the same time, the severest of Plato's
 
 262 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 critics, one who saw into all the weak places of his 
 teaching, and pressed home every objection against it 
 with unsparing logic. Sometimes he is carried so far 
 in his polemic that he becomes as one-sided as the 
 philosopher he attacks, only in an opposite direction. 
 At other times the antagonism between them is rather 
 one of words than of essential meaning, and w^e seem 
 to find the true interpretation of Plato rather in 
 Aristotle's own view than in that which he attributes 
 to his master. And not seldom he lays himself open 
 to the same objections which he urges against Plato. 
 
 The precise nature of this agreement and difference 
 may be made clearer by a few words of explanation. 
 As I have shown in previous lectures, the general 
 tendency of Plato is to generalise and to unify, to refer 
 each sphere of phenomenal existence to some idea 
 which he regards as the source of all its reality, and 
 the principle through which alone it can be understood; 
 and, ultimately, to carry back all these ideas to the 
 Good or the divine reason, as the principle of all being 
 and of all thought. His fundamental doctrine is that 
 ' the universal is the real ' ; and in his earlier dialogues 
 he emphasises this aspect of things so strongly as to 
 give colour to the idea that he seeks truth not in, but 
 beyond, the many. Hence the Platonic idea has been 
 supposed to be the abstract universal, i.e. a common 
 element found in the particulars as these are given in 
 ordinary experience, and not a principle which explains
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 263 
 
 these particulars, and in doing so transforms our first 
 conception of them. It has, however, been pointed 
 out in the preceding lectures that there is much 
 even in the earlier, and still more in the later 
 dialogues of Plato, to prove that he is no mystic 
 who loses the many in the one, and that, if he 
 regards his ideal principles as transcending the 
 particular phenomena of experience, yet this means — 
 mainly and primarily — that he sets aside all that is 
 irrelevant and accidental in the objects or aspects of 
 objects investigated, in order that he may confine his 
 view to their characteristic and inseparable properties. 
 It has also been pointed out that philosophy, as Plato 
 finally describes it, is as much concerned to resolve the 
 unity of the idea into the multiplicity of its different 
 elements or specific manifestations, as to bring back all 
 its differences to unity. His ultimate aim, therefore 
 is not simply to attain to unity, still less to do so by 
 the omission of difference, but to produce a com- 
 prehensive system of thought, in which all the 
 elements are clearly distinguished, yet all are organi- 
 cally connected with each other as members of one 
 whole. 
 
 On the other hand, it is obvious that Aristotle's 
 primary tendency is to analyse and distinguish, to 
 resolve his data into their separate elements, and to fix 
 each element by clear definition in its opposition to all 
 the others ; and, generally, to account for the whole,
 
 264 The transition from 
 
 as far as possible, by the parts. He first drew sharp 
 lines of division between the different sciences, insist- 
 ing that each subject-matter should be dealt with 
 according to its own principle and method. For him, 
 ' the individual is the real,' and general ideas have 
 value only as the explanation of particulars. He 
 seeks the one not beyond, but in the many, not by 
 abstracting from experience, but by the analysis of it. 
 So far, therefore, his language seems to be in direct 
 contradiction to that of Plato, and, indeed, he means us 
 to understand that it is so. But when we look closer, 
 we find that he too is obliged to find room for the 
 Platonic point of view, and to confess that the one is 
 not only in but also beyond the many ; ^ in other 
 words, that there are irrelevances and inconsistencies in 
 the immediate judgments of experience, from which we 
 must abstract in order to reach the real nature of its 
 objects ; and that science, therefore, cannot explain 
 the many changing particulars without rejecting 
 our first conceptions of them. For science, as 
 Aristotle conceives it, has to become demonstrative ; 
 it has to deduce the properties of things from their 
 essential definitions ; and this implies that there is 
 much that is irrelevant and accidental in particular 
 substances, as immediately presented in experience, 
 which must be set aside as incapable of being 
 explained by the specific principles realised in them. 
 
 ^Po6t. An., II, 19.
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 265 
 
 Finally, if Aristotle seeks to explain things by 
 resolving them into their elements, yet he knows that 
 any real whole is more than the sum of its parts. 
 And, though he seems at first to take the separate 
 sciences and their objects as independent of each other, 
 yet in the end he represents the universe as a 
 teleological whole which finds its principle in the pure 
 nature of mind or self -consciousness, a principle which 
 is realising itself in every rational being and is 
 eternally realised in God. 
 
 The truth is that both the principles, expressed 
 in the propositions, * the universal is the real ' and 
 ' the individual is the real,' are ambiguous. Each of 
 them may be taken in a higher and in a lower sense ; 
 and while, in the lower sense, they are diametrically 
 opposed to each other, in the higher sense they are 
 only distinguished as complementary aspects of the 
 same truth. That ' the universal is the real ' may, 
 as we have seen, be taken to mean that any common 
 quality, in the immediate conception of it, is an in- 
 dependent reality, centred in itself and without relation 
 to any other qualities or to any subject in which 
 they inhere ; and this is what is commonly under- 
 stood by the term realism. Or, on the other hand, 
 it may mean that anything that deserves to be called 
 a substance, or independent reality, must have in it a 
 principle of unity, which may at first be hidden from 
 us, but which, when we discover it, can be seen
 
 266 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 to manifest itself in all the different aspects it 
 presents to us. Thus each kind of existence has 
 its specific form which makes it a relatively inde- 
 pendent whole, and, again, all these specific forms 
 are finally subordinated to one general form, which 
 gives unity and individuality to the universe. In like 
 manner, the principle that ' the individual is the 
 real,' taken in its lowest sense, will mean that the 
 real lies in the particular thing as the immediate 
 object of sense perception, of which we can say only 
 that it is imique, or that it is a ' this,' which here 
 and now we see and handle, and to which universals 
 must be attached as qualifying predicates. But, on 
 the other hand, it may mean that reality is to be 
 found only in that which has organic or, at least, 
 systematic completeness, in that which is one with 
 itself through all the difference of the elements that 
 enter into its constitution, and which remains one with 
 itself through all the phases of its history. In other 
 words, it may mean that that alone is substantially 
 real which has a self, or something analogous to a 
 self, and which, therefore, in all its various modifi- 
 cations may be said to be at least relatively self- 
 determined. 
 
 Now, in the former of these two senses individuality 
 and universality are direct opposites of each other, 
 and to say that the real is both individual and uni- 
 versal, both a * this ' and an abstract quality, would
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 267 
 
 be absurd — though dialectically it might be shown 
 that abstract universality and abstract individuality 
 easily pass into each other. But, in the latter sense, 
 individuality and universality are different aspects of 
 the same thing ; for a universal only means a general 
 principle, viewed as expressing itself in different forms 
 or phases, each of which implies all the others and the 
 whole ; and an individual is just such a whole or 
 totality, viewed as determined in all its forms or 
 phases by one principle. To put it otherwise, we 
 know any thing or being, only when we discern all 
 the elements that are necessary to it in their dis- 
 tinction and in their relation ; and we can recognise 
 it as a real whole or individual substance, only in so 
 far as these distinctions and relations are determined 
 by one idea or principle. In short, it is just the 
 determination of all its properties by one universal 
 principle that makes us separate it from other things 
 and beings as a true individual; and on the other hand, 
 if, and so far as, its character be determined by external 
 or accidental relations to other things, it is imperfectly 
 individualised. This, of course, implies that ultimately 
 there is no existence which is universal and none 
 which is individual in the highest sense of these words, 
 except the universe as a whole, or the divine Being 
 who is its principle. But it also implies that no 
 existence can have individuality even in a relative 
 sense, except in so far as it has universality, that is,
 
 '268 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 in so far as all its aspects are determined by one idea ; 
 and that no existence can have universality, unless it 
 is self-determined and individual.^ 
 
 Now, just in so far as the doctrines of Plato and 
 Aristotle can be taken in this latter sense, there is 
 no real opposition between them ; while, if they can 
 only be taken in the former sense, they must be 
 regarded as wholly irreconcileable. The truth may 
 perhaps best be expressed by saying that, to one who 
 takes their first words in their most obvious sense, 
 Plato and Aristotle seem respectively to begin with 
 the abstract universal and the abstract individual, but 
 that in their most developed doctrine they substitute 
 for these what we may call the concrete universal and 
 the concrete individual. This is partly hidden from 
 us by the fact that Aristotle seems often to take 
 Plato in his lowest sense, as many later writers have 
 taken Aristotle in his lowest sense. In his criticisms 
 upon the ideal theory Aristotle very distinctly points 
 out the error of taking the abstract universal as com- 
 plete in itself, and, therefore, as an independent or 
 individual substance. He shows with convincing logic 
 that the separate sciences of arithmetic, geometry, etc., 
 in dealing with number, extension, quantity, motion, and 
 the like, are concerned with aspects of things which 
 
 1 Aristotle's chief argument against the ideal theory is just that 
 the ideas were at once universal and individual. Cf. e.g. Met., 
 1086, 10.
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 269 
 
 may be isolated by abstraction, but which have no 
 independent reality apart from each other, or from the 
 concrete existence in which they are elements.^ In 
 this he undoubtedly makes a valid criticism upon 
 Plato, in so far as the latter, especially in his earher 
 works, is apt to speak of particular ideas or 
 universals, as if each of them were complete in itself 
 apart from the rest, and even to take the special 
 sciences built upon such principles as if they dealt 
 with quite independent realities or provinces of 
 reality. But Aristotle himself falls into the same 
 error, though in a less obvious way, when he treats 
 inorganic elements and organic beings — ^plants, 
 animals and men — as, each and all of them, in- 
 dividual substances in the same sense, without any 
 admission of the partial character of their individuality, 
 or of the fact that there are what Mr. Bradley calls 
 " degrees of reality " among them. Each of them may 
 be characterised as ' this particular thing ' ; and, 
 therefore, as Aristotle seems to think, each of them 
 may be taken as an independent substance which is 
 only accidentally related to other substances. It 
 is true that he treats each of these substances as 
 having a specific principle realised in it, but he 
 draws a broad line of separation between the pro- 
 perties which belong to it in virtue of this specific 
 principle, and the accidents which come to it from 
 
 J See especially Met., XIII, 3.
 
 270 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 the peculiar character of its matter or from its 
 external relations to other things. Nor does he 
 seem to admit that there is any point of view from 
 which these accidents shall be conceived as them- 
 selves the manifestation of a higher necessity. In 
 other words, he does not realise that what, in view of 
 the principle realised in a particular substance, might 
 be regarded as accidental, may be necessary from the 
 point of view of some larger whole, in which it is 
 contained. Yet such isolation of the individual 
 involves exactly the same error as the Platonic 
 isolation of the universal. 
 
 And this leads me to point out what may be 
 regarded as the common source of the errors of the 
 Platonic and the Aristotelian philosophies. This is 
 that both Plato and Aristotle start with presupposi- 
 tions, which they are unable either to explain or 
 to explain away : Plato, with the presupposition 
 of a given multiplicity which he seeks to re- 
 duce to unity ; Aristotle, with the presupposition of 
 a confused unity or continuity ^ which he is never 
 able distinctly to resolve into its elements or to 
 show to be individually determined in all its parts. 
 The result is that, in both cases, that which is re- 
 garded as the ideal of knowledge, and, therefore, as 
 the supreme reality, cannot be recognised as the 
 truth or reality of the world of our immediate 
 
 ^Phys., 184a, 21.
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 271 
 
 experience. In that world, according to Plato, we 
 fail to find the pure manifestation of the universal 
 truth, which yet everything seems to suggest ; and 
 when, in our practical endeavours, we seek to realise 
 that universal Good, which is ultimately the object 
 of all our desires, what we attain must always fall 
 short of what we think. In like manner, according 
 to Aristotle, what we require for our intellectual 
 satisfaction is demonstrative system ; it is to resolve 
 the world into a multitude of individual substances, 
 each of which is determined in all its properties by 
 one principle ; but what we find is a multitude of 
 imperfect specimens of each specific kind, none of 
 which is free from accidental modifications. And, 
 again, in the sphere of practical reason we are met 
 by the same contradiction of the ideal and the actual ; 
 for, while it is the chief end of man to realise 
 himself as a rational being, to turn his life into a 
 perfectly ordered whole in which every activity plays 
 its proper part, he has to work out this ideal in 
 the contingent matter of an individual human exist- 
 ence, and under the influence of passions which can 
 never be entirely subjected to reason. Yet on the 
 other hand, that which in this world appears as the 
 ideal which man must seek to find or to produce 
 is, for both Plato and Aristotle, the supreme reality. 
 For Plato, the Idea of Good is the unity of being 
 and knowing, it is the idea which sums up all other
 
 272 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 ideas in itself, or it is the intelligence in which 
 all other intelligences are embraced : but, as such, 
 it is essentially separated from the finite world, and 
 from the psychical as well as the corporeal existence 
 of men. In like manner, the divine or absolute 
 Being is for Aristotle a pure self-determined, self- 
 contemplating reason, which can be grasped only by 
 the pure intelligence of man, and can hardly be 
 distinguished therefrom. As such, God is the first 
 mover and the final end of the universe ; yet, as we 
 shall see, Aristotle has great difficulty in connecting 
 him with the finite at all, and only succeeds in 
 doing so by a metaphysical tour de foixe. And, as 
 his conception of matter, as the necessary basis of 
 existence in this world of finitude and change, is 
 more positive than Plato's, the ultimate result of 
 his system is even more decidedly dualistic than that 
 of his master. 
 
 This last point, however, is a subject of much 
 controversy, and in order to deal with it fairly, it 
 will be necessary to consider Aristotle's main lines 
 of thought in two opposite aspects. I shall en- 
 deavour, therefore, to show that Aristotle goes much 
 beyond Plato in the fulness and definiteness with 
 which he works out his idealistic system; and yet 
 that, in doing so, he makes concessions to a dualistic 
 mode of thinking which are greater than anything 
 admitted by Plato.
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 273 
 
 The advance which Aristotle makes upon Plato 
 lies mainly in two directions. In the first place, 
 his individualistic tendency brings with it a greater 
 respect for immediate experience : it saves him to a 
 great extent from the dangers of a too rapid 
 synthesis, and it keeps alive his curiosity for all the 
 details of existence where no synthesis is yet pos- 
 sible. Aristotle is no mere empiricist ; he is well 
 aware that we must go beyond immediate experience 
 to know things as they really are ; but he has noth- 
 ing of that impatience with particular phenomena, 
 and that desire at once to get away from them to 
 general principles, which was the main weakness of 
 Plato. Plato had, indeed, to a certain extent, main- 
 tained the rights of opinion, that is, of our immediate 
 empirical consciousness, but Aristotle does much more. 
 He is infinitely patient in exhibiting all the aspects 
 of things as they present themselves to the ordinary 
 consciousness, and all the judgments which they have 
 suggested to the ' plain man,' as well as to the philo- 
 sopher. His collections of empirical data, especially 
 in biology, ethics, and politics, greatly widen the 
 area of scientific enquiry ; and his constant effort to 
 mark out the different spheres of knowledge and to 
 find the principles appropriate to each sphere, ex- 
 hibits a great advance upon a method of philosophising 
 which brought all things at once within the scope 
 
 of its grand generalisations. The difficulty with 
 VOL. I. s
 
 274 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 Aristotle is rather that each science or department 
 of philosophy is treated so independently, and with 
 so little reference to the others, that it is often 
 hard to see how the various researches can be com- 
 bined into one whole. But the dangers of excessive 
 specialism were yet in the future ; and, in the mean- 
 time, Aristotle's example gave a great encouragement 
 to thoroughness and completeness of enquiry into 
 different departments of knowledge — an encouragement 
 which was much needed, but which was little appre- 
 ciated till a later period. 
 
 To this formal improvement in the method of 
 science, another of even more importance has to be 
 added. Aristotle's deep interest in the phenomena 
 of life — an interest which was probably awakened 
 in him prior to his entrance into the Platonic school, 
 and which in any case was quite independent of the 
 Platonic philosophy — not only introduced science into 
 a new field, but also suggested a new way of looking 
 at things in general. The ideas of organism and de- 
 velopment, indeed, were not quite alien to Plato: they 
 were partly involved in his scheme of education 
 based as it is on the idea of the latent rationality 
 of opinion which it is the object of all philosophical 
 teaching to bring to self-consciousness. He saw 
 clearly that the highest ideal for man is to become 
 what potentially he is, to develop the capacities which 
 ?ire inherent in his nature. But Plato's almost ex-
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 275 
 
 elusive occupation with the theoretical and practical 
 interests of men caused him to neglect the relations 
 between humanity and the lower forms of life, or, 
 so far as he paid regard to them, to interpret the 
 animal as a degraded and degenerated form of man. 
 His sharp distinction of soul, as that which is moved 
 by itself, from body, as that which is moved by 
 another — and which indeed he sometimes treats as 
 if it were a corpse — tended to obscure the unity of 
 the system of things, and the continuity of gradation 
 by which one stage of existence is linked on to 
 another. Hence all appearances of design in the pro- 
 ducts of nature were apt to be attributed to conscious 
 purpose rather than to the working of an immanent 
 teleological principle. On the other hand, Aristotle 
 recognises a purposive activity in all organised beings, 
 an activity which is independent of consciousness, 
 but which, in becoming conscious, does not essentially 
 change its character. There is thus a correspondence 
 or analogy running through all the steps of the 
 scala naturae, connecting the unconscious life of plants 
 with the relatively conscious life of animals, and the 
 self-conscious life of man. For, in each case, there 
 is an organising principle, which Aristotle calls the 
 soul. The Aristotelian idea of the soul is, indeed, 
 a new and original conception : for in Plato the soul 
 is not generally distinguished from the intelligence ; 
 and, though, in the Timaeus, it appears as the principle
 
 276 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 that combines the intelligence with the body, this 
 mediation is little more than a word, and shows 
 only that Plato felt the need of some connecting 
 link, which he was miable from the resources of his 
 philosophy to supply. Aristotle, on the other hand, 
 grasps the idea of organism, and declares the soul to 
 be the form which realises, or brings into activity 
 and actuality, the capacities of an organic body. 
 Hence in his view the soul cannot exist v/ithout 
 the body, nor the body without the soul. In short, 
 on the first aspect of Aristotle's philosophy, and 
 subject to a reservation in favour of the reason, 
 soul and body seem to be taken by him as 
 different but essentially correlated aspects of the 
 life of one individual substance. Thus he rejects 
 the Platonic idea that all souls are simply minds in 
 various degrees of obscuration, owing to the nature of 
 the bodies in which they are incorporated; and with 
 it he repudiates the doctrine of transmigration, and, 
 especially the transmigration of the soul of a man into 
 the body of an animal. In place of this doctrine, he 
 substitutes the conception of a hierarchical order of 
 psychical existence, in which the higher soul includes 
 the lower, and reduces it into the basis or material 
 of its own new principle of life. But just because 
 of this — because, in Aristotle's conception of it, the 
 higher life presupposes the lower and makes it the 
 means of its own realisation — Aristotle is able to
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 277 
 
 regard the whole process as one, to personify nature 
 as a power that does nothing in vain, and even to 
 look upon the whole ascending movement of organic 
 being as an effort after the complete and self-deter- 
 mined existence which is found only in God. Each 
 of the finite creatures is thus regarded as seeking 
 for the divine, but able to realise it only within the 
 limits of its own form. Aiming at eternity, it is con- 
 fined within the conditions of an individual existence 
 which is finite and perishable, though it attains to 
 a kind of image of eternity in the continuity of the 
 species. It attains it, however, in a still higher way, 
 in so far as its own limited life is made the basis 
 of a higher life; till in the ascending scale we reach 
 at last the rational life of man, who, at least in the 
 pure activity of contemplation, can directly participate 
 in the eternal and the divine. 
 
 So far the evolutionary conceptions of Aristotle 
 seem to carry us beyond many of the difficulties of 
 the Platonic theory, and to point towards a more 
 complete idealism than Plato had ever imagined. 
 Eor, if a philosopher be able to regard all nature as 
 the realisation of an immanent design, which becomes 
 more and more completely manifested the higher we 
 rise in the scale of being ; if, further, he be able to 
 view the imperfect life of the lower orders of creat- 
 ures as subordinated to the fuller existence of those 
 which stand higher in that scale, it is natural to
 
 278 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 expect that in the last resort he will be able to regard 
 all being as the manifestation or realisation of the 
 perfectly self-determined life of God. On this view 
 accident could exist only from the point of view of 
 the part, as separated from, and opposed to the 
 whole ; it would be eliminated more and more as 
 we advance to the point of view of existences 
 which are relatively more complete, and it would 
 disappear altogether from the point of view of the 
 divine centre of the whole system. Matter, as 
 opposed to form, would become a relative concep- 
 tion, and the phenomenal world would simply be the 
 real world imperfectly understood. The organic view 
 of the universe would thus subordinate, and take 
 up into itself the mechanical ; and in place of the 
 Platonic conception that reason " persuades necessity 
 to work out that which is best in most things," we 
 should be able to substitute the doctrine that all 
 things must, ultimately at least, be regarded as the 
 manifestations of a divine reason. 
 
 Such a view, however, we cannot attribute to 
 Aristotle. The organic idea, which he seems to 
 accept, especially in his conception of life in all its 
 forms, is continually traversed by another idea which 
 is essentially alien to it — the idea that all finite 
 existence is a combination of elements which are 
 not essentially related. Aristotle, in fact, while 
 accepting the Platonic opposition of form to matter,
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 27^ 
 
 gives to the latter a definite name, and a more dis- 
 tinct position than Plato had assigned to it. For in 
 the Republic Plato had spoken of it only as 'Not-Being,' 
 and had referred the defects of finite existence to 
 the fact that such existence stands midway between 
 Not-Being and the substantial reality of the ideas. 
 And in the Timaeits he seemed still farther to lower 
 the character of phenomena by treating them as mere 
 images or reflexions of true Being, explaining the 
 appearance of substantial reality which they present 
 by the spatial conditions which attach to such 
 images. He seemed, therefore, to be endeavouring 
 to escape the admission of a genuine dualism, to 
 which nevertheless he was driven by what he calls a 
 'spurious reasoning.' Aristotle, on the other hand, looks 
 for a substratum for all change in something which 
 remains while its qualities are in process of being 
 altered. The change of properties is, he argues, impos- 
 sible, unless there be a substance which undergoes 
 this change ; and the genesis and decay of substances 
 is impossible, unless there is something which passes 
 from the one form of existence to the other. Hence, 
 as all forms of being are changeable, we are ulti- 
 mately driven by a necessary argument from analogy, 
 to conceive pure matter as the ultimate substratum of 
 all that movement or transitionary process to which 
 finite things as such are subjected. Matter is, there- 
 fore, the possibility of all things and the actuality of
 
 ^80 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 nothing ; an idea which is made to seem less irra- 
 tional by the doctrine that it never exists except 
 under some elementary form. Perhaps we may 
 better bring out the effect of Aristotle's view by 
 saying — what Aristotle himself does not say — that 
 matter is that in the nature of finite things and 
 beings which causes their existence to be a continual 
 process of change, that is, causes it to be not a pure 
 activity which begins and ends in itself like that of 
 God, the unmoved mover, but a continual movement 
 from possibility to actuality, which comes to an 
 end in one subject only to begin in another in end- 
 less succession. Aristotle, indeed, avoids verbally the 
 contradiction of making matter, which in itself is 
 absolutely passive, the cause of the transitory cha- 
 racter of the existence that is realised in it ; but he 
 does so, as we shall see hereafter, only by taking 
 for granted the transition from the eternal to the 
 temporal, from the pure activity of the divine in- 
 telligence to the movement and change of the phe- 
 nomenal world. Yet this is the very thing which 
 needs to be explained. 
 
 This general antagonism or imperfect union of 
 matter and form shows itself even in Aristotle's 
 conception of the organic process. At times, as we 
 have seen, he emphasises the unity of form and 
 matter, and therefore of soul and body, so strongly as 
 to make them essentially correlative with each other
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 281 
 
 — opposite but complementary aspects of the same 
 being, which are only separated by abstraction. Thus 
 when he declares that the ultimate matter of a 
 substance is one and the same with its form, though 
 the one is to be taken as expressing the potentiality 
 of which the other is the actuality/ he suggests the 
 conception of a unity which is beyond the difference 
 of the two elements, and in which, therefore, they 
 entirely lose their independent character. So far as 
 this is the case, it would be true to say, as Aris- 
 totle does say in the immediate context, that no 
 reason can be given for the unity of form and matter, 
 except that they are reciprocally form and matter 
 to each other. From such a point of view we could 
 not speak of form acting upon matter, or matter 
 reacting upon form, but only of the whole substance 
 as manifesting itself in these two aspects. But 
 Aristotle does not consistently think of it in this 
 way. For the most part he seems rather to regard 
 the form as giving to the matter a unity which does 
 not belong to it, and to which it is never completely 
 subordinated. Thus he declares that the soul neither 
 grows nor decays, though all the activities usually 
 ascribed to it are conditioned by the growth and 
 decay of the body. The soul, in fact, is taken as 
 an identity which abides in unity with itself above 
 all change ; and which, though it gives rise to manifold 
 ^MeL, 10456, 18.
 
 ^82 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 activities and changes in the individual subject, 
 never itself enters into the process. While, there- 
 fore, we can see that Aristotle is striving against 
 the tendency to separate soul and body, yet his way 
 of expressing the difference between them inevitably 
 leads him back to the Platonic conception of a 
 spiritual being which is dragged down into a lower 
 region, and reduced to an imperfect kind of activity by 
 the vehicle which it has to use. This tendency to 
 fall from the conception of an organism to that of a 
 arvuOerov — a complex existence compounded of a 
 mortal body and a spiritual principle which finds an 
 inadequate expression therein — is shown even in his 
 account of the animal life ; as when he teUs us 
 that the decay of age does not affect the soul, but 
 only the organs through which it acts, and that, 
 therefore, "if the old man had the young man's 
 eyes, he would see as ^^ell as the young man." 
 Here the soul is manifestly taken as an abstract 
 form which is not relative to the body ; not as a 
 unity which maintains itself in change, but as one 
 which is entirely lifted above change and unaffected 
 by it. 
 
 The difficulty, however, takes a more definite form 
 in relation to the reason of man, which, in Aristotle's 
 own words, " seems to be born in us as an inde- 
 pendent substance, which is beyond decay and death." ^ 
 
 ^De All., 4086, 19.
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 283 
 
 In this case the question is not merely of the 
 presence or absence of a special bodily organ ; for 
 reason, according to Aristotle, has no such organ. 
 Yet its existence in the body and its connexion 
 with the animal nature, subjects it to conditions 
 which alter its pure activity, and bring it down 
 from the intuitive contemplation of truth to the 
 sphere of imagination and of discursive thought. 
 Hence Aristotle says that " the discursive reason 
 and the feelings of love and hate are not modes or 
 affections of reason, but of the subject in which it 
 is realised, though they are due to that realisation. 
 Hence, when this subject is destroyed, reason ceases 
 to remember and to love ; for such states belong not 
 to it, but to the being in whom soul and body are 
 combined (rou koivov), and this, of course, perishes. 
 But reason in itself is something more divine and 
 cannot be the subject of any such modes as these." ^ 
 
 It would appear, then, that Aristotle holds that 
 the individual mind, as such, ie. the individual's con- 
 sciousness of his own past and of all the particulars 
 of his individual life, with all the desires and feelings 
 which accompany such a consciousness, is changeable 
 and mortal. In this region of the finite, reason sinks 
 from intuition and contemplation into ' discourse of 
 reason ' ; in other words, it no longer sees all things 
 in their transparent unity, but, aided by sensuous 
 
 ^DeAn., 4086, 25 seq.
 
 284 THE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 images, its thought moves from one object to another, 
 distinguishing and connecting the different elements 
 by definite acts of analysis and synthesis, of judg- 
 ment and inference. Thus a deep line of division 
 is drawn between the intuitive and the discursive 
 intelligence, between the pure reason and the passions 
 and interests of mortal life. And the organic idea, 
 which is already strained to the utmost by Aristotle 
 in his conception of the relations between the form 
 and the matter, and, therefore, between the soul and 
 body of plants and animals, is once for all set aside 
 as regards the rational life of man. 
 
 The result, then, is that, though at first Aristotle 
 seems to free himself from the dualism of Plato, and 
 to rise to an organic point of view, he is unable in 
 the long run to maintain this advantage. It was a 
 distinct advance upon Plato to repudiate the mystic 
 tendency shown in some parts of the Platonic 
 writings, the tendency to regard the connexion of 
 soul and body as accidental or external. It was a 
 still farther advance to maintain that matter was 
 not merely the ' Not-Being ' of the RepuUic, or the 
 spatial conditions which, according to the Timaeus, 
 distinguish images or appearances from reality, but 
 the necessary correlate of form. But Aristotle was 
 not able to maintain himself at this point of view, 
 or to work it out to all its consequences. Hence 
 the very fact that he gave a distinctly positive
 
 PLATO TO ARISTOTLE 285 
 
 character to matter as the substi'atiim of motion 
 and change, while yet he was unable to conceive 
 it as simply the manifestation or necessary com- 
 plement of the ideal principle, drives him in the 
 end to a more definitely dualistic result than had 
 been reached by Plato. It also causes him to neglect 
 or reject those speculations in which Plato comes 
 nearest to a concrete, as opposed to an abstract 
 idealism. Thus, in the end, as we shall see more 
 fully hereafter, Aristotle conies to a view of reason, 
 and of God as the unmoved mover, which carries 
 us far in the direction of the mysticism of Plotinus.
 
 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON IN ITS 
 PRACTICAL USE. 
 
 In the last lecture I gave a general view of Aristotle's 
 way of thinking as contrasted with that of Plato. 
 I pointed out that he makes a great advance upon 
 Plato in so far as he frees himself from the tendency 
 to oppose form to matter and soul to body, and 
 thereby initiates a more organic view of the world, 
 and, in particular, of the phenomena of life in all 
 its forms — vegetable, animal and human. But just 
 because he is not able to carry out this new way 
 of thinking to its consequences, in the end he becomes 
 the author of a more definite and pronounced form 
 of dualism than that of Plato. For, though in his 
 philosophy matter gets a more definite position, it is 
 not after all made the true correlate of form. Hence 
 it sinks into an external something which the form 
 needs in order to realise itself, but in which it 
 can only realise itself imperfectly. And even this 
 necessity seems to be denied in the case of the
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 287 
 
 pure intelligence, which is conceived as so complete 
 in itself, that its association with the body is not 
 required for its realisation, but rather, through such 
 association, it is drawn down into a lower kind of 
 activity. It is this view of reason which is the 
 source of the greatest difficulty in Aristotle's psycho- 
 logy ; it manifests itself again in his conception of 
 morality and of the relation of the practical to the 
 contemplative life ;^ and, finally, it determines his idea 
 of the nature of God and of his relations to the 
 world. 
 
 This will become more completely understood if 
 we follow the line of the ascent to man, which 
 Aristotle traces out for us in the De Anima. 
 
 He begins by telling us that there is no 
 proper definition of the soul, if a definition be 
 understood to mean the determination of a generic 
 form which remains identical with itself in all its 
 specific manifestations.^ When we speak of organic 
 beings as having souls, all we mean is that in 
 each of them there is an immanent principle of 
 unity. But this principle takes a different character 
 in all the species that fall under it ; for these species 
 are not co-ordinate. On the contrary, they form a 
 series, in which each later member takes up the 
 previous member into itself, but at the same time 
 so transforms it that there is nothing which is 
 
 ^ De Anima, 4146, 20 seq.
 
 288 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 common to them all. It might, indeed, be said 
 that what is possessed by the lowest kind of soul 
 is common also to all the higher kinds : but this 
 is not strictly true ; for in the higher soul, the 
 lower ceases to be what it was, as it is made sub- 
 ordinate to a different principle of unity, and its 
 own characteristics are thereby completely changed. 
 Thus the life of sensation which is characteristic of 
 animals is not simply added to, the nutritive life 
 of plants ; it so absorbs and transfigures it, that, 
 though all the elements of the latter are present in 
 the former, none of them is just what it was in 
 the former. And the same is the case when we 
 pass from the sensitive life of animals to the rational 
 life of men. In the transition to a higher stage of 
 development, the elements of the lower stage are 
 preserved, but they are, in the language of Aristotle, 
 reduced to potentiality ; they are absorbed and taken 
 up into a new form of being. The individuality of 
 the more imperfect form of existence disappears, as 
 it becomes the material or basis for a new principium 
 individuationis. Hence the different species are con- 
 nected only by a certain bond of analogy, in so far 
 as the relations of form and matter are the same 
 in all. 
 
 To begin at the beginning, the life of plants is 
 a life of nutrition and reproduction, in which the 
 individual assimilates material constituents from its
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 289 
 
 environment to subserve its own existence and thus 
 goes through a course of growth and development, 
 which in the end passes into decay and death. 
 So long as this series of changes goes on, the 
 individual unity of the plant maintains itself, and 
 reproduction is only a farther extension of the same 
 process whereby a specific form is realised in a 
 new individual which must go through the same 
 cycle of change. For, as Aristotle says, adopting 
 the language of Plato, " it is the most natural of 
 all functions for the living being to produce another 
 like itself, the plant a plant, the animal an animal, 
 in order that they may partake in the eternal, 
 so far as is possible for them. This is what all 
 beings seek for, and in view of this they do all 
 that it is natural for them to do. We must, how- 
 ever, distinguish between the objective end which 
 they all seek and the realisation of it which is 
 possible to the particular subject. Now, since living 
 beings cannot partake in the divine and the eternal 
 by continuing their individual existence — it being 
 impossible for a nature which is finite and perishable 
 to maintain for ever its individuality and numerical 
 identity — they partake in it as they can. In other 
 words, they abide, not in themselves, but in what 
 is like them ; not as numerically one, but in the 
 unity of one species."^ What we have in the plant 
 
 '^ De Anima, 414a, 26. 
 vol.. I, T
 
 290 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 life is, therefore, not merely a continuation of the 
 process of change, whereby the different inorganic 
 elements are incessantly passing into each other ; 
 for these elements and their process are subordinated 
 to a higher principle of unity, first in the individual, 
 and then, when the individual fails, in the race. 
 Thus by the continuous cyclical movement of indi- 
 vidual and racial life the transitory existence of 
 finite beings is turned, in Platonic language, into a 
 moving image of eternity. 
 
 Again, just as the nutritive life is not a mere 
 repetition of the process of the elements, nor even 
 that with the addition of another process, but in- 
 volves the subjection of these elements to a higher 
 principle of unity, so the sensitive and appetitive life 
 of animals is not an external addition to the nutri- 
 tive and reproductive process, but absorbs and, so 
 to speak, transubstantiates its results. In one sense 
 it might be said that the animal goes through the 
 same round of existence as the plant, and that the 
 ends realised in it are still the same, the maintenance 
 of the individual and of his kind. But this is only 
 superficially true : for these very ends become changed 
 in character when the}^ are mediated by conscious- 
 ness, by sensation and desire. It is true, indeed, 
 that these ends do not exist in their generality for 
 the animal itself, any more than for the plant, and 
 therefore the animal cannot be said to will them,
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 291 
 
 It is only of nature, as an unconscious principle, 
 which realises itself in them through their particular 
 sensations and appetites, that Aristotle speaks as 
 willing the good of the individual and of his kind. 
 But the animal is capable of perceiving the particular 
 objects that secure or hinder its well-being, and of 
 feeling desire or aversion in relation to them. For 
 the sensitive soul stands in an ideal relation to its 
 objects, and can receive their sensible forms without 
 the matter. Moreover, these sensible forms are not 
 impressed on its organs from without, but the object 
 without only calls into action what is potentially 
 present in the sensitive faculty. Hence sense can- 
 not perceive anything but its special object, and even 
 that only within the limits of its sensibility. From 
 this point of view its perceptions are merely a 
 development of its own nature, and it might fairly 
 be said to perceive nothing but itself.^ We have 
 further to observe that all sensations, in order that 
 they may be compared and distinguished from each 
 other, must be brought to a centre of sensibility in 
 what we should call the feeling self.^ And the same 
 must of course be true of the desiring self, though 
 Aristotle does not call special attention to this. 
 
 In both these forms of life, as I have already 
 observed, the idea of the organic correlation of body 
 and soul conflicts with Aristotle's general conception 
 iZ)e Anima, 417a, 21. ^ De An., 4266, 8,
 
 292 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 of the relation of form to matter, which is deter- 
 mined by form, yet not altogether subjected to it : 
 for matter is always regarded as having a relative 
 independence. Thus the material constituents of the 
 body have a process of their own which is never 
 completely subordinated to the process of plant life, 
 and which in the decay and death of the plant 
 ceases to be subordinated to it at all. And, in like 
 manner, the nutritive life has a process of its own 
 which is not unconditionally subordinated to the pro- 
 cess of animal existence, or completely absorbed in 
 it. But the discordance between these two aspects 
 of the relation of form and matter becomes still 
 more definitely and distinctly revealed in Aristotle's 
 conception of the life of man. The form of man's 
 life is reason ; and reason is not merely one form 
 among others, it is the universal form, the form which 
 embraces and prevails over all other forms. And 
 reason has, as Aristotle puts it, no opposite, nothing 
 from which it is distinguished or to which it is 
 externally related ; if it is determined, it is only 
 as it determines itself. If, therefore, reason be 
 taken as the form of the life of any being, it 
 would seem that that life must not only be a stage 
 higher in development than the life of animals ; it 
 must be qualitatively distinguished from it. For 
 there can be no continuity between the relative and 
 the absolute, between that which acts only as it is
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 293 
 
 determined by something else and that which deter- 
 mines itself. In fact, it seems something like a 
 paradox that such a principle should manifest itself 
 in the form of any particular existence. Yet this 
 paradox, after all, is not one that arises out of the 
 peculiar doctrines of Aristotle. It is the essential 
 paradox or problem of the life of man, as a being 
 who is, in one point of view, only a particular 
 existence like an animal or a plant, but who, never- 
 theless, has the principle of universality, the principle 
 of self- consciousness and self-determination within 
 him. It is, therefore, by no subtilty of ancient 
 dialectic, but by the nature of the case, that Aristotle 
 is forced to recognise two contrasted aspects of the 
 nature of man, as at once particular and universal, 
 or, we might even say, finite and infinite. How 
 does he endeavour to solve this problem ? 
 
 It must, I think, be confessed that Aristotle has 
 no final solution for this difficulty, but rather that 
 he evades it, as the Scholastics so often evaded their 
 difficulties, by a distinction. In other words, he 
 breaks the unity of man's life and divides it into 
 two departments or spheres of existence, in either 
 of which he may live and move. In both spheres, 
 indeed, man manifests his rational nature ; for reason 
 is the form of his being, and it is impossible to live 
 the life of a man without, in some sense, living the 
 life of reason. But there is an exercise of reason
 
 294 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 in which it is determined by itself, and deals only 
 with purely intelligible objects ; and there is another 
 exercise of reason in which it deals with a material 
 which is alien to itself — a material which it can 
 control and subordinate to its own ends, but which 
 it can never completely assimilate. Thus in relation 
 to the immediate world of experience reason may be 
 regarded as both immanent and transcendent. But it 
 is only as transcendent that it can fully realise itself 
 and come to a clear consciousness of its own nature; 
 while, as immanent, it is obstructed by the nature 
 of the subject-matter with which it has to deal, 
 and drawn down into a lower form of activity in 
 which it can never adequately manifest or satisfy 
 itself. Speaking generally, these two spheres corre- 
 spond to the theoretical and the practical use of 
 reason ; for, in its theoretical use, reason is concerned 
 only to discover the universal principles which 
 underlie all existence, and to follow them out to 
 their logical consequences ; its work, therefore, is 
 purely scientific, and the results it reaches will be 
 necessary and exact. In its practical use, on 
 the other hand, it has to deal with the world of 
 immediate experience, as well as with the nature 
 of man, in all their complexity and particularity : 
 it has to determine the ends which, as a rational 
 being who is also an animal, he has to realise, and 
 to consider the means of realising them in the world.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 295 
 
 In this sphere, therefore, its objects are practical 
 rather than scientific ; and if, by reflexion, it can 
 attain to a kind of science, yet the results of such 
 science must be only approximate and inexact — they 
 can reach only generality and not universality. We 
 have, then, a broad division between the two spheres 
 of theory and practice ; and, in accordance with this 
 division, we have to distinguish between pure science, 
 which has to do with intelligible reality, as such — with 
 the ideal forms of things and their consequences — and 
 that lower kind of science which seeks to throw light 
 upon the particulars of experience that have to be 
 dealt with in practice. In the sequel we may have 
 to admit some modification of this contrast, and that, 
 indeed, on both sides ; for Aristotle's actual methods 
 of theoretical and practical science do not strictly 
 correspond to the sharp distinction which he draws 
 between them ; but it will conduce to clearness to 
 begin by taking the division in its most rigid form. 
 We have, therefore, first of all, to realise that 
 Aristotle conceives the life of man as consisting in 
 the exercise of reason, and as comprising two dis- 
 tinct forms of that exercise, Oewpla and Trpu^i^, the 
 pure activ.'ty of contemplation, and the mixed and 
 imperfect activity of the practical life. And we 
 have further to realise that this division is not quite 
 exclusive: for contemplation or science enters into prac- 
 tice, though only as a means to iin end beyond itself.
 
 296 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 This broad division of the contemplative from the 
 practical life is one of the points in which Aristotle 
 separates himself decisively from Plato, though only 
 by giving further play to tendencies which are 
 already visible in the Platonic writings. For Plato's 
 philosophy, like that of his master Socrates, was, in 
 the first instance, practical, and it was only by gradual 
 and almost unwilling steps that he came to make 
 theory an end in itself apart from practice. And, 
 even when he did so, he was never content to make 
 theory his sole end, but to the last sought to bring 
 the highest ideas of his speculation to bear upon the 
 reformation of Greek political life. The Republic^ 
 however, shows the parting of the ways. It shows 
 us how Plato, in the very effort to render his prac- 
 tical proposals complete and to base them upon the 
 highest philosophical principles, was gradually led to 
 invert the relations of theory and psactice, and to 
 treat the latter as a secondary result of the former. 
 
 Thus in the first part of the Republic Plato starts 
 from the actual life of a Greek State, and seems 
 tacitly to assume, what Aristotle declared in so many 
 words, that such a State is the irepa^ rrj^ avrapKelag — 
 the precise form of social organisation in which the 
 moral nature of man can find its best education 
 and realisation. And if he seeks to improve upon 
 the actual models of political life set before him in 
 Athens or Sparta, it is not by introducing another
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 297 
 
 political idea, but rather by working out more fully 
 the principles that seemed to underlie these models. 
 Thus his socialism and communism were only the 
 further development of that tendency to lose the 
 man in the citizen which had already been carried so 
 far in the actual life of Greece. 
 
 But the very attempt to universalise the principle 
 of Greek politics inevitably led Plato to aim at 
 something more than it was possible to realise in a 
 Greek municipal society. The philosopher, he main- 
 tained, must rule ; and the philosopher was one who 
 looked beyond the unity of the State to the unity of 
 the whole universe, and who could not, therefore, 
 treat the former as an absolute end. The Idea of 
 Good, the principle of all being and of all knowing, 
 must be made the basis and the object of his life; 
 and the State, with its bourgeoise ethics of use and 
 wont and its mythological religion, could not be 
 recognised by him as more than a subordinate sphere 
 of reality. If, therefore, the philosopher has laid upon 
 him the duty of governing and regulating the State, 
 yet his true life is elsewhere. His function as ruler, 
 indeed, is to make the civic community a copy 
 of the ideal order of the intelligible world ; but 
 his main interest lies in the original and not in the 
 copy. Ethics and politics have for him become 
 secondary to philosophy or theology, and the practical 
 has been subordinated to the contemplative life.
 
 298 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 And soon the question must arise whether the con- 
 nexion of the two can be maintained, and whether the 
 municipal State can be brought in relation to the type 
 set up for it, or reconstituted upon the model of the 
 intelligible world. The last word of the JRepicblic on 
 this subject shows that Plato found it hard to pour 
 the new wine into the old bottles. " I conclude, ' says 
 Socrates, " that the man of understanding will direct 
 all his energies throughout life to those studies which 
 will impress upon the soul the characters of wisdom, 
 temperance, and justice, and will neglect all others." 
 ... " Then," answers Glaucon, " if that be his 
 motive, he will not care to interfere with politics." 
 " By the dog of Egypt, you are wrong," replies Socrates ; 
 " for he certainly will do so, at least in his own city, 
 though perhaps not in the city in which he happens 
 to be born." " I understand," says Glaucon ; " you 
 mean that he will be an active politician in the city 
 which we have now organised, the city which as yet 
 exists merely in idea ; for, I believe, it is not to be 
 found anywhere on earth." " Well," answers Socrates 
 again, " perhaps in heaven there is laid up a pattern 
 for him who wishes to behold it, and, beholding, to 
 organise his own life by its laws. But the question of 
 its present or future existence upon earth is quite un- 
 important ; for, in any case, the philosopher will live 
 after the laws of that city only and not of any other." ^ 
 ^Bep., 592 A,
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 299 
 
 What we gather from this remarkable utterance is 
 that Plato found it impossible to raise the Greek 
 State, which still remained for him the highest type of 
 political association, to the level of his philosophical 
 principles. In fact, he makes no attempt to connect 
 the reconstruction of the State with the Idea of Good, 
 and the only place in which he gives a practical turn 
 to his highest ideas is in the remarkable picture of the 
 philosopher which he draws at the beginning of the 
 Rqniblic. There he endeavours to show that one who 
 views all particular things in the light of the whole, as 
 the philosopher must do, will necessarily acquire an 
 absolute generosity and freedom of spirit, which will 
 raise him far above the level of the ordinary civic 
 virtues ; ^ but Plato does not enquire how, in that 
 case, his philosophy can throw any light upon the 
 organisation of the State. Eather, as Plato seems to 
 indicate, his contemplation of ideal reality must bring 
 with it a depreciatory estimate of all political interests, 
 and even of the finite life in general. " Do you 
 think," says Socrates, " that a spirit full of such lofty 
 thoughts, and privileged to contemplate all time and 
 existence, can possibly attach any great importance 
 to this life of ours ? " ^ And, in another place, he 
 anticipates Aristotle in drawing a broad line of 
 
 ^Cf. Rep.,A^\ B, where these virtues are asserted to be a hindrance 
 to philosophy. 
 
 ^Rep., 486 A.
 
 300 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 division between the ethical virtues — which " are like 
 quaUties of the body, wiiich, not being in us at first, 
 are put into us hy training and habit " ^ — and the 
 wisdom of the philosophers, which is based on the 
 pure faculty of intelligence and requires nothing for 
 its development, except to be turned from sensible 
 things to the contemplation of ideal reality. On 
 this view, however, the relation of the philosopher 
 to the State seems to drop away from him, or to 
 become an external adjunct to his life, which can be 
 easily disjoined from it altogether. He owes it as a 
 duty to the city that has educated him that he should 
 be willing to undertake its government, but his real 
 vocation lies not in any practical endeavours, but in 
 the contemplation of the ideal and the divine. 
 
 When the link between theory and practice had 
 become so weak, it was easily broken by Aristotle, 
 w^ho summarily rejects the idea of connecting ethics 
 and politics with the highest principle of philosophy. 
 Accordingly, in the Ethics he sets aside the Platonic 
 Idea of Good — ostensibly, indeed, on the ground that 
 it is an abstraction which has no definite meaning, or 
 which at least is too vague and general to supply any 
 practical guide to human life. But Aristotle's quarrel 
 was not merely with the ideal theory of Plato, but 
 with his wiiole attempt to connect ethics with meta- 
 physics, and to base the rep;ulation of conduct upon 
 ^Eep., olS E.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 301 
 
 the conception of the absolute Good. While, therefore, 
 Plato, in the effort to reach the deepest and most 
 comprehensive view of ethics, had been drawn onward 
 from the consideration of the unity of the State to 
 that of the unity of the whole system of the universe, 
 Aristotle entirely repudiates this line of thought as 
 carrying us beyond the limits of the matter in hand, 
 and demands that ethics and politics should be treated 
 as a separate science, and saved from the irrelevant 
 intrusion of metaphysics. And his ultimate reason for 
 this was not that he denied the existence of an 
 absolute Good, which it is possible for us to know ; 
 for, as we shall see, his own metaphysical investigations 
 were directed to the discovery of such a Good. It lay 
 rather in his conviction that our relation to that Good 
 cannot be practical but only theoretical ; while the 
 sphere of ethics, on the other hand, is not theory but 
 practice. Theory, therefore, can be of use only so far 
 as it is a means to practice; for "we study ethics not 
 that we may know what virtue is, but that we may 
 become good men ; otherwise there could be no ad- 
 vantage in it whatsoever."^ It is true, indeed, that 
 ethics starts with the conception of man as a rational 
 sul)ject who seeks to organise his life with a view to the 
 end which, relatively to him, is the highest ; and no 
 doubt also, what is highest relatively to man's nature 
 is the exercise of his reason : but in the ethical sphere 
 ^ Eth., 100.3?), 27.
 
 302 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 this does not mean the exercise of pure reason upon its 
 appropriate objects. It means, looking at the matter 
 in a subjective point of view, the exercise of reason in 
 governing the passions and giving unity and order to 
 the inner life of man as a complex being, who is a 
 compound of ' dust and deity ' : for he who speaks of 
 man, as Aristotle says, Trpoa-TiOtja-i kcu Orjpiov} that is, he 
 must take into account the lower as well as the higher 
 nature of man. And, looking at it in an objective 
 point of view, it means the control of the conditions 
 presented by the environment of the life of man. so as 
 to gain oppr)rtunity for the exercise of his highest 
 qualities. In both aspects, ethics has to guide man in 
 dealing with the particular facts of his existence, and 
 it has, therefore, to take account of external conditions 
 and, therefore, of an element of contingency which 
 cannot be brought within the sphere of pure reason. 
 
 And this also greatly affects the value of science in 
 relation to morality ; for, while reason can rise above 
 the particular experiences of the moral and social 
 life to the general conception of the end to be sought, 
 and of the means w^hereby it may be attained, it is 
 hampered in its processes both of induction and 
 deduction l)y conditions which do not apply to pure 
 science. In the first place, ethical experience is not 
 the product of reflexion, but of the unconscious action 
 of reason in the development of social life ; and, we 
 
 iPo/., 1287a, 30.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 303 
 
 may add, it must have been already acquired by 
 the individual himself, who seeks to interpret it, 
 or even to understand its interpretation when it is 
 presented by others. For, only one who by par- 
 ticipation in the common life of the State has had 
 his moral nature developed, is capable of rising to 
 the knowledge of ethical principles or even of making 
 anything of them when they are set before him by 
 others. The value of scientific ethics is, therefore, 
 that it brings into clear consciousness the ideas which 
 underlie the unreasoned ethics of the ordinary good 
 man and good citizen ; and he who would recognise 
 the truth of ethical science or gain any profit from 
 it, must already possess in himself the data on 
 which it is based. It is true that for such an 
 one ethical science may have great value ; for the 
 reflexion which discovers the universal principles 
 involved in the special rules and customs of life 
 will enable him to criticise and correct the very 
 experience from which he starts. The statesman, 
 above all — who has not merely to find his way amid 
 the difficulties of private life, but to meet the 
 larger demands of legislation and administration, and 
 even, it may be, to make modifications in the con- 
 stitution of the community which he governs — must 
 know the grounds upon which the State in general, 
 and his particular form of State, are based. He must 
 Jiave analysed the moral nature of man, and examined
 
 304 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 the particular excellences that need to be called 
 forth, and the particular vices which need to be 
 repressed, by a good education. But even in hia 
 case Aristotle insists on the necessity of that 
 immediate sense or intuition of moral truth, which 
 can only be developed by habit. Moral science, there- 
 fore, must not only be based upon the immediate 
 judgments of the individual who is imbued with the 
 ethical spirit of a civic society, but it depends for 
 the proper application of its general principles upon 
 the peculiar tact and power of handling ethical 
 interests which is due to that spirit. 
 
 Now no one can fail to recognise that, in his account 
 of the development of the moral consciousness through 
 habit and in his rejection of the Socratic doctrine 
 that ' virtue is knowledge,' Aristotle is expressing an 
 important aspect of the truth — if at least we limit 
 knowledge to the reflective form of science. It is 
 easy to show that the science of ethics presupposes the 
 existence of morality, and cannot be the cause of 
 that existence. If all the spiritual possessions of 
 man, and, in particular, the institutions and customs 
 of the society of which he is a member, be produced 
 by the activity of the reason that is within him, 
 yet they are certainly not due to a reason that is 
 conscious of what it is doing, or aware of its own 
 processes. So far, therefore, even the profoundest 
 believer in the rational nature of man would admit
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 305 
 
 that the unconscious comes before the conscious, or, 
 what is the same thing, that the particular applica- 
 tion of moral principles is prior to their distinct 
 recognition as general principles. To say otherwise 
 would be like saying that no one could trace effects 
 to causes without having recognised and defined the 
 idea of causality. 
 
 But, in the second place, Aristotle means more 
 than this. He means that in the determination of 
 particular objects by the ordinary consciousness there 
 is a synthesis of reason with an irrational element — 
 with an element of real contingency of which we can 
 only say that it exists, and that we cannot explain 
 it by any rational principle. Hence, strictly speak- 
 ing, we cannot know the particular; we can only 
 grasp it in the immediate intuition of sense ; or, 
 to put it in a more directly Aristotelian way, our 
 knowledge of objects becomes actual, and not merely 
 potential, only when the consciousness of the universal 
 is brought into relation with the perceptions of sense.^ 
 There is, therefore, an element in our consciousness 
 which cannot be universalised, or made intelligible, 
 in the way of science. This fact, however, does not 
 embarrass us in the sphere of pure science; for, in 
 Aristotle's view of it, science has only to do with 
 general principles and what can be deduced from 
 them. In the practical life, however, it becomes 
 
 ^MeL, 1036a, 5: cf. 1087c/. 17. 
 VOL. I. U
 
 806 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW (^F REASON 
 
 higlily important, for action has directly to do with 
 the particular — with the particular act to be done 
 and the particular end to be achieved. And this 
 can be apprehended only in an immediate intuition, 
 which might be called a moral sense, if that name 
 did not do injustice to the rational element involved 
 in it.^ This moral sense cannot be produced in us 
 by teaching or by any purely intellectual process ; 
 it is due only to that combination of the rational 
 with the irrational factor, which belongs to our nature 
 as thinking beings who are also animals ; and if it 
 can be developed by training, and especially by the 
 training of social life, yet the process of such training 
 cannot be referied to reason alone. In other words, 
 our appetites and passions have not reason immanent 
 in them, and must have it superinduced upon them 
 from without by exercise and habituation. They 
 have in themselves no measure, they fluctuate between 
 excess and defect, and only accidentally hit the 
 golden mean. Hence, measure has to be imposed 
 upon them by reason, and gradually to be wrought 
 into their texture by discipline. It is as with the 
 sculptor, w^ho has to give form to a material which in 
 itself is formless, or has only a form which is not 
 relative to his purpose, and who, therefore, in shaping 
 the parts of liis statue, has so to guide his hand that 
 each of them may be in just proportion to all the rest.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 307 
 
 In the creation of such a work of art, the exact 
 measure of each part has to be preserved, and the 
 slightest exaggeration or diminution of any limb or 
 feature may make all the difference ])et\veen beauty 
 and ugliness. So also it is with the moral artist, who 
 has to take the rough block of humanity, with the 
 animal nature which is its basis, and so to restrain or 
 to encourage, to weaken or to strengthen, the different 
 passions and tendencies, as to fashion out of them 
 a noble character. Nor does it alter the case that 
 each man, to a certain extent at least, is the moral 
 artist of himself. Here, too, the material is given 
 independently of the reason either of the individual 
 himself or of those who regulate the life of the 
 society in which he is a member; and the manifold 
 contingency to which that material is subjected, makes 
 it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to attain a 
 satisfactory result. All we can say is that goodness 
 is shown in making the best of the circumstances. 
 We can now see what it is that makes Aristotle 
 dwell so persistently upon the inexactness of the 
 science of ethics. It is not merely that the subject 
 is so complex that it is impossible to disentangle 
 all the threads that are interwoven in it. Nor is 
 it, as has ])een suggested, that Aristotle mistakes 
 the difficulties of the practice of science for the 
 difficulties of the science of practice ; for, though 
 the application of any science must involve many
 
 308 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 considerations which are omitted in pure theory, 
 that does not interfere with the exactness of the 
 science itself. The real reason is that, in Aristotle's 
 way of conceiving it, the science of practice has little 
 or no value apart from practice, because of the 
 essential nature of its subject-matter. It is that 
 the actions of men involve a realisation of reason in 
 an element which is not purely rational. Hence, from 
 the pure idea of man as a rational being, we cannot 
 develop an adequate conception of the methods in 
 which reason is to be realised in human life. We 
 are obliged to take the actual types of morality as 
 they present themselves in experience, and from 
 them to extract such general ideas as may give 
 some help to the citizen and the statesman in mould- 
 ing their own character and the character of others. 
 And even in this case the teachings of science will 
 be unavailing, unless such citizen or statesman is 
 already deeply imb^^ed with the spirit of the State. 
 Thus (j)p6vtj(Tig can never become crocpla, practical 
 wisdom can never be raised into the form of pure 
 science. Accordingly, in his ethical and political 
 philosophy, Aristotle clings very closely to the facts 
 of Hellenic character and Hellenic institutions, 
 and his ideal of the State is little more than 
 a selection and combination of the features which 
 present themselves in different Greek cities. It 
 is an ideal Athens, with the mob of mechanics, and
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 309 
 
 all that are incapable of the highest civic functions, 
 shut out from authority ; or it is an ideal Sparta 
 with its admirable discipline directed to higher ends 
 than war. But Aristotle never pretends, like Plato, 
 directly to connect the ethical and political life with 
 the highest exercise of the intelligence : indeed, he 
 tells us explicitly that that life belongs to man as 
 a (TvvOerov — a complex or compound being with a 
 mortal as well as an immortal part. Hence he 
 speaks contemptuously of the notion of ascribing 
 moral virtues to the gods, who, as purely spiritual 
 beings, cannot descend into the region of practice. 
 " That perfect happiness is," he declares, " a purely 
 contemplative activity, may be seen from this that 
 we ascribe it most of all to the gods. But what 
 kinds of moral action are we to attribute to them ? 
 Are we to say that they do just actions ? As if it 
 were not absurd to think of the gods as making 
 bargains with each other and duly restoring what 
 is entrusted to them, and the like. Or are we to 
 say that they perform acts of bravery, enduring 
 dangers and encountering risks because it is noble 
 so to do ? Or, again, have they to show liberality in 
 their dealings ? But to whom will they give any- 
 thing, and what is the coin or currency that they 
 use ? Or are they to be thought of as temperate ? 
 Would it not be a quaint praise of the gods to say 
 that they have no bad impulses to check ? In
 
 310 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 truth, when we go through all the moral virtues, we 
 see clearly that such practical activities are mean 
 and unworthy of the gods." ^ 
 
 Whether the same objections will not lie against 
 all the theoretic activities by which the intelligence 
 of a finite being advances to the discovery of the 
 truth, and, indeed, against every exercise of the intellect 
 short of the beatific vision, Aristotle does not here 
 enquire. But the consequence for ethical science is 
 obvious. The ethical teacher must not attempt to 
 pass beyond the boundaries of ethical experience, or 
 to connect his science with metaphysical principles. 
 He must be content to bring to light the principles 
 that underlie Greek ethical practice, and to use them 
 to improve that practice. In this lies at once the 
 value of ethical studies, if confined within their proper 
 range, and their valuelessness, if carried beyond it. 
 Aristotle, therefore, frequently insists on the useless- 
 ness of ethical theories that are not based upon an 
 actually realised ethical life, and do not throw new 
 light upon it. Morals, in his view of it, is essentially 
 a science that springs from practice and returns to 
 practice ; and for it to set up any other end than 
 this, or to pretend to be science for science's sake, 
 is to forfeit all its claims to the relative place which 
 it holds in human knowledge. It is only pure Oecopta, 
 pure contemplation, that can pass beyond these limi- 
 
 ^Eth., 11786, 7 scq.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 311 
 
 tations, can leave behind it the uncertain and troubled 
 region of the contingent, in which lie the interests 
 and cares of man's transitory life, and can attain to 
 that kind of reality which is independent of time 
 and change. 
 
 Nor is there any possibility of connecting the rela- 
 tive truths of ethics with the absolute principles of 
 pure metaphysic. Ther€ is, indeed, a kind of connexion 
 between the practical and the theoretical life, in so 
 far as the former is the precondition of the latter : 
 but this is only an external and accidental connexion. 
 The State is needed to protect and to educate man, 
 to furnish the material basis for his existence and 
 the sphere for the exercise of his moral energies. 
 It is, so to speak, the ladder on which he has to 
 climb up to the higher life. But with that which is 
 highest of all, it has nothing directly to do. The 
 contemplative life, and it alone, is self-sufficient and 
 complete in itself; or it would be so for us men 
 were it not that, as mortal and changeable beings, 
 we cannot continuously maintain the pure activity 
 of thought, and must therefore fall back on the 
 ethical virtues, which " enable us to play our parts 
 as men." ^ In showing the elevation of the contem- 
 plative life above all material and even moral 
 interests, Aristotle's sober style for once gets a tinge 
 of poetry. " Such a life," he declares, " is greater than 
 
 ^ Trpbs TO dydpWTrevecrdai. Eth., 11786, 7.
 
 <{12 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 can be measured by a human standard, and man can 
 live it not qua man, but only as there is something 
 divine within him. And the active development of this 
 so7nething is as much superior to the exercise of the 
 other virtues as reason in its purity is superior to the 
 mixed or composite nature of humanity in general. If 
 then reason is divine in comparison with the man's 
 whole nature, the life according to reason must be 
 divine in comparison with human life. Nor ought we 
 to pay regard to those who exhort us that, as we are 
 men, we ought to think human things and to keep our 
 eyes upon mortality : rather, as far as may be, we 
 should endeavour to rise to that which is immortal, 
 and do everything to live in conformity with what 
 is best in us ; for, if in bulk it is but small, yet in 
 power and dignity it far exceeds everything else that 
 we possess. Nay, it may even be regarded as consti- 
 tuting our very individuality, since it is the supreme 
 element, and that which is best in us. And if so, 
 then it would be absurd for us to choose any life 
 but that which is properly our own. And this agrees 
 with what was said before " (in relation to the defini- 
 tion of happiness) " that that which is characteristic 
 of any nature is that which is best for it, and gives 
 it most joy. Such, therefore, to man is the life 
 according to reason, since it is this that makes him 
 man." ^ 
 
 ^Eih., 1177b, 27.
 
 IN ITS PRACTICAL USE 313 
 
 In this passage we must not miss the verbal con- 
 tradiction. The theoretic life is beyond the measure 
 of humanity ; it is the life of God rather than of 
 man. Yet, from another point of view, it is the life 
 wherein that which constitutes the very nature and 
 individuality of man, his characteristic power or 
 faculty, alone finds its appropriate exercise. The 
 sharp division which Aristotle makes between the 
 two lives which man can live, makes it difhcult for 
 him to say where the central principle of man's 
 being is to be placed, and what, strictly speaking, 
 constitutes the self or ego to which everything else 
 in him is to be referred. His words remind us of 
 a saying of Emerson that the consciousness of man 
 is a sliding-scale, which at one time seems to identify 
 him with the divine spirit, and at another with the 
 very flesh of his body. The rift that runs through 
 the philosophy of Plato seems here to have widened 
 till it rends human nature asunder. The result is a 
 division of the contemplative from the practical life, 
 which has had momentous results in the history of 
 philosophy and theology. It is the source of what 
 has sometimes been called the ' intellectualism ' of 
 Greek philosophy, which passed from it into the 
 Christian church in the form of the exaltation of the 
 monastic life above any life that can be lived in 
 the world. And Thomas Aquinas was only following 
 out the principles of Aristotle when he exalted the
 
 314 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 contemplative above the moral virtues, and maintained 
 that the latter related to the former dispositive sed non 
 essentialiter} This transition of thought was already 
 made easy by the religious turn of expression which 
 Aristotle and his followers often use. It is specially 
 marked in the Eudemian Ethics, where we are told 
 that the highest life is to worship and contemplate 
 God, depaireveiv top Oeov Koi Oewpeiv. Professor Burnet 
 translates this by the familiar words : " to glorify God 
 and to enjoy him for ever " : but we must remember 
 that for Aristotle this enjoyment consists in a pure 
 contemplative activity, in which thought rises above 
 all discourse of reason into unity with its object, and 
 rests in it as its final and complete satisfaction. 
 
 The farther development of this view and the dis- 
 cussion of the error and truth which are mingled in 
 it, will be the subject of the next lecture. 
 
 '^ Summa, 8.6. 9. 180, 2.
 
 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON IN ITS 
 THEORETICAL USE. 
 
 In the last lecture I have shown that, although 
 Aristotle regards reason as the form of man's life, 
 he does not conceive of it as constituting a self or 
 personality which equally manifests itself in all his 
 feelings, thoughts and actions. In other words, he 
 does not regard man as an organism, in which all 
 the parts imply each other and the whole, because 
 they are all the realisation of one principle. Rather 
 he thinks of him as a combination of reason with 
 an irrational element, which it cannot completely 
 absorb or take up into itself. 
 
 But this view gives rise to a double difficulty : 
 for, in the first place, it involves the severance of 
 the theoretical from the practical life, of the life in 
 which reason is purely self-determined and one with 
 itself, from the life in which it determines a matter 
 that is alien to itself : and, in the second place, it 
 makes it impossible, even in the practical life, to
 
 316 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 arrive at any clear notion of the principle of activity. 
 At times reason seems to be represented by Aristotle 
 as constitutive of its own motives, and, therefore, as 
 one with will ; as when he declares that " reason 
 always chooses the best," and that " the good man 
 is he who obeys reason."^ But elsewhere reason is 
 conceived as the faculty of the universal and not of 
 the particular, a purely theoretical faculty which 
 "moves nothing," 2 and must be determined to action 
 by the appetitive part of man's nature, by which alone 
 an object or end can be prescribed as desirable. 
 Yet Aristotle would certainly not accept the doctrine 
 of Hume that " reason is, and ought to be, the slave 
 of the passions" — because apart from them, it cannot 
 choose or reject anything. The natural passions are 
 for Aristotle immediate impulses, which are always 
 in excess or defect, and never, except by accident, 
 in the proper proportion in reference to the good of 
 man's being as a whole. Having no measure in 
 themselves, they need a measure to come to them 
 from without ; and from what can it come save 
 reason ? Aristotle seems to come near the solution of 
 the difficulty, when he detects in man a fiov\r](n^ or 
 will of the good, that is, a desire for the satisfaction 
 of our whole being, which is quite different from 
 the particular passions ; for this is clearly a desire, 
 the contents of which could not be derived from 
 
 ^Eth., iW3a, 17. "- Eth., \loda, o'o.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 317 
 
 anything but reason. Nay, more, the presence of 
 such a desire in us must be regarded as giving a 
 new character to all the other impulses ; for, in 
 virtue of it, all the particular ends of passion must 
 be sought not for themselves but sub rations honi, 
 as means to the complete realisation and satisfac- 
 tion of the one self to which they are all related. 
 But Aristotle does not recognise this " will of the 
 Good " as the essential impulse of a rational nature, 
 which underlies all its other tendencies ; he seems 
 simply to mention it as one of the elements of 
 our being which is to be placed beside its other 
 desires. And when he comes to ask himself what 
 is the nature of that act of self-determination 
 which is implied in all moral action, he does not 
 connect it in any special way with the will of 
 the good, but defines it simply as a ' deliberative 
 desire,' meaning a desire accompanied by delibera- 
 tion as to the means of its satisfaction — a definition 
 which leaves desire and reason as two separate 
 elements which are connected only externally. Nor 
 is it by any accident or oversight that Aristotle is 
 drawn into this circular process, in which intelligence 
 and will presuppose each other ; it is the necessary 
 result of his conception of human nature as a 
 arvvOerov, a combination of disparate elements. If 
 desire be taken as separate from intelligence, intelli- 
 gence can only be, what Hume makes it, an
 
 318 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 instrument by wldch the means of satisfying desire 
 is determined. Nor is it possible that any desire 
 should be in itself rational ; for, if reason be con- 
 ceived as determining a motive, it seems to be 
 leaving its own sphere and intruding into that 
 of will, which ex hypothesi is closed to it. And 
 Aristotle's final deliverance^ — that reason is the 
 real man, but yet that the life of reason is one 
 which he lives not qua man, but as having some- 
 thing divine in him — only shows the perplexity to 
 which he is reduced by the cross-currents of his 
 thought. 
 
 Now the ultimate cause of Aristotle's defective 
 view of the unity of the life of man lies in the 
 fact, that he identifies reason primarily with its 
 conscious or reflective activity, the activity which 
 creates science and philosophy. He cannot, there- 
 fore, attribute to it, or at least to it alone, that 
 unconscious or unreflective activity which is implied 
 in all our ordinary experience, both theoretical and 
 practical. Hence he is obliged to explain that 
 experience as a sort of blend between reason and 
 sensation or desire, which has something in it essen- 
 tially non-rational. It was, indeed, the general defect 
 of Greek thought that, while it tended to exalt 
 reason, what it comprehended under that name was 
 rather the reflective power of the philosopher, the 
 
 ^Kth., 11776, 26 stq.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 319 
 
 scientific man, and the statesman — who is like a 
 scientific man in his mastery of the general principles 
 of legislation and administration — rather than the self- 
 consciousness and self-determination, which belongs 
 equally to all men, and is, indeed, that which makes 
 them men. Hence also Aristotle's view of the political 
 and moral life was essentially aristocratic, though the 
 aristocracy he recognised was not one of birth but 
 of intelligence. Thus he regarded the Greek, with 
 his quick perceptions and superior rational power, 
 as a being almost of a different species from the 
 barbarian ; and he even refused to recognise the Greek 
 artizan, who practised a ' base mechanic trade,' as 
 fitted to discharge the functions of a citizen. The 
 same ' intellectualism ' — which made him look upon 
 science as something that can be attained only by 
 one who has risen above the contingency of particular 
 facts — shows itself in his separation of the higher 
 and more general functions of the State from the 
 occupations of the tradesman, whose vocation is to 
 supply the means for a life in which he does not 
 partake. Hence, instead of the organic unity of 
 society, we have a hierarchy in which the slaves 
 and mechanics furnish the basis for the life of those 
 citizens who share in the administrative, judicial 
 and legislative work of the State and enjoy its 
 privileges ; and these in turn supply the conditions 
 for the still higher functions of the philosopher, who
 
 820 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 lives for contemplation alone. For contemplation 
 is the only alsolutely free activity, which never is 
 a means to anything but itself.^ 
 
 What, then, is the nature of this free activity, and 
 how is it possible for Aristotle to speak of it in the 
 terms he uses ? How is it possible for him to regard 
 science and philosophy as the purely self-determined 
 activity of reason, an activity which is free from 
 all the conditions to which practice is subjected ? 
 How does reason emancipate itself from the chains 
 in which the will is bound ? And, when it has so 
 emancipated itself, what is the subject-matter with 
 which it deals ? Can the science, which abstracts 
 from so much, still retain any real content for itself, 
 and must it not necessarily lose itself in empty 
 generalities ? These questions are not perhaps 
 capable of being answered in an unambiguous way, 
 or without considerable balancing between opposite 
 ways of understanding the language of Aristotle. 
 But the attempt to deal with them is necessary to 
 any one who would estimate fairly the results of 
 his thought and the influence he had upon sub- 
 sequent times, and, above all, upon the history of 
 theology. 
 
 We may begin by guarding against a possible 
 misunderstanding. Aristotle is by no means an 
 empiricist, yet no one can doubt that he makes 
 iCf. Eth., X. 7.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 321 
 
 immediate experience the starting-point of his thought; 
 and that, indeed, he conceives of all truth as being, 
 if not based upon such experience, yet ultimately 
 derived from it. No one could show greater interest 
 in collecting facts, and in testing all the theories 
 which they had suggested to previous writers or 
 to the ordinary consciousness of men. Aristotle 
 made many collections of data which were relevant 
 to his special enquiries, nor was he impatient in 
 chronicling such data, even when he could make no 
 immediate scientific use of them. This is equally 
 true in relation to the structure and processes of 
 animal life, to the varieties of ethical sentiment, to 
 the different kinds of political organisation and to 
 the manifold forms of philosophical opinion. Aris- 
 totle's aim is always to take as complete a view as 
 is possible of all the phenomena relevant to the sub- 
 ject he is investigating. Nor can he be said to have 
 ever neglected — as Bacon supposes him and all the 
 ancients to have neglected — to look for negative 
 instances. On the contrary, his first effort is in- 
 variably to seek out any appearance of disparity 
 or contradiction between the different phenomena, or 
 between the aspects in which they have presented 
 themselves to different persons. His principle and 
 his practice are at the very outset to bring to light 
 as many such difficulties as he can discover ; and he 
 even holds that we cannot be sure that we have 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 322 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 reached the truth of the subject under investigation, 
 unless we are able, by means of it, to explain not 
 only the phenomena or opinions if they have a real 
 basis, but also to show the reason of the mistake when 
 they have none.^ A principle of science is thus 
 supposed to emerge, in the first instance at least, 
 as the result of a synthesis of the phenomena to be 
 explained, and as the key to all the difficulties con- 
 nected therewith. And if Aristotle be not aware 
 of the necessity of our modern methods of analysis 
 and experiment, and sometimes is too ready to 
 assume that he has all the necessary data without 
 them, at any rate he cannot be accused of failing 
 to make his inductions as complete as possible, or 
 of theorising without an attempt to realise all the 
 difficulties of his subject. 
 
 There is, however, another aspect of Aristotle's 
 conception of science. All induction is with a view to 
 deduction or demonstration, and these, for Aristotle, 
 are two processes which are quite independent of 
 each other. Hence, in order to deduction, we must 
 first, by means of induction and dialectical discussion, 
 attain to some general principle from which infer- 
 ences may be drawn. Farther, all this process of 
 discussion only gives occasion for the intuitive action 
 
 ^ Eth.y 1154a, 22. In the beginning of the 7th book of the 
 Ethics, Aristotle explains this method of investigation, and 
 examples of it may be found at the beginning of many of his 
 works.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 323 
 
 of reason, which grasps the principle of the subject, 
 and perceives its self-evidencing character. We 
 might, therefore, say that Aristotle starts from the 
 a posteriori to find the a priori ; in other words, 
 that he begins with a view of truth as a mass of 
 separate phenomena, which seem to be given to the 
 mind from without, and that he regards the intellectual 
 comprehension of these data as attained only when 
 the mind finds itself in its objects, or grasps as 
 their explanation a principle which needs no evidence 
 but itself. The process is otherwise described by 
 Aristotle as one in which we advance from what is 
 first to us to that which is first in the nature of 
 things. This regress from phenomena to their 
 principles is, however, a preliminary process, and 
 the proper moveq^ent of science begins with these 
 principles and seeks to show by demonstration all 
 that is involved in them. 
 
 Now we might at first be disposed to interpret 
 this as meaning simply that the scientific man finds 
 the starting-point of investigation in the immediate 
 appearances of sense, that he soon discovers that these 
 appearances, in the first view of them, are inconsistent 
 and even contradictory to each other, but that, by 
 bringing them together and comparing them, he rises 
 to an explanation, which enables him to remove their 
 apparent inconsistency and bring them all into agree- 
 ment with each other. But this is not what Aristotle
 
 324 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 says. He does not expect that science will ever be 
 able to explain the particulars of sense from which it 
 starts; for, in his view, science, as such, deals with 
 the universal and the necessary, while the particulars 
 of sense have in them an element of contingency 
 which cannot be referred to any such principle. The 
 world, indeed, is conceived by him as consisting in a 
 multitude of individual things, in each of which 
 some specific principle is manifested ; but this specific 
 principle is not supposed to account for all that we 
 find in the individual things, still less for all that 
 happens to them. It cannot in this way explain any- 
 thing that results from the particular material basis 
 in which the form of the species is realised, or from 
 the external relations into which the particular object 
 is brought, but only the properties that are neces- 
 sarily involved in the form and can be logically proved 
 to be so involved. And, as logical proof for Aristotle 
 means simple deduction, it would seem to follow that 
 a science must be made up of universal judgments, 
 which are analytically deducible from each other. It 
 is probable that Aristotle was misled in some degree 
 by the example of mathematics, and that he did not 
 realise,^ what Kant afterwards showed, that there is a 
 syuthetical movement of thought in every step of the 
 
 ^Professor Cook Wilson has pointed out to me that in one 
 passage of the Metaphysic (1051a, 22 seq.) Aristotle seems to 
 discern the synthetic character of mathematical proof; but this 
 is an isolated statement.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 325 
 
 process by which the science of mathematics is built 
 up. It is true that he calls attention to the fact that 
 mathematics has not to do with substances, but only 
 with special aspects of them which are abstracted from ^ 
 their other aspects. And he also points out that 
 there are many such aspects of substances, e.g. their 
 motion, which may be made the subjects of special 
 sciences. Still he seems to contemplate it as the ideal 
 of a science, that it should be based upon the defini- 
 tion of a substance — a definition which expresses the 
 form realised in such a substance — and that its 
 demonstrations should result in the exhibition of all 
 the propria which are analytically deducible from that 
 definition.^ 
 
 ^ Objection might be taken to the above statements, if they were 
 intended as a complete account of Aristotle's views upon logical 
 method. They correspond to the ideal of science which is expressed 
 in the Metaphysic, Book 7. In the Posterior Analytic we find two 
 other views which are not easily reconcilable either with it or 
 with each other. In the first book nothing is said of substances, 
 as such ; but the general conception of demonstration is still that 
 it is deduction of projyria from a definition. And it is implied, I 
 think, that this definition must express the formal cause of the 
 subject — say, a triangle — of which the science treats. Aristotle 
 seems mainly to be thinking of mathematics, though, as stated 
 above, he does not apprehend the synthetic character of mathema- 
 tical reasoning. In the second book, however, demonstration is 
 taken as the proof of the existence of an attribute, or the occurrence 
 of an event, through its own definition : and this definition may be 
 given through the efficient, as well as the formal and final causes. 
 Further, the cause in question is always the proximate cause, and 
 nothing is said as to the mode in which this cause is to be con- 
 nected with the definition of the subject, which in the first book
 
 326 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 Now it is hardly necessary to say that Aristotle's 
 actual efforts at scientific construction do not conform 
 to this type. He is not content, in practice, to seek 
 for some abstract principle or definition of the object 
 in question, and then to derive everything analytically 
 from it. What he usually does is, first, to establish 
 by induction and dialectical reasoning some very 
 general view of the subject of investigation, and then 
 to distinguish different elements within it, and to 
 endeavour, by further inductions and inferences, to 
 determine their relations as parts of a whole which is 
 one with itself through all its differences. He thus 
 proceeds not from the concrete to the abstract, but 
 from the abstract to the concrete, not by analysis and 
 
 was spoken of as supplying the middle term in scientific demonstra- 
 tion. Another view is suggested in the Metajjhysic (Book 7, ch. 11 
 seq.) by the fact that Aristotle has great difficulty in determining 
 that the definition of a substance should express only its form and 
 not its matter. There and more definitely in his works upon the 
 science of nature (especially Phys., II, 8, and the Part. An., I, 1) it 
 is recognised that there are two lines of scientific enquiry ; one, 
 which deals with the final cause (which is shown to be one with 
 the formal cause) and the properties deducible therefrom ; and 
 another, which deals with the necessary conditions of its realisa- 
 tion, and, therefore, with material and efficient causes. Matter, 
 of course, is here taken not as the indeterminate basis of all exist- 
 ence of which he speaks in 2Iet., 1029a, 24, but as equivalent to 
 the material constituents (in our sense) of the plants or animals. 
 This corresponds to the view of Plato spoken of above (pp. 130, 
 2-41). I shall have to say more of it in the next chapter. In 
 reference to these differences, I can only suggest that Aristotle 
 forgets or modifies his general statements, when he has to deal 
 with particular branches of science.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 327 
 
 formal deduction, but by differentiation and integra- 
 tion; or, in other words, by the evohition of differences 
 and the reconciliation of them or the discovery of their 
 relative character. In fact, there is no other way in 
 which scientific investigation can possibly proceed if it 
 would lead to any profitable result. For what in all 
 cases investigation must seek after is to exchange the 
 vaguely determined wholes of our immediate empirical 
 consciousness for that clear articulation and necessary 
 connexion of the different elements or aspects of a 
 subject, or, in other words, for that systematic complete- 
 ness and unity, which we call science. If we would 
 determine the nature of any whole, says Aristotle 
 himself on one occasion,^ we must divide it into its 
 elementary parts and endeavour to define each of them 
 separately : but, in practice at least, he is never 
 content to conceive any real whole as the mere sum of 
 the parts or as the resultant of their action and 
 reaction upon each other, but seeks to discover how 
 the relative independence of the parts is consistent 
 with, and subordinated to, the unity of the whole. 
 Thus in the Politics he regards the separate families as 
 the elementary parts, or primitive cells, out of which 
 the State is made up, but he is not content to treat 
 the State as a multitude of families acting externally 
 upon each other ; rather he maintains that ' the State 
 is prior to the family,' or in other words, that it is the 
 ^Post. An., 966, 15.
 
 S28 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 higher ethical unity of the State, which first enables 
 us to comprehend fully the function of the family as 
 a constituent part of it. 
 
 But, though the actual science of Aristotle does 
 not agree with his logical ideal, it would be a 
 mistake to suppose that this ideal is without 
 influence upon his philosophy. On the contrary, his 
 logical ideal is the counterpart of his conception of 
 individuality as involving, so to speak, a nucleus of 
 specific determination in each individual substance, 
 which is embedded in a mass of accidents. In other 
 words, Aristotle sharply divides the individual as 
 an object of sense from the universal principle which 
 is realised in it, and which enables us to make it 
 an object of science. He separates the individual 
 as having a specific character from the individual as 
 this particular being in its particular environment. 
 Nor does it carry us much farther that in one passage 
 in the Metaphysics he speaks as if there were a definite 
 form and a definite matter for every individual,^ so 
 long as the form and the matter are not conceived as 
 essentially and entirely relative to each other, that 
 is, so long as the latter is conceived as in any sense 
 accidental or as the source of accidents. For, so long 
 as the separation of these two factors of reality is 
 maintained, we are obliged to regard the true nature 
 of the individual as consisting in that which he 
 
 ^ Met., 1071a, 28.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 329 
 
 is, or would be, apart from all relation to other 
 individuals. Nor can we, on Aristotle's principles, 
 consider this as a mere distinction of the different 
 points of view from which we regard the individual, 
 as, on the one hand, a separate being, and as, on the 
 other hand, a part of a more comprehensive in- 
 dividuality. Aristotle, indeed, seems at times to 
 encourage this conception, as when he tells us that 
 an individual human being, when severed from society, 
 is no more worthy of being called a man than a hand, 
 when separated from the body, would be worthy of 
 being called a hand. Are we then to say that there 
 are different degrees of substantiality or individuality, 
 and that a civic society is a higher kind of substance 
 than an individual man ? Could the Aristotelian 
 philosophy allow of such a conception of substance 
 or individuality ? 
 
 There are some passages in Aristotle in which this 
 conception is at least suggested. Thus in the seventh 
 book of the Metaphysics ^ he raises the question how a 
 substance can be defined. To define it, he argues, we 
 must resolve it into its elements ; but what can these 
 elements be ? They cannot be substances, for sub- 
 stances by their very nature as individuals are separated 
 from each other, and different substances cannot be 
 contained in one substantial unity. Yet they cannot 
 be other than substances, for it is impossible to suppose 
 ^Met., VII, 13.
 
 330 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 a substance made up of qualities or relations. It 
 would appear, therefore, that a substance cannot be 
 resolved into any elements at all, and, therefore, 
 cannot be defined. Yet the substance is just that 
 which we seek to define ; indeed, it is on the defini- 
 tion of it that all demonstrative science is based. 
 Aristotle ends with the promise of a further dis- 
 cussion of the subject, a promise which is nowhere 
 adequately fulfilled.^ 
 
 Yet there are passages in this chapter which 
 seem to suggest that what from one point of view 
 may be regarded as an individual substance or 
 self-determined whole — say, an individual man — 
 may from another point of view be regarded as a 
 res incompleta, an imperfect individuality, when we 
 realise his essential relation to other individuals 
 in society.^ If, however, Aristotle had ever entered 
 
 * So far as I am aware, the only attempt which he makes in 
 this direction is in a passage already quoted {Met., 10456, 16) in 
 which he speaks of form and matter as essentially correlative. 
 This, however, could not really solve the difficulty ; for, in the 
 first place, this correlativity is not consistently maintained ; and, 
 in the second place, even if it were maintained, it would not 
 enable us to distinguish different elements in the form. For 
 Aristotle does not seem here to be speaking of matter in the sense 
 of the logical genus. 
 
 ^ Met., 1039a, 2. This seems to be involved in what he says 
 of the principle that 77 ivTiK^x^ia x^pi^'ei, and that e.g. in the 
 number 2, the two units exist only potentially, while they exist 
 actually only when the units are separated from each other. This 
 would seem to point to the only possible solution of the diropta
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 331 
 
 upon his course of explanation, he would have been 
 carried on, like Plato, from the individual to the 
 State and from the State to the world, and he would 
 have been able to find absolute individuality only where 
 Plato found absolute universality, in the universe as a 
 whole or in God as its principle. In other words, he 
 would have been obliged to regard all other individual 
 substances but God or the universe as imperfectly 
 individualised, and he would have been compelled at 
 the same time to treat the conception of the contingent 
 or accidental as existing only from the point of view 
 of the part. But to have done this would have been 
 to go quite beyond the general principles which he 
 acknowledges in all his speculations. Aristotle, 
 indeed, as we shall see, holds that there is in God 
 a unity which transcends and comprehends all the 
 forms of things, a unity of the intelligible world ; but 
 he never imagined that any such unity is to be found 
 in the world of experience. 
 
 To discover Aristotle's view of the highest kind 
 of unity to which science can attain, we must turn 
 
 with which the chapter ends, whether a substance can be composed 
 of substances or of elements that are not substances, both of which 
 alternatives are impossible. It can, we may answer, be composed 
 of substances, but these substances can exist in it only potentially 
 or as elements of its higher individuality. They can exist actually 
 only when this higher substance is destroyed. This seems the 
 necessary consequence of Aristotle's reasoning, but he nowhere 
 accepts it. Nor, indeed, could he accept it without great modifi- 
 cations in his theory of ovalai.
 
 332 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 to the De Anima, where he treats it mainly from 
 the point of view of the subject of knowledge. 
 In that treatise he discusses the position of intelli- 
 gence in relation to the complex nature of man, and 
 endeavours to explain its nature as a universal faculty 
 which yet is subjected in its development to the 
 conditions of man's finite life. For while, as I have 
 stated above,-^ it is the characteristic of reason to 
 be determined by nothing but itself, yet it cannot 
 act or develop itself in man without the aid of 
 sensuous perception and imagination. It must, there- 
 fore, be capable of receiving impressions, and, indeed, 
 of receiving impressions from all the objects which 
 can be known by it ; yet, on the other hand, these im- 
 pressions must not alter its own nature or do anything 
 except to give it occasion to determine itself. How 
 is it possible to combine such opposite conditions ? 
 To discover Aristotle's answer to this question, it is 
 necessary to follow somewhat closely the pregnant 
 and somewhat obscure utterances in which he sets 
 before us his view of the rational life of man. 
 
 In the first place, he declares^ that there is an 
 analogy between reason and sense, in so far as both are 
 capable of being affected, in some way, by objects, and 
 so stimulated to apprehend them. Yet, as he contends 
 such affection or stimulation only makes them realise 
 what potentially they are. Hence in apprehending 
 
 1 Pp. 292 seq. : 331 seq. "^ De An., Ill, 4 f^eq.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 333 
 
 their objects, sense and reason may be said to be only 
 apprehending themselves. But there is a two-fold 
 difference between them. For, in the first place, 
 each sense is confined to a definite object — the ear 
 to sound, the eye to colour, etc. — and even that object 
 it can apprehend only within certain limits of in- 
 tensity. But reason has no limit to its capacity in 
 either of these aspects : it is capable of apprehending 
 all objects and under all conditions. Like pure 
 matter, it is a potentiality for all the forms of 
 things; for it has no nature of its own which could 
 come between it and other things or prevent it 
 from seeing them as they are. Hence it is not 
 going beyond itself in knowing anything else. Eather 
 in all knowledge it is realising its own nature and 
 so coming to a consciousness of itself. We may. 
 therefore, say that it is absolutely impassive, in so 
 far as in no exercise of its knowing faculty is it 
 drawn beyond itself or subjected to a foreign 
 influence. Eather in apprehending objects it 'gains 
 the mastery ' over them, and uses them to evolve 
 its own powers. While, therefore, the data of 
 sense may supply the first occasion for its action, 
 the principle of its activity is always in itself, and 
 we have to conceive all the process of its develop- 
 ment as one of self-determination; or, as Aristotle 
 puts it, of the determination of the passive by 
 the active reason, Aristotle's conception of reason,
 
 334 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 however, as at once a universal receptivity and a pure 
 activity, has given occasion to so much controversy 
 that it seems desirable to quote his own words.^ 
 
 " Here," he declares, " we have to bring in a 
 distinction of elements or factors, which prevails 
 throughout all nature. For in every kind of reality 
 we find, on the one hand, a matter as the potentiality 
 out of which it is produced, and, on the other 
 hand, a cause or active principle which realises itself 
 therein : and this distinction necessarily extends to 
 the soul. There is then a reason, the characteristic of 
 which is that it becomes everything, and a reason the 
 characteristic of which is that it produces everything. 
 And the latter exists as a positive source of activity ,2 
 like light which turns potential into actual colour. 
 Now it is this form of reason which exists separately, 
 unmingled and impassive, its very being consisting 
 in its activity ; for that which is active is always 
 superior to that which is passive, and the determining 
 principle to the matter it determines. But science, 
 in which active reason realise? itself, is one with 
 the reality which is its object ; while the potentiality 
 of science, though prior to actual science in time 
 in the individual, is posterior to it even in time, if 
 we speak generally. Nor must we suppose that the 
 active reason sometimes thinks and sometimes does 
 
 ^De An., Ill, 5. 
 
 ^ ws e^ts Tts. I think the opposition of e^ts to areprjaLS is suggested.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 335 
 
 not think ; it thinks always, though it manifests this 
 its essential nature only when it has been separated ; 
 and it is of it alone that we can say that it is 
 immortal and eternal. We however" (as the finite 
 subjects in whom reason realises itself) " are liable to 
 forgetfulness ; for though the rational power which 
 is in us cannot be affected by anything else, there 
 is also in us a passive reason, which is capable of 
 decay and death, and except by means of this passive 
 reason we do not think anything." 
 
 In this chapter we can see very clearly the diffi- 
 culties under which Aristotle is placed in attempting 
 to bring together the two aspects of man's intelli- 
 gence, as a universal principle which yet must be 
 conceived as developing itself in a finite individual 
 subject. Eeason, from the former point of view, is 
 impassive and active and it can be determined by 
 nothing but itself. Yet at first it exists in man 
 only as a potentiality ; and as a potentiality 
 it would seem to be exposed to influences from 
 without, while, as a universal potentiality, it 
 would seem to be exposed to such influences from 
 everything. How does Aristotle unite these two 
 apparently contradictory characteristics of it ? He 
 does so, as I have already pointed out, simply 
 by showing that all that such influences can do is 
 to become the occasion, not of imposing anything 
 upon reason, or putting anything into it from without,
 
 336 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 but only of calling out its power of determining 
 itself. Its universal potentiality or openness to 
 everything — which at first sight looks like emptiness, 
 and seems to involve its being subject to every im- 
 pression — is really a capacity of overpowering every 
 such impression, and finding itself in everything. 
 " It must therefore, since it apprehends all things, 
 be pure and unmingled, that it may overcome all 
 objects, that is, that it may know them." ^ 
 
 But this, again, raises the question, how objects 
 are in the first instance given to reason ? Aristotle 
 answers that they are given to it through the per- 
 ceptions of sense, and the images which are derived 
 therefrom. But we have to remember, in the first 
 place, that even the perceptions of sense are not for 
 Aristotle mere impressions ; for, as we have seen, 
 objects act upon sense only to call out its own 
 potentiality. Thus the activity of sense already 
 strips objects of their ' sensible matter,' and appre- 
 hends only their ' sensible forms.' These sensible 
 forms, again, which are taken up into the imagin- 
 ation, though they are free from the sensible matter 
 of their objects, have still what Aristotle calls an 
 ' intelligible matter ' ^ attaching to them, in so far 
 as they are images of objects in space and time, 
 
 ^DeAn.y 429a, 19. 
 
 2 Aristotle's conception of 'intelligible matter' has a close analogy 
 to Kant's doctrine as to the forms of sense (cf, Met., 1036a, 10),
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 337 
 
 and not, therefore, objects of pure thought. Thus 
 they are not in the highest sense intelligible, 
 though, as Aristotle maintains, we cannot think at 
 all without them. They are the vehicles in 
 which the forms of things are brought within the 
 reach of our intelligence, the occasions for pure 
 reason to exercise its faculty and to evolve its 
 potentiality. It is in this sense, then, that Aris- 
 totle says that the development of knowledge means 
 the determination of reason as passive or potential 
 by reason as active. But he is obliged to add that 
 such determination is not possible, except so far as 
 the passive reason is already supplied with the 
 images of sense ; and that it is in these images or 
 sensible forms, and not directly in itself, that the 
 reason finds at first the objects or forms which are 
 purely intelligible.^ In this way the self-determina- 
 tion of the mind does not exclude its receiving its 
 forms through the medium of sense and imagina- 
 tion ; for, in doing so, it is not receiving into itself 
 anything foreign, but only, as it were, recovering and 
 recognising what is its own. All that reason has to 
 do is to set aside or discount the intelligible matter 
 in such images, in order to grasp its proper object, 
 the object in which alone it can find itself. 
 
 ^ ev To7s etdecTi tois ahd-qrots rb. porjTd ian (De An., 432a, 4). Our 
 actualised knowledge for Aristotle is of the individual, which is pre- 
 sented in sense or imagination (cf. Met., 1087a, 19), though we 
 can distinguish the universal from the particular element in it. 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 338 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 We see, tlien, how it is that Aristotle could make 
 a distinction between the active and the passive 
 reason, and yet regard them as one. The reason of 
 man, in his view, is identical with the absolute reason, 
 with this difference — that the absolute reason is com- 
 plete in itself, and independent of all time-process, 
 while in man reason, at first, appears as a potenti- 
 ality which can be developed only by means of the 
 data of sense. Yet these data are merely means or 
 occasions of its own action, and what it finds in 
 them, or rather, we might say, extracts from them, is 
 the pure forms which are one with its own nature. 
 In this sense, therefore, it is never determined by 
 anything but itself. We are not, therefore, to think 
 of the active reason as something external to the 
 individual, but simply as the correlate of the 
 universal potentiality which belongs to him as a 
 finite subject, who cannot realise himself at once, 
 but only by a process of development. Our know- 
 ledge, as knowledge, is the manifestation of a 
 universal principle, and yet, from another point of 
 view, it is dependent on a sensible process, which 
 must be stimulated from without by its appropriate 
 objects. Thus it is limited in its evolution by the 
 conditions of a sensitive life, from which, nevertheless, 
 it emancipates itself in so far as it is realised. We 
 know, indeed, as ' spectators of all time and exist- 
 ence,' as conscious subjects who arc only as they
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 339 
 
 think and think as they are ; for intelligence is the 
 same thing in all in whom it is developed, and in 
 every one its nature is to emancipate itself from 
 individual conditions, and to regard things not from 
 the point of view of a particular organism, but from 
 the point of view of a pure subject of knowledge. 
 Hence, while, in one sense, reason is what is most 
 our own, in another sense it may be said to be in- 
 dependent of the individuality in which it is realised ; 
 for, in so far as we know, it is not our individu- 
 ality which is in question, but the reason that dwells 
 in us ; and if this reason were completely realised, 
 it would be an intelligence which no longer took 
 any account of the particular self as a being with a 
 determinate individual existence in space and time. 
 It would not remember nor expect, and it would be 
 free from all feelings of love and hate, which depend 
 on the personal relations of this individual. Nay, 
 we may go farther: for, as all finite individu- 
 ality would drop out of view for a subject which 
 contemplated only the forms of things in their pure 
 ideal relations with each other, there would for it be 
 no difference in things which would not be at once 
 transparent, and therefore no process from one thing 
 to another. Discourse of reason would cease in the 
 pure intuition of truth in its unity. 
 
 This view of reason will become more intelligible, 
 if we follow Aristotle a little farther in the contrast
 
 340 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 he draws between pure reason and the discursive 
 faculty which, for want of a better name, we might 
 call the understanding. Reason, as we have seen, 
 apprehends its objects in their intelligible forms, 
 freed from all the images of sense. It grasps the 
 ideal unity which is hidden from us by tlte sensible 
 or intelligible matter, that is, by the manifold sensuous 
 or imaginative elements in connexion with which 
 they are at first presented. For it, therefore, objects 
 are simple and indivisible, as is the act of thought 
 wherein they are known. And, as this intuitive act 
 is completely one with itself and does not admit of 
 division, it excludes the possibility of error. In 
 this activity of reason, therefore, there are no 
 degrees of knowledge; we either know the truth 
 altogether or we do not know it at all. In 
 our ordinary consciousness of things, on the other 
 hand, we have to admit the possibility of many 
 intermediate stages between absolute ignorance and 
 complete knowledge : for in ordinary experience we 
 have to deal not with transparent unities in which 
 no element can be separated from the rest, but 
 with complex data including in themselves many 
 disparate elements, which may be connected with 
 each other but cannot be identified. And in forming 
 such connexions, the discursive reason or under- 
 standing has to proceed by judgment and inference. 
 Thus it moves from one point or datum to another.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 341 
 
 without having, at least while the process lasts, 
 any intuition of the unity of the whole. The highest 
 result of this discursive process, however, is just to 
 attain such an intuition ; and when the intuition 
 comes, it will make the process of thought super- 
 fluous ; f(tr the mind, to which the whole object is an 
 indivisible unity, has no longer any need to connect 
 the parts together by any links of argument. 
 
 In the last paragraph, I am perhaps going a little 
 beyond the words of Aristotle, but not, I think, 
 beyond what is implied in them. For the simplicity 
 and indivisibility of the objects of reason cannot be 
 taken as absolutely excluding all difference, but 
 only as meaning that no element can be separated 
 from the rest. We may, therefore, illustrate what 
 Aristotle means by comparing the kind of know- 
 ledge of a science which is possessed by the 
 learner or discoverer — for whom every new step is 
 a surprise till it has been brought by reasoning into 
 connexion with what is already known — with the 
 kind of knowledge possessed by one who grasps the 
 science as a unity in which every truth involves all 
 the others. In this sense, the whole process of 
 learning might be described as the process whereby 
 discursive passes into intuitive reason; for the ideal 
 which in all investigation we are seeking, and in 
 which alone the scientific impulse can be satisfied, 
 is that of a unity of knowledge which is completely
 
 342 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 differentiated into all its parts and yet seen to be 
 one with itself through aU its differences. The 
 great steps in the progress of thought are just 
 those in which some new insight makes a scattered 
 mass of observations and inferences suddenly coalesce 
 into one indivisible body of truth. 
 
 While, however, we may fairly interpret in this 
 way what Aristotle says of the indivisible objects 
 of reason, we have to remember that for him these 
 objects are not the phenomena of ordinary experience 
 but the intelligible forms of things, and these alone. 
 For it is only ' in things without matter ' that 
 reason finds the objects, which it can identify with 
 itself. Hence Aristotle goes on to contrast these 
 objects not only with sensible objects but even 
 with all objects which possess ' intelligible matter.' 
 Anything that has quantity — anything that occupies 
 a part of space and time — has in it an imagina- 
 tive element which is inconsistent with the pure 
 unity of thought. A quantitative whole, indeed, 
 may be apprehended as a unity and by one 
 indivisible act of mind ; for, though divisible, it 
 may not be actually divided in our apprehension 
 of it. In other words, we may take it as con- 
 tinuous or as discrete just as we please ; and 
 while, in the former case, the act of mind by 
 which it is apprehended is one and indivisible, in 
 the latter case the mental activity becomes divided
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 343 
 
 into several acts like its object. But in the case 
 of the pure form, there is no such alternative 
 possibility. The intelligible form, as such, is simple, 
 and it cannot be apprehended except in one indivisible 
 act of thought ; for in the case of such a form, as 
 we have already seen, we must either have absolute 
 knowledge, or we must be completely ignorant.^ 
 
 In the contrast thus drawn by Aristotle between 
 an object quantitatively determined, and an object of 
 pure thought, there is a measure of truth ; for a 
 quantity, as such, is not an organic whole. We 
 may take it either in its unity with itself or in its 
 difference, either in its continuity or in its discretion, 
 as we please ; but we cannot conceive it as an object 
 which is one with itself in and through its difference, 
 so long as we take it simply as a quantity. On the 
 other hand, anyone who leaves out the quantitative 
 aspect of things altogether, in order to reach their 
 unity, will, so far, be making that unity empty and 
 abstract. He will be securing unity not by synthesis, 
 but by the omission of difference and multiplicity. 
 And if he proceeds farther in this direction, the 
 simplicity he attains will not be that of a whole 
 which is indivisible — because no part of it can be 
 conceived without the rest — but that of a bare identity, 
 
 1 De An., 430&, 5-20. We must however always remember that in 
 our knowledge the vov^ TradrjTiKos is always involved, and we cannot 
 voeiv avev (pavTaafxaros, though we may discount the image.
 
 344 ARISTOTLE^S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 which is one with itself because it has no content 
 at all. The exclusion of the quantitative from the 
 unity of the pure form thus suggests a suspicion 
 that Aristotle is seeking for unity by the way of 
 abstraction. And this suspicion is confirmed by what 
 he says in the immediate context/ in which he seems 
 to be answering the objection that the pure forms 
 cannot be simple because they have negatives or oppo- 
 sites, which are apprehended by the same act of mind 
 whereby we grasp the forms themselves ; for the 
 knowledge of opposites is one. If this be the case, 
 therefore, it seems impossible that the knowledge of 
 such forms can be attained by a simple and in- 
 divisible act of mind. 
 
 Now, the true answer to this difficulty would seem 
 to be that, as correlated factors in one conception, the 
 positive and the negative, the form and its opposite, 
 are apprehended in one indivisible act of thought, and 
 that, in this sense, they constitute a simple and 
 indivisible unity. But the answer of Aristotle appears 
 to be not this, but that the negatives or opposites of 
 the pure forms exist only in the phenomenal world, in 
 the region of matter and change. Hence also the 
 mind only apprehends the negatives or opposites of the 
 forms along with them, in so far as it has a material 
 or sensible basis, and, therefore, itself belongs to the 
 world of change. But for the absolute intelligence no 
 
 ^DeAn., iSOh. 20.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 845 
 
 opposition or negation can exist. It has no connexion 
 with matter, and, therefore, no alternative potentiali- 
 ties. In its pure intuitive energy it is simply positive 
 or affirmative of itself, and has not to deal v^^ith the 
 negative, even as a possibility.-^ 
 
 Now I will not say that such language is quite 
 conclusive as to Aristotle's views. It is possible to 
 take it as meaning simply that all oppositions and 
 differences of thought are relative, and imply a unity 
 which transcends them ; and that a perfect intelligence 
 must contemplate all things in relation to this unity. 
 If we adopted this view, we might say that Aristotle 
 does not dismiss negation and opposition as unreal or 
 as not entering into the objects of reason, but simply 
 contends that they are never to be taken as absolute 
 negation or opposition ; in other words, that they are 
 only to be regarded as expressing the negative relation 
 to each other of the indivisible factors of one whole. 
 But when we consider Aristotle's general treatment of 
 the idea of negation, and how he frequently attacks 
 Plato for maintaining that opposites directly affect 
 each other, it is difficult to attribute to him any such 
 doctrine. In his whole discussion of the law of con- 
 tradiction, again, he seems to lay all the emphasis 
 upon the reciprocal exclusiveness of the affirmative 
 and the negative ; nor does he ever seem to realise the 
 truth that, if things have no positive relation, they 
 
 1 De An., 4306, 24 : cf. Met., 10756, 24.
 
 346 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 cannot even exclude each other ; for, even in order to 
 exclusion, they must be conceived as included in some 
 larger unity. Finally, this view of Aristotle's meaning 
 is confirmed by the comparison which he draws ^ 
 between the intuition by which reason apprehends the 
 pure forms of things and the apprehension by sense of 
 the ' special sensibles,' which also he regards as simple 
 and indivisible, independent of all judgment or infer- 
 ence, and therefore exempt from the possibility of 
 error. Aristotle fails to see that even the special 
 sensibles cannot be apprehended without discrimination, 
 nor, therefore, without mental process. On the other 
 hand, even if we could conceive of something — say, a 
 sensation of sound or colour — as given to the mind 
 through sense, in an immediate intuition which implied 
 no activity of thought, it would not supply any fit 
 illustration of the intuitions of reason. For, though 
 an intuition of reason may be called simple and 
 indivisible, it is not in the sense of a bare unit which 
 has no mediation, but in the sense of an organic unity, 
 whose manifold elements are so perfectly mediated 
 with each other that we can no longer think of any 
 one of them except as involving, and involved in, the 
 whole. 
 
 To sum up the result of this lecture. Our exami- 
 nation of the Aristotelian conception of science has 
 shown that his separation of the theoretical from the 
 
 ^De An., 4306, 29 seq.
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 347 
 
 practical activity of reason is based upon a principle 
 which greatly narrows his view of the former. 
 Practice is conceived as an imperfect manifestation 
 of reason because it deals with the particular; and, 
 on the same grounds, practical science is regarded 
 as less exact, and therefore of less scientific value 
 than the other sciences. For science, in the highest 
 sense of the word, has only to do with the definition 
 of substances and the deduction of consequences from 
 these definitions. It thus excludes from its considera- 
 tion the accidental element which enters into the 
 nature and the circumstances of every individual 
 finite substance. It deals only with the universal, 
 the pure forms of things and what is demonstrable 
 from them. In the De Anima we are carried a step 
 farther, in so far as the demonstrative process itself 
 appears to be discounted or transcended in the idea 
 of a pure intuition of reason. For the objects which 
 reason grasps are, as we have seen, simple and in- 
 divisible, and their whole nature must be apprehended 
 in a simple and indivisible act. Now, if we take 
 this simplicity in the highest sense, it will refer not 
 to an abstract unit or identity, but to the organic 
 or super-organic unity of a whole, in which no part 
 can ever be separated from the rest without losing 
 its essential character. What, on this view, Aristotle 
 means, is that we know a thing truly only when its 
 diversity is completely taken up into its unity, so
 
 348 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF REASON 
 
 that, if known at all, it must be known as in all its 
 constituents the expression of one principle. In this 
 sense it might without difficulty be acknowledged 
 that the discourse of reason culminates in making 
 way for an intuition, which completely transcends 
 it, and renders it henceforth unnecessary. But Aris- 
 totle fails to develop his view to its consequences, 
 and that in two ways. In the first place, he forgets 
 to trace the necessary connexion between the discur- 
 sive operations of the mind and the intuition in 
 which they result. At least we cannot find that he 
 calls attention to the fact that the object of the 
 intuition is a concrete unity, which contains in itself 
 all the elements- distinguished and related by the 
 discursive faculty, though, of course, it casts upon 
 them a new light v/hich greatly alters our first thoughts 
 of them. In the second place, Aristotle's initial error 
 in making an essential division between form and 
 matter, or in not carrying out fully the idea that 
 they are correlative with each other, leads to a separa- 
 tion of the world of experience, the world of change 
 which is subjected to the conditions of space and 
 time, from the world of intelligible forms which can 
 be only apprehended by pure reason. Hence, as 
 the unity of the intuitive reason is not reached 
 by means of a synthesis which embraces all things 
 in their concrete nature, but only by a synthesis 
 of all things in their pure form without any matter,
 
 IN ITS THEORETICAL USE 349 
 
 it is a unity which is reached by abstraction from 
 many of the aspects of reality. And it is a 
 dialectical necessity that he who omits any element 
 of the whole, will be driven to omit other elements 
 connected with them, and others again connected with 
 these, till the whole is emptied of its contents and 
 reduced to a barren identity. Thus Aristotle, the 
 most scientific of minds, had placed his philosophy, 
 as it were, upon a sliding-scale, which leads ultimately 
 to the mystical negation of all science. At the same 
 time, we can see that the organic idea, which he never 
 consistently applied but which never ceases in some 
 degree to influence him, leaves the result of his 
 philosophy somewhat ambiguous, and even makes it 
 possible for some interpreters to maintain that he 
 rose ' above all dualism ' ^ to the conception of the 
 world as a self-consistent system. Nay, he even 
 seems to assert the same thing himself.^ Before, 
 however, we can venture to pronounce a final judg- 
 ment upon this question, we must consider Aristotle's 
 doctrine as to the nature of God and his relation 
 to the world. 
 
 ^ See especially A. Bullinger, Aristotle^s Metaphyf>ic and his various 
 other essays upon Aristotelian subjects. 
 2 Met., 1076a, 4.
 
 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 DOES THE PEIMACY BELONG TO EEASON 
 OR TO WILL? 
 
 In the last two lectures we have considered Aristotle's 
 views of the practical and of the theoretical life, 
 and the grounds on which he regards the latter as 
 a purer and higher expression of reason than the 
 former. Practical reason has to realise itself in a 
 subject-matter which is not purely rational but 
 mixed with contingency, and in which the univer- 
 sality of pure science is reduced to generality, and 
 the absolute necessity of law to the hypothetical 
 necessity of empirical fact. But the theoretical 
 reason is free from all such limits. Its object is 
 the universal and eternal, the forms of things apart 
 from their matter, and as these forms are the 
 counterpart of its own nature, it may even be said 
 that its only object is itself. From this it follows 
 that ethics cannot, as Plato supposed, be based upon 
 metaphysics. Indeed, whatever connexion there is
 
 REASON OR WILL 351 
 
 between them lies in the opposite direction ; for it 
 is the virtues of the moral and political life that 
 form the indispensable basis or precondition for the 
 development and exercise of those higher qualities 
 which are shown in the life of contemplation. 
 
 Aristotle's exaltation of theory above practice will 
 become more intelligible if we compare it with the 
 opposite view which is more prevalent in modern 
 times, and which regards science as confined to the 
 narrow sphere of a finite experience, while it finds a 
 way to the infinite only through ideas connected 
 with our practical life. On the whole, ancient 
 philosophy tended towards what has been called 
 * intellectualism ' and regarded the pure activity of 
 reason as that in which man rises into t4ie most 
 intimate communion with the divine. But in modern 
 times, especially since Kant, the trend of opinion has 
 often been in the opposite direction, namely, to regard 
 scientific knowledge as limited to the phenomenal 
 world of experience, and to look to the impulses of 
 the will or the demands of practical reason to 
 free us from such limitations and supply us with 
 grounds for belief in some higher reality. If we 
 can discern the causes of this marked difference 
 between the ancient point of view and that which 
 has been most popular, at least in recent times, it 
 will carry us some way toward the determination 
 of their respective values ; in other words, it will
 
 352 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 help us to decide whether the truth lies in either 
 of these extremes or in some higher view in which 
 the opposition between them is transcended. 
 
 Now, we have already seen how Aristotle was 
 led to his view of the primacy of the contemplative 
 life. The opposite view, which has been much 
 favoured in recent speculations on the nature of 
 religion, finds its foremost representative in Kant. 
 It was the aim of the Critique of Pure Reason to 
 show that the objective world — the only world of 
 which we can have scientific know^ledge — is a 
 thorough-going system of necessity, a system of 
 objects represented as existing in space and time, 
 and reacting upon each other according to fixed 
 laws which are altogether independent of our will. 
 Of this objective system we, as natural beings, are 
 parts, and in it we find the satisfaction of our 
 immediate impulses ; but there is nothing in it or 
 in ourselves as parts of it, which could suggest 
 the existence of any principle either within or without 
 or above us other than the necessity of nature, the 
 necessity that connects all objects with each other. 
 When, however, we reflect on the conditions of our 
 knowledge of this world of externally related pheno- 
 mena, we see that such knowledge is possible only 
 through the unity of the self within us and by the 
 thorough-going synthesis of phenomena according to 
 the principles of the understanding. For, in order
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 353 
 
 that objects may exist for us, it is necessary that 
 the intelHgence should combine the data, given in 
 sense under the forms of time and space, by the 
 aid of the principles of causality, reciprocity, and 
 the other principles of the understanding, so as 
 to produce a connected experience — an experience 
 which can be referred to one self. But this, 
 again, leads to a further step in the analysis 
 of knowledge ; for, when we realise what is meant 
 by this reference of experience to the unity of one 
 self, we see that it involves certain ideas or ideals 
 of reason, by which we are guided in applying the 
 principles of the understanding. The conscious self 
 in all its constructive activity — in its endeavour to 
 construe its own life, in its endeavour to determine 
 the connexion of outward phenomena, and finally in 
 its effort to bring together in one both these forms 
 of experience — is guided and stimulated by the ideas 
 of the self, the world and God; and of each of these 
 it thinks as a systematic whole which is absolutely 
 one with itself through all its differences. Of these 
 ideas it cannot get rid, yet neither is it possible 
 for it to realise or verify them in experience. 
 The ultimate verdict of the Critique in relation to 
 them is, therefore, an open one. To reason in 
 its theoretical use, they must always remain proble- 
 matical, that is, they must remain ideals which it 
 
 can and must aim at in the development of its 
 VOL. I. z
 
 354 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 knowledge, but which it can neither assert nor deny 
 to be real. They are, as it were, dark lanterns 
 which illumine the object but not themselves, which 
 throw light upon experience and enable us to detect 
 its phenomenal character, yet without revealing 
 anything as to the existence of real objects corre- 
 sponding to themselves. If we have any right to 
 believe in the existence of any such objects, it must 
 be not upon theoretical grounds, but in virtue of 
 some practical necessity to affirm their reality. 
 
 Now, such a practical necessity is found in the 
 moral law which, as it issues unconditioned com- 
 mands, compels us to believe in our own freedom. 
 And the idea of an intelligible world is just the 
 conception on which we must take our stand, in 
 order to think of ourselves as self-determining beings,^ 
 or to refer our own actions to ourselves as their 
 origin and cause. Thus while the theoretical reason 
 forced us to deny that the ego is under the law 
 of necessity, which applies only to its objects, the 
 practical reason reveals to us that we are under 
 the law of freedom, or, in other words, that in all 
 our action we are determined only by ourselves. 
 But what is this law of freedom ? It is the 
 counterpart of the ideas of reason ; for these are all 
 reducible to different applications of the conception 
 
 ^ Metaph. der Sitten, III, ** Von der aiissersten Grenze aller 
 practischeu Philosophie."
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 355 
 
 of self-consistent or systematic unity. To say that 
 a rational being, as such, is under the law of freedom 
 means, therefore, that in all its actions it must be 
 consistent with itself, and that this consistency must 
 be its sole motive. 
 
 Now, if we free this idea from the ambiguity which 
 attaches to Kant's different expressions of it — as bare 
 logical consistency, as consistency with the self, and as 
 consistency with the idea of a possible kingdom of 
 ends ^ — what he seems to mean is that a moral life is 
 one which in all its acts is in perfect organic unity 
 with itself. Further, as the unity of the self is a 
 principle to which all the intelligible world is relative, 
 the moral law not only demands the systematic unity 
 of the life of the individual, but postulates the idea of 
 a system of the universe in which all the ideas of 
 reason are realised, and all things are brought into 
 unity with each other and with the intelligence. In 
 other words, it postulates not only the freedom of the 
 individual, but the conformity of all the conditions 
 of his life to such freedom : or, as Kant puts it, it 
 postulates both the immortality of the soul to work 
 out its infinite task, and the existence of God as the 
 ultimate principle of unity by which tlie order of the 
 material world is conformed to the demands of self- 
 
 ^ The main defects of Kant's view arise, as I have tried to show 
 elsewhere {Critical Philosophy of Kant, II, p. 218), from his follow- 
 ing out the first of these formulas to the exclusion of the other two.
 
 356 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 determining reason, and happiness is bound up with 
 goodness. 
 
 The general result of Kant's doctrine, then, is that, 
 while there is nothing in the objective world, viewed 
 simply in itself, to raise our thoughts above the 
 necessity of nature, we find in our practical conscious- 
 ness a sufficient warrant for the belief in our own 
 freedom and in the existence of a spiritual Being 
 like ourselves, who is the ultimate principle of all 
 reality, and through whom, therefore, all reality is 
 determined in conformity with the demands of our 
 spirits. This Being we cannot, indeed, know, as we 
 know the objects of ordinary experience, but the 
 thought of him is bound up with the consciousness 
 of self and with all the experience which the unity 
 of the self makes possible; and the helief in him 
 is implied in our consciousness of the law that gives 
 order and direction to our practical life. In this 
 case, and in this case alone, can we vindicate our 
 right to believe what we loill to believe, but cannot 
 know ; and the limitations which science cannot 
 transcend are set aside by the imperative voice of 
 duty, which compels us to think of the universe as 
 ordered in conformity with itself. 
 
 Such, in outline, is the Kantian theory of the 
 relation of our ordinary experience — our immediate 
 consciousness of the world and ourselves — to that 
 higher idea of both which is presupposed by morality
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 357 
 
 and religion. And we find the same theory repeated 
 with modifications by many writers in the present day, 
 who, without adhering closely to Kantian principles, 
 adopt his general conception of the limits of know- 
 ledge. To such writers science seems to be confined 
 to the task of tracing out the lines of natural necessity 
 by which one phenomenon, or phase of existence, is 
 bound to another ; and the possibility of escape from 
 this iron circle of causation is supposed to be opened 
 up by the revolt of human hearts against it. Thus 
 tlie feeling of inconsistency between the conditions 
 of finite existence and the obligations laid upon us by 
 our spiritual nature, the demand of the soul for a good 
 more complete and enduring than any of the changing 
 objects of sense, or the aspiration after an ideal beauty 
 which is never adequately realised in the world — are 
 regarded as a sufficient warrant for casting aside the 
 ordinary tests of credibility and basing belief upon the 
 will to delieve. In many different ways the will, or 
 the heart, or the imagination, is supposed to emanci- 
 pate us from the limitations of sense and experience, 
 and to put us in relation to ends and objects which 
 cannot be brought within the scope of science. 
 
 Now it is easy to see that the two theories or 
 classes of theories, represented by Aristotle and Kant, 
 are diametrically opposed to each other, and it is 
 instructive to draw out the points of contrast between 
 them. With Kant science is confined to the discovery
 
 358 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 of the laws which determine the co-existence and 
 succession of objects and events in the finite world of 
 experience, and it is only through the moral conscious- 
 ness and the practical faith which that consciousness 
 brings with it that we escape from the limits of this 
 system of necessity, and rise to the idea of a spiritual 
 God who rules over a free kingdom of spiritual beings. 
 With Aristotle, on the other hand, moral practice is 
 the hampered activity of reason, working with a matter 
 which can never be perfectly subdued or determined 
 by it, exercising itself in a medium which is exposed 
 to the inroads of a necessity that comes not from 
 within but from without, not from itself, but from 
 nature and circumstance; while it is science which 
 emancipates reason from this foreign yoke, and raises 
 it to a consciousness of all things in their ideal prin- 
 ciples, which is also a consciousness of their unity with 
 the mind that knows them : for, as Aristotle says, in 
 the case of things without matter, the knower and the 
 known are one. Thus it is only the mind which sees 
 the essential forms of things — their final or formal 
 causes — that can attain to the full consciousness and 
 realisation of itself. Putting this contrast in a slightly 
 different way, Kant holds that knowledge can grasp 
 only the external conditions of things, while it is the 
 faith that goes with the moral consciousness which 
 alone can give us insight into the final causes, the 
 ultimate forms of reality, the spiritual principles upon
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 359 
 
 which the universe is based. Aristotle, on the other 
 hand, looks upon practice as a continual struggle with 
 external necessity, while he thinks of Qewpla, philoso- 
 phical contemplation, as the free converse of the mind 
 with itself, the activity of unimpeded reason, which is 
 at the same time the revelation of the nature of God 
 and of the immanent purpose of the universe. In 
 both cases, therefore, we have, on the one side, an 
 immediate view of the world as a resjion of accidental 
 co-existence and external necessity, and, on the other 
 side, a deeper view of it as the manifestation of a 
 spiritual principle, as an organic whole in which an 
 ideal design is ever realising itself. But the difference 
 is that the principles to which the two views are 
 referred change places, and the higher religious and 
 philosophical consciousness is in the one case associated 
 with practice and in the other with theory. 
 
 Now this comparison is very instructive, whether 
 we look at the points in which the two views 
 agree or at those in which they differ. Looking 
 first at the points of agreement, we see that they 
 both start with the presupposition of a certain 
 irrational or non-rational element in things which 
 cannot be explained, though in the case of Aristotle 
 this element is taken as objective, and in the case of 
 Kant as subjective. Thus Aristotle presupposes that 
 there is in the world a substratum of matter, which 
 makes it impossible that formal or final causes should
 
 360 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 be perfectly realised, and which obliges us to explain 
 many things by an external necessity, which is closely 
 allied with contingency, or, at least, leaves much 
 room for it. In like manner, mutatis mutandis 
 Kant bases our experience upon data of sense, of 
 which we can say nothing, except that so they are 
 given. Our mind, indeed, by the aid of principles 
 derived from itself can reduce these data into a 
 fixed and necessary order, and so can construct out 
 of them a world of experience. But it cannot make 
 this world wholly intelligible ; it cannot bring it into 
 agreement with the ideas of reason which are bound up 
 with its consciousness of itself. Thus in both philo- 
 sophies the immediate world of experience is conceived 
 as one in which we continually encounter contingency 
 or external necessity, and it is by abstraction from that 
 world, or rather from the irrational element in it, that 
 we are supposed to attain to the consciousness of 
 an intelligible reality, which is determined only by 
 idea or spiritual principles of connexion. These 
 principles, however, are to Kant only objects of a 
 practical faith which science cannot verify ; while, to 
 Aristotle, they are the supreme objects of science, 
 and, indeed, if we take the word science in its 
 strictest sense, they are the only objects of science. 
 Now there is a plausible explanation of this 
 difference of view which many moderns would be 
 ready to give. It is that Aristotle is still entangled
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 361 
 
 in the illusive search for formal or final causes which 
 belongs to the metaphysical stage of thought. He has 
 not yet discovered what later philosophers were to 
 discover— that that search is hopeless, and that all we 
 can do is to observe the qualities of things as they 
 present themselves, to determine their quantitative 
 relations, and to find out the laws that govern their 
 co-existence and succession. To attempt anything 
 more is to go beyond the possibility of science ; it is 
 to substitute anthropomorphic fancies for the truths 
 which we are able to ascertain by scientific methods. 
 When we think we discover design in nature, what 
 we see is not her real lineaments, but the reflexion of 
 our own faces. If we can attain to more than this, 
 the grounds of our belief must be not objective but 
 subjective, not derived from scientific scrutiny of the 
 world without, but by listening to some voice that 
 speaks within us. If, therefore, we have any right 
 to a faith that there is in nature a principle kindred 
 in some way to our own spirits, and that this principle 
 is the real cause or substance of the world without us, 
 we must find its ground simply in this — that, as Kant 
 showed, we cannot be true to ourselves or live in 
 accordance with the law of our own rational being 
 without presupposing or postulating such a principle. 
 Hence modern philosophy must speak with a humbler 
 voice than the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. 
 It must not pretend to determine scientifically the
 
 862 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 highest principles of reality. It must be content 
 if it can find grounds for a rational faith that, behind 
 the phenomenal veil which hides the truth of things 
 from us, there is a divine reality which corresponds to 
 the highest needs of our souls. For us, in this region 
 of appearance, the true can never be coincident with 
 the good ; but our souls refuse to believe in their 
 ultimate discord, and this refusal is itself a sufficient 
 evidence that, if we could see the whole truth, we 
 should find that they coincide. 
 
 It may, however, as I think, be shown that 
 there is a better way out of the difficulty. The 
 sharp antithesis between the phenomenal and the 
 real or intelligible worlds which is common to 
 Aristotle and Kant — whether it be conceived with 
 the former as a contrast between the sphere of 
 opinion and that of science, or with the latter as a 
 contrast between the sphere of science and that of 
 faith — is the result of a false abstraction. There is 
 no phenomenal world, no world in which reality is 
 veiled from us by a material or irrational element. 
 The only distinction is between the world as im- 
 perfectly conceived and the world as more adequately 
 interpreted. Nor is it true in regard to any object 
 that the utmost science can attain is to find out 
 the external relations of co-existence or succession, 
 in which it stands to other objects. It is, indeed, 
 true that this kind of explanation is the primary
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 863 
 
 work of science, and that, as I have said in a 
 previous lecture, neither Plato nor Aristotle had an 
 adequate perception of the difficulty and extent of 
 this work. It is also true that the higher teleo- 
 logical view of nature cannot be reached, except in 
 so far as this humbler work of science has been 
 achieved. But it is impossible to admit the abstract 
 contrast between mechanism and teleology in the 
 sense in which it has often been maintained. For, 
 in the first place, recent times have seen a new 
 attempt to use the conceptions of organism and 
 organic evolution in the explanation of tlie pheno- 
 mena of nature and, particularly, of the phenomena 
 of the life of plants and animals. But any appli- 
 cation of such categories to natural beings involves 
 that the kingdom of nature is not cut off by any 
 sharp line of division from the kingdom of spirit; 
 but that there are in nature indications of the 
 same upward movement towards an ideal end, which 
 is continued in a higher form in the moral effort 
 of the human will to attain an absolute good. In 
 this sense, modern thought has recognised the same 
 fact which Aristotle half-poetically expresses when 
 he speaks of a ' will of nature,' which reaches beyond 
 the particular impulses of the animals and seeks for 
 the preservation of the individual and the species. 
 Even Kant himself acknowledges that it is necessary 
 to use teleological ideas in dealing with living things;
 
 364 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 though he treats this use as merely ' heuristic/ i.e. 
 as supplying a necessary point of view from which 
 we must carry on our scientific investigations, but 
 not as enabling us to attach any real predicates 
 to such beings as objects. But the division between 
 such a provisional hypothesis or postulate of science 
 and its recognised truth is not easy to maintain — as 
 is shown by the speculations of many of our modern 
 biologists, whose general repudiation of teleological 
 speculations does not prevent them from continually 
 in detail making use of the idea of purpose, whenever 
 it is necessary to explain any special modification of 
 structure or function that seems to conduce to the 
 preservation of the individual or the species. 
 
 We ought not, however, to make too much of 
 such concessions. For it must be allowed that the 
 main work of science has been to follow out the lines 
 of external connexion between phenomena, and that, 
 even in regard to the organic world, it generally 
 pursues the same method to the same result. Even, 
 therefore, if in this region it cannot altogether banish 
 the idea of final causes, yet it keeps that thought 
 as far as possible in the background; and it treats all 
 the phenomena with which it deals as the necessary 
 results of the action and reaction of elements 
 which are not themselves subordinated to any per- 
 vading unity. And the Darwinian theory, many as 
 are the applications of the idea of purpose to which
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 365 
 
 it has led, is itself an attempt to carry the idea 
 of an external necessity, resulting from the rela- 
 tions of the organism and the environment, into 
 the explanation of those very phenomena which 
 were once thought to be the clearest evidences of 
 design. 
 
 But, in the second place, there is a better way 
 of proving the limited and provisional character of 
 the ordinary scientific view of nature, as a system 
 of external necessity ; and Kant himself, though he 
 maintained that view, and indeed, gave it a fuller 
 and more distinctive philosophical expression than 
 anyone before him, was also the first to supply the 
 conclusive means of refuting it. For, while he 
 treated the world of experience as a system of 
 objects — which are external to each other in space, 
 and pass through successive phases in time, according 
 to necessary laws of coexistence and succession — he 
 showed also that this world of necessity stands in 
 essential relation to the unity of the self that 
 knows it. Hence, any explanation of the world, or 
 of any object in it, which does not take account of 
 this relation, must be regarded as abstract and 
 imperfect. Thus the external necessity which charac- 
 terises the objective world when we regard it as 
 complete in itself (as it is generally regarded by 
 science), must receive a new interpretation when 
 we recognise that it cannot be separated from the
 
 366 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 unity of the intelligence. When we rise above the 
 abstractions of the ordinary consciousness and of 
 science, and take a complete or concrete view of 
 the facts, we see that this external necessity never 
 exists apart from an identity which manifests itself 
 in it and controls it. This identity beyond difference, 
 indeed, was recognised by Kant only in the form of 
 an ideal of reason which cannot be realised in experi- 
 ence, or, in his language, of a regulative idea, which 
 cannot be treated as constitutive. But this view 
 implies an imperfect conception of the unity of self- 
 consciousness, and is quite inconsistent with Kant's 
 own conception of the relativity of objects to that 
 unity. For, if the object in its externality be an 
 abstraction which requires an ideal principle of 
 identity to complete it — if, in other words, the 
 object always has a subjective unity underlying all 
 its differences — we can no longer admit that Kant's 
 categories of the understanding are the highest prin- 
 ciples we can apply to the contents of our experience. 
 If, therefore, the special sciences confine themselves 
 to explaining the connexion of phenomena by the 
 external relations of causality and reciprocity, this 
 proves nothing in regard to the limits of knowledge. 
 It proves only that such sciences are not able to 
 speak the last word as to the nature of the objects 
 with which they deal. For, in order to speak that 
 last word, we must regard the world — and everything
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 367 
 
 in it to which we attribute any independent reality — 
 not as an external combination of elements, acting 
 and reacting on each other, but as a unity which is 
 one with itself through all its differences. While, 
 therefore, it may be legitimate for the purposes of 
 science to bring all phenomena under the form of 
 necessity, it is obvious that this is a provisional 
 way of regarding them, and that it cannot furnish 
 us with any ultimate conception of reality. " The 
 truth of necessity is freedom or self-determination," 
 in the sense that whatever claims to be real must 
 be an individual, and that no object is individual 
 except in so far as it is an organic whole which 
 has its principle of unity in itself. 
 
 The result of this line of thought, then, is to 
 break down the abstract opposition which Kant set 
 up — between the object and the subject, between the 
 world known and the self that knows it — by the dis- 
 covery, in the object, of that unity which was sup- 
 posed to characterise the subject. But with this we 
 have also to break down the opposition between the 
 theoretical and the practical life: for the relativity 
 of subject and object, self and not-self, must be 
 accepted in both its aspects ; and if the object cannot 
 be severed from the unity of the self, neither can the 
 unity of the self be severed from the multiplicity 
 and externality of the object. Now Kant, as we 
 have seen, supposed that reason, in its practical
 
 368 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 exercise, carries with it an ideal of freedom or self- 
 determination, which sets it in abstract opposition to 
 the objective world as a system of necessity. This 
 also causes it to condemn that world as phenomenal, 
 and to look beyond it to an intelligible world, in 
 which all things are determined according to the law 
 of liberty, and to a divine intelligence which orders 
 all things according to that law. But one of the 
 necessary presuppositions of this view has already 
 disappeared when we have rejected the conception of 
 the objective world as a world of necessity. And 
 the other necessary presupposition must also dis- 
 appear, when we recognise that the subjective unity of 
 self-consciousness cannot be severed from the objec- 
 tive consciousness of the world in space and time. 
 The relativity of object and subject to each other 
 implies that the unity of the intelligence must 
 be found also in the object ; but it also implies 
 that the intelligence or conscious self, in seeking to 
 realise itself in the object, is only bringing to light 
 what the true nature of the object is. Hence, we 
 cannot suppose that the aspirations of the soul or the 
 obligations of the will can carry us into a new region 
 absolutely separated from that phenomenal world, 
 which is the object of our knowledge. On the con- 
 trary, the practical must be view^ed as continuous 
 with the theoretical life, and it must be recognised 
 that, if the former goes farther than the latter,
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 369 
 
 it is still on the same road. The good cannot be 
 opposed to the true ; for they are only different 
 aspects of the relation of the same self to the 
 same all-embracing whole, in which the self finds 
 its objective counterpart. Thus the contrast of 
 knowing and willing cannot be treated as an abso- 
 lute one, so soon as we discern that in knowing we 
 are coming to the consciousness of self as well as of 
 the objective world, and that in action we are realis- 
 ing an end which is involved in the nature of the 
 world as well as in our own nature. It is true that 
 in both cases, in knowledge as in action, the univer- 
 sality of the principle that manifests itself in our lives 
 is at first hidden from us by the conditions of its ^pro- 
 gressive manifestation. What we know seems to be 
 only the particular things with which our senses 
 bring us into contact ; what we will seems to be 
 only the paifcicular objects which excite our desires. 
 We do not reflect that all known objects already have 
 taken their place in the one world to which all that 
 is knowable by the one self must belong; nor that 
 all objects of desire must be sought sub ratione boni, 
 as the satisfaction of a self which, as it is a unity 
 to which all ends are related, cannot be satisfied with 
 anything but the whole. Thus through all the stages 
 of their development, the theoretical and the prac- 
 tical consciousness are actuated by the same princi- 
 ples, and have to contest with the same difficulties; 
 vol.. I. 2 a
 
 370 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 nor is it possible to separate the one from the other 
 without mutilating both. 
 
 We may put this point in a more palpable way, 
 if we consider that the opposition of practical to 
 theoretical reason, which Kant maintains, resolves 
 itself into an opposition of that which ought to be 
 to that which is. The good is an ' ought- to-be ' of 
 reason, which never is realised in the phenomenal 
 world. But, if the above criticisms have any 
 value, this opposition must be broken down on both 
 sides. For, on the one hand, the real, which is the 
 object of knowledge, cannot be regarded as a dead 
 reality which exists apart from any movement in 
 itself or in the intelligence which apprehends it, 
 but only as the expression of an absolute intelligence 
 which reveals itself both in the object and in the 
 mind. Nor, on the other hand, can the good be 
 taken as mere ideal, an ' ought-to-be,' which is present 
 to our minds but has no necessity of realisation ; for, 
 as the good of a self, it has in itself a principle to 
 which all knowable objects are related. Hence it 
 is realised, or is realising itself, in all things, even 
 in those which seem most to hinder its realisation. 
 It is impossible to sever the absoluteness of the 
 moral law, upon which Kant so strongly insists, 
 from the idea that " morality is the nature of 
 things " : in other words, that it is a principle 
 which is realising itself in the objective world.
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 371 
 
 Thus also morality passes into religion, not as with 
 Kant by the external postulate of a Deus ex machina 
 who shall bind together goodness with happiness, or 
 the spiritual with the natural world, but by the 
 recognition that there is one principle underlying 
 both. For the very essence of religion lies in the 
 consciousness that what we have presented to us in 
 the objective world is not a foreign necessity, which 
 has no relation, or only an accidental relation to 
 our will, but rather an environment which is 
 the necessary condition of its exercise ; and, con- 
 versely, that what we seek as the highest in our 
 practical life, is not a mere subjective end, to which 
 we try to- subordinate all that is without us. Eather 
 that it is one and the same end which is revealed 
 both within and without, in the order of nature 
 and history and in the wants and aspirations of our 
 spirits. Our theoretical and our practical conscious- 
 ness are thus in continuity with each other. We 
 have not in the one the determination of the self 
 by an objective world which is independent of us 
 and our desires, succeeded in the other by the un- 
 availing, or only partly successful, effort to subdue 
 such objects to our will. We discern that, in 
 knowledge, we are active as well as passive ; and 
 that, in practice, we are passive as well as active. 
 Or, more properly, we discern that the opposition 
 of activity and passivity does not hold good, when
 
 372 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 we are attempting to describe the relations of 
 spiritual beings, who are members of the great 
 organic whole of the universe, to that divine Spirit 
 which is the principle of that whole. Eather we 
 are obliged to say that these members are active, 
 because, and just so far as, the principle of the 
 whole is active in them. 
 
 It appears, then, that there is an essential fallacy 
 in the Kantian attempt to confine science to the 
 sphere of phenomenal objects which are connected to- 
 gether only by an external necessity, and to refer 
 all our higher consciousness of reality, whether re- 
 ligious or philosophical, to the demands of practical 
 reason. But the same criticism applies also to the 
 opposite view of Aristotle, that it is the practical 
 reason which is immersed in the phenomenal world — 
 in the world of external necessity and contingency of 
 which science in the strict sense of the term is 
 impossible; while it is the theoretical reason which 
 alone is able to grasp things in their essential nature, 
 and to follow out the inner necessity by which all 
 their attributes are connected ; and, above all, it is the 
 theoretical reason alone that can rise to the contem- 
 plation of God as the principle of all reality, the first 
 and the final cause of the universe. We must, I 
 think, recognise that in this view also there is an 
 unhappy divorce betw^een the two sides of man's life ; 
 and that his higher or religious consciousness can no
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 373 
 
 more be conceived as abstractly theoretical than it 
 can be conceived as abstractly practical. The idea 
 that science is concerned only with deducing the 
 nature of things from their essential definitions — 
 from the formal or final cause of their being — is as 
 one-sided as the Kantian conception that it has to do 
 only with measuring the phenomena as they are given, 
 and determining the external conditions of their 
 co-existence or succession. For neither of these is 
 possible without the other. A teleology that takes no 
 account of mechanism is as imperfect as a mechanical 
 philosophy that takes no account of teleology. The 
 latter, indeed, is less of an illusion ; for a science that 
 deals with efficient, and not with formal or final causes, 
 is a true science so far as it goes. It enables us to 
 find order in the world, though it may be only an 
 external order. It thus lays the true foundation for 
 a systematic view of things, even though it may not 
 be able to give to that view the highest kind of unity. 
 It exhibits to us the anatomical structure and mecha- 
 nical relations of the parts of the body, though it is 
 not able to detect the secret of its life. On the other 
 hand, as the work of the Scholastics often showed, 
 the attempt to deal directly and immediately with 
 formal and final causes, is apt to lead to a philosophy 
 of foregone conclusions, which stereotypes our first 
 notions of things, and attempts, by merely analysing 
 these notions, to add to our knowledge of their objects.
 
 374 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 So understood, the demonsi^rative syllogism of Aristotle 
 becomes a mere formal exercise of thought which can 
 only bring out in the conclusion what has been 
 assumed, and even explicitly assumed in the premises. 
 We cannot, indeed, attribute such a notion of 
 science to Aristotle ; for as I have shown in an earlier 
 lecture, his definitions were not mere reproductions 
 of popular notions, but were reached by an inductive 
 and dialectical process which is closely analogous to 
 the methods of modern science. At the same time, we 
 have to recognise that there were defects in Aristotle's 
 logic which gave too much encouragement to the 
 Scholastic interpretation of it. In the first place, he 
 assumed that by a direct process of induction it is 
 possil)le at once to rise to an explanation of nature 
 by formal or final causes. Thus he thought it possible 
 to solve the whole problem of science at one stroke, 
 and did not recognise that we must use lower cate- 
 gories before we proceed to higher categories ; in other 
 words, that we must connect the phenomena with 
 which we are dealing in an external way as causes 
 and effects of each other, before we can safely attempt 
 to grasp their essential individuality and the organic 
 relations by which they are bound to each other and to 
 the mind that knows them. It is true that besides 
 the science that demonstrates the properties of sub- 
 stances through their essential definition, Aristotle 
 also refers to a kind of science which has to determine
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 375 
 
 the causes of particular events, such, for instance, as 
 an eclipse. Like Plato, therefore, he recognises that 
 the external or mechanical action of substances upon 
 each other is worthy of investigation as well as the 
 formal or teleological principles that are realised in 
 them. And, especially in his biological works, he 
 carries the investigation of the necessary conditions, 
 without which the ends of nature cannot be achieved, 
 to a point far beyond the imaginary physics of the 
 Timaeus. But such enquiries into ' second causes ' 
 do not, in his view of science, take the important 
 place which has been given to them in modern 
 times; still less does he suppose that they precede 
 and condition the higher kind of knowledge which 
 deals with the essential forms of things.^ 
 
 ^ In one sense we might say that for Aristotle the sole ava-yKotov, 
 the sole condition sine qua non, of the realisation of the ends of nature 
 is matter. But, in his special enquiries, matter is never taken in 
 the sense of the ultimate indeterminate iiXrj, but always as the 
 specialised matter which is necessary for a particular purpose, e.g. 
 in the life of an animal or a plant. Hence the investigation of 
 material causes is really an enquiry into the special actions and 
 reactions of the elements of such specialised matter upon each 
 other or upon the environment — in other words, it is an enquiry 
 into efficient causes. We have, however, to observe that efficient 
 cause is taken by Aristotle in two quite diflferent senses. In the 
 Metaphysic, the efficient cause generally means a substance which 
 exists prior in time to the efifect, and has the same forms realised 
 in it as in the efifect. (Cf. Met., 1032a, 25, where Aristotle refers 
 to his usual example: dvOpwiros yap &vdpu3Trov yevvq..) In other 
 cases the term efficient cause is used by Aristotle in the modern 
 sense, as meaning the conditions of an effect, which, as Aristotle 
 also observes, do not precede it in time [An. Post.,d5a, 22).
 
 376 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 In the second place, as I tried to show in the 
 last lecture, Aristotle, almost in spite of himself, is 
 forced by his doctrine as to matter to recognise an 
 essential opposition between the universal and the 
 particular. Hence no science seems to him exact 
 except as it approximates to the type of mathematics. 
 He saw, indeed, that the exactness of mathematical 
 science rests upon abstraction, but he did not discern 
 that the same defect of abstractness would attach 
 to any attempt to determine individual substances 
 apart from each other, and he even seemed to adopt 
 the principle that the highest substance is that which 
 is most simple. Hence, in what he supposed to be 
 the absolutely regular movement of the heavens he 
 saw a higher manifestation of intelHgence than in 
 the confused and complex motions of earthly things 
 and beings. In this there is obviously manifested the 
 influence of a false ideal of knowledge ; for, even if 
 we conceived the stellar motions as he did, that is to 
 say, as circular motions absolutely continuous and 
 regular, or only irregular in so far as many spheres are 
 concerned in the movement of one body, this absence 
 of complexity would seem to us to involve that there 
 is less, and not more, need for a spiritual principle to 
 explain them. In both cases, however, in astronomy 
 as in mathematics, we are really dealing with what 
 is general and abstract — with aspects of the existence 
 of material objects, the exactness of our knowledge
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 377 
 
 of which is dependent on the fact, that we consciously 
 omit, or unconsciously neglect, their relations to other 
 parts or elements of reality. In like manner, the 
 comparative exactness of physical science in general 
 is at least partly due to the fact that we regard its 
 objects merely as material things, and omit altogether 
 to take into account their relations to life and mind. 
 Hence, though this kind of exactness seems to diminish 
 as we rise in the scale of the sciences from physics to 
 chemistry, from chemistry to biology, from biology to 
 psychology, this does not mean that we are passing 
 from that which is more to that which is less in- 
 telligible ; rather it means the reverse of this. It 
 means that we are bringing our science nearer and 
 nearer to the complex whole to which these abstracted 
 elements belong, and, therefore, are leaving less and 
 less to take its place with the accidental or inexplicable. 
 It is true that, as we advance, just because we are 
 leaving the region of the abstract, we are brought into 
 contact with greater difficulties. The unexplained 
 remainder, that is, the numerous objects and events 
 which, after all that the special sciences can do, are 
 still incompletely accounted for — all this apparently 
 accidental element in life does not press itself upon 
 our notice, while we are dealing with the abstractions 
 of mathematics, or with what we may call the natural 
 abstraction of the motions of the heavenly bodies. 
 Even in physics and chemistry we are not much
 
 378 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 troubled with the consciousness of it, because in these 
 sciences we are satisfied with finding the causes or 
 conditions of the particular phenomena, and are not 
 embarrassed by the thought of any general purpose 
 or teleological unity that binds all the particular 
 phenomena together as elements in one whole. But 
 biology brings with it the conceptions of organic unity 
 and evolution ; it exhibits to us, in the plant and still 
 more in the animal, a whole the parts of which are 
 means and ends to each other. Here, therefore, we 
 begin to be embarrassed by the fact that the purposes 
 of the individual life and of the life of the species are 
 so often thwarted and interfered with by what seem 
 to be external accidents; or, in other words, that 
 the environment is so often at war with the life 
 instead of subserving it. And when we come to the 
 spiritual life of man, with its still higher purposes and 
 its deeper teleological unity, we are still more disturbed 
 by what seems the frequent defeat of rational order by 
 external accidents — by the catastrophe of individual 
 lives that seemed to contain so high promise in them, 
 by the way in which the course of social progress is so 
 often stopped or turned back, and by that mixture of 
 success and failure in the attainment of good, which 
 renders it so difficult to discover any general meaning 
 in human history. Thus in the moral sciences we 
 are continually dealing with the struggle of the will 
 of man to remould nature, and, we may add, his own
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 379 
 
 natural life, in conformity with his spiritual needs ; and 
 these two sides of our existence, by their co-existence 
 and interference with each other, by their partial 
 agreement and yet frequent collision, at once tend to 
 awaken in our minds the idea of a rational plan and 
 purpose, and at the same time to oppress us with 
 a consciousness of its imperfect realisation. It is 
 thus that the practical life of man appears to be 
 the peculiar sphere of accident and caprice, just 
 because it forces upon us the conception of a universal 
 system of reason which would not admit any accident 
 or caprice at all. 
 
 All this might make us inclined to accept the 
 Aristotelian notion that ethics is the science in 
 which least exactness is to be expected, and that it 
 is excluded altogether from that sphere of demon- 
 stration in which reason finds its highest exercise. 
 In truth, however, such a view rests upon an 
 illusion. The inorganic world taken by itself — in- 
 cluding the heavenly bodies, which the Greeks deified, 
 and even Aristotle and Plato treated as free from all 
 imperfection and accident — is the sphere of an external 
 necessity which, as Aristotle discerned, is closely con- 
 nected with contingency.^ It is in the organic world, 
 
 1 In Met., VI, 3, Aristotle seems to coine very near to the modern 
 idea that, in the endless series of efficient causes we must stop 
 somewhere, and that the necessity of this arbitrary stop forces us 
 to regard the whole series as contingent. But Aristotle does not 
 definitely say this. Elsewhere he seems to talje as contingent
 
 380 DOES THE PRIMACY BELONG 
 
 and still more in man's moral life, and in the subjection 
 of nature to the higher ends of that life, that purpose or 
 design begins clearly to manifest itself. Here, therefore, 
 we have the first lifting of the veil of contingency 
 from nature ; and it is natural, as I have already 
 suggested, that this partial revelation should awaken 
 the desire for a more complete manifestation of 
 spiritual law in the natural world. In ethics, there- 
 fore, we are vexed with an antagonism of principles 
 which, without going beyond the sphere of our science, 
 we cannot finally solve. But it is the peculiar 
 task of philosophy, following out the forecast of 
 religion, to develop that idealistic view of the 
 world which supplies the only possible key to such 
 difficulties, and enables us to see that the principle 
 of nature and the principle of man's higher life 
 are one, and that it is an imperfect interpretation 
 of the facts which regards them as coming into 
 collision with each other. In other words, it is its 
 business to raise the intuitive certitude of religion — 
 its unreflecting faith in goodness and God — into the 
 clear reflective consciousness that the world is an 
 organic system, the principle of which is spiritual. 
 
 But it is impossible that philosophy should attain 
 to such an interpretation of things, as it has too often 
 tried to attain to it, by the way of abstraction, by 
 
 whatever cannot be traced to the operation of formal, final, or 
 eveu efficient causes. Cf. Vol. I, p. .325 note.
 
 TO REASON OR TO WILL? 381 
 
 turning away from the difficulties of the special 
 sciences, and especially from the difficulties that beset 
 us in the explanation of the practical life of man. On 
 the contrary, it can solve them, or approximate in any 
 measure to the solution of them, only by taking a more 
 comprehensive and complete view of the facts than is 
 possible in any of the special sciences. And, as it 
 is an imperfect religion which withdraws itself from 
 any of the concrete interests of life — from art 
 or literature, from trade or politics — and seeks to 
 escape from their manifold difficulties and dangers by 
 occupying itself only with what are technically called 
 'religious interests,' and, as it were, hiding itself in 
 the sanctuary : so it is an imperfect philosophy which 
 finds the highest truth in a pure contemplation, which 
 confines itself to the most general ideas, and throws 
 no new light upon the results of natural or ethical 
 science. Philosophy must, indeed, change our ordinary, 
 and even our scientific views of reality ; it must give 
 a new meaning to life : but it can do so only as it 
 re-interprets our common experience, and shows us that 
 the world we live in, here and now, is a spiritual world. 
 The general result to which our argument brings us 
 is that neither the theoretical nor the practical life 
 can be viewed as the exclusive source of that higher 
 consciousness which is manifested in religion and 
 philosophy. Aristotle's exaltation of pure contempla- 
 tion and Kant's exaltation of practical reason equally
 
 382 REASON OR WILL 
 
 rest upon a false abstraction. To say, with the latter, 
 that we can think and believe what we cannot know 
 is arbitrarily to confine our knowledge of the objective 
 world to lower categories than those which we apply 
 to the inner life of the conscious self, and to forget 
 that the consciousness of the self cannot be severed 
 from the consciousness of the world. To say, with 
 Aristotle, that we can know that which is universal 
 and eternal, but that we cannot, in the full sense 
 of the word, know that which is particular and 
 temporal, is to suppose that we reach the highest 
 reality by abstraction, and to forget that the ulti- 
 mate truth must be that which is most complex and 
 concrete, as it is that in which all other truth 
 reaches its completion. We cannot find an ultimate 
 principle of unity either in the subject as separated 
 from the object or in the object as separated from the 
 subject, since it is only in rising above this division 
 that we have any apprehension of such a principle. 
 Hence, also, any exclusive emphasis on the theoretical 
 or the practical consciousness must tend to empty the 
 consciousness of God of its peculiar meaning and 
 content. If, therefore, there be any sense in which the 
 religious consciousness may be regarded as contem- 
 plative, it is not as excluding, but as at once including 
 and transcending the practical consciousness. Whether 
 there is any trace of such a view in Aristotle, we shall 
 have to consider in the next lecture.
 
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