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 AWEUNI
 
 PLATO 
 
 AS AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN 
 
 CRITICISM OF LIFE
 
 PLATO 
 
 AS AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN 
 
 CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 EMIL REICH 
 
 (Dr. JURIS) 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS," "FOUNDATIONS OF 
 MODERN EUROPE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd. 
 
 1906
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The following pages were taken down in longhand 
 
 by two secretaries during the two courses I gave 
 
 in London on some ideas of Plato in Michaelmas 
 
 term 1905, and in Lent term 1906. I do not 
 
 prepare my lectures either by writing them out, 
 
 or by preparing elaborate or even short notes for 
 
 them ; I prepare them only by constantly thinking 
 
 of their subjects. The consequence is that I am 
 
 unable to reproduce any lecture as I have actually 
 
 given it. In correcting the work of my secretaries, 
 
 I find, as my readers will not fail to see, that 
 
 -|^ while much of the substance of the lectures is 
 
 j given, many another point, connecting-link, and 
 
 2 shade has disappeared. For this, the indulgence 
 
 of the reader is requested. But for my hearers, 
 
 v< who constantly asked for these pages, and were 
 
 i kind enough to promise to put up with their 
 
 ? necessary incompleteness, the present book would 
 
 not have been published at all. With all its short- 
 
 tS comings it may yet serve as a little corrective 
 
 t to so many learnedly inane works written on 
 
 /XOJL^
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the Athenian sage by men, who probably know 
 Greek, but have only a very poor notion of the 
 Life of which Plato speaks. Plato is neither 
 mystical nor abstract. In his time he lectured 
 to ordinary men of the world, taking his illus- 
 trations from Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, Sicily, 
 the Balkan peninsula and southern Greece. 
 On the basis of his ideas, I tried to treat of 
 modern life, taking my illustrations from England, 
 France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Eussia, 
 
 and America. 
 
 EMIL REICH. 
 
 33, St. Luke's Road, W. 
 May 36^,1906. 
 
 VI
 
 PLATO 
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 FIRST COURSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 It will be necessary to premise in a few words 
 the nature of these papers, and to characterize 
 their special features, in order to grasp clearly 
 the full significance of what is termed philosophy, 
 and the philosophy of Plato. 
 
 When one is told that there are to be chapters 
 on Plato, one is inclined to say, " Oh ! what a 
 learned thing!" or, "It is a sort of an erudite 
 affair." No doubt Plato can be made to look 
 erudite ; he was certainly one of the best-informed 
 minds of the world. But it should not frighten 
 one into thinking that he is beyond comprehension, 
 or that his writings must be left only to philolo- 
 gians and professors to fathom their meaning. 
 There is, indeed, a far more important attitude 
 of Plato than being erudite, that is, his power of 
 touching the world and each individual being by 
 the very simplicity of his teaching. 
 
 I b
 
 PLATO 
 
 The whole philosophy of Plato can be summed 
 up into two parts, that is, either the criticism of 
 Life, or the criticism of Thought. Plato's criticisms, 
 in fact, bear directly on the intellectual and the 
 emotional machinery of mankind. Both very com- 
 plicated, it may be said, but not so complicated 
 as may be supposed ; on the contrary, they bear so 
 intimately on all the problems of daily life, that it 
 is hoped they will, in the end, appear quite simple. 
 
 Plato appeals to the world, not as an ancient, 
 but realty as a most modern writer. He deals 
 with problems of action, problems affecting every 
 phase of present day life ; they are all problems, 
 and problems extremely interesting to English- 
 speaking people. Indeed, it is not possible to 
 mention a modern problem that is not elaborately 
 discussed by Plato in all its bearings. In all this 
 there is no erudition, it is real Life. It is Life 
 so complicated, so rich, as to be ever presenting 
 new phases for thought, and from which even the 
 apparently more complicated life of the present 
 day does not differ. 
 
 The more one sees life and studies Plato, the 
 more one is impressed by his writings. One does 
 not grasp the meaning of Plato on first reading 
 his works, or when one reads him in the earlier 
 years of one's life. For instance, if one has lived in 
 America for some time, and studied everything of 
 life, one begins to understand the whole Symposium 
 of Plato, every type of man and woman. And 
 
 2
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 yet Plato had never heard of the United States, 
 or of France, or England ; countries which have 
 developed types which were never known to Plato. 
 The man thus stands out not only as a professor 
 of philosophy, hut a seer. He thus makes a most 
 profound impression ; he becomes a great prophet, 
 in fact. And in his prophetic phase he fore- 
 shadows the Catholic Church ; gives a clear 
 outline of the hierarchy of the Church ; and fore- 
 shadows Gothic architecture. The world may 
 shiver with astonishment that 350 years before 
 the Catholic Church was established, he outlines 
 the Church and the character of that Church, 
 when the personality of Jesus was unknown ! Of 
 what nature was such a man ? There can be 
 no doubt that here was a mind far above mere 
 erudition, and imbued with very strong principles 
 of suggestiveness and clearsightedness. 
 
 The study of Philosophy begins with Plato, 
 and however much the matter may be discussed, 
 Plato can never be exhausted. Like all practical 
 and imperial nations, the English are very authori- 
 tative ; they insist that some one must be at the 
 head of every branch of knowledge; he must be 
 quoted as an authority. In music the appeal is 
 to the authority of Beethoven; Lord Kelvin is 
 the authority on science ; and so on with other 
 branches of knowledge. In Philosophy there is no 
 such thing. As the old adage truly said, " Plato 
 is a good friend of mine, but truth is greater." 
 
 3
 
 PLATO 
 
 Before proceeding further it is necessary to 
 consider where the difficulty in understanding 
 Plato lies. There is no difficulty whatever; he 
 is, in fact, very simple, and can he understood 
 by a child. His charm lies, indeed, in simplicity 
 and dramatic style. On the stage, for instance, 
 the most commonplace statements are made ; a 
 famous American actress was once heard telling 
 her husband to take a seat ; there was nothing 
 in that, but everything in the dramatic style in 
 which the request was uttered. A gesture, or a 
 word, and one feels there is a something, a tragic 
 veil behind it. This is Plato, this is Art. Art 
 is thus expressed delicately, not too explicitly. 
 It veils and disguises as much as it expresses. 
 And this is Plato. His writings may be looked 
 upon as ordinary prattle, but everything in them 
 has a meaning. 
 
 In Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades enters with 
 a little flute girl. Plato says he is drunk. All this 
 is prattle to the ordinary reader, but when read 
 thoughtfully, and his meaning fully seen, there 
 will be found innuendoes, suggestions and veiled 
 thoughts, which are lost on the superficial reader. 
 These are the pith of his dialogues, and it is this 
 that is called Art. 
 
 With Plato, philosophy was superior to poetry. 
 Poetry was the very soul of the Greeks, who 
 looked upon poets as modern people do on their 
 preachers. They went to the theatres to get that
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 emotional stir which is now got in our churches ; 
 and to them Aristophanes was a preacher. 
 
 Plato is in prose, what the Parthenon is in 
 stone. It is absolute art. The mind requires 
 nothing too explicit either from the one or the 
 other. It is not asked why certain things are 
 depicted on the friezes and not on the metopes. 
 It is not questioned why this picture does not 
 portray the defeat of the Persians, or that the 
 triumph of the Athenians. The whole is taken 
 as a consummate work of art, with all the subtle 
 meaning which appeals to the mind. 
 
 When Socrates talks of love, he does not put 
 it into the mouth of an ordinary woman, but of 
 a virgin priestess. And so with Plato ; he dis- 
 guises his meaning just as readily as he tells it. 
 
 Not so with modern philosophers. Take for 
 instance, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, etc. 
 They state bluntly what they have to say, and 
 never disguise it. With them it is like a problem 
 in mathematics ; everything is explicit, technical, 
 colourless, and so, extremely un-Platonic. 
 
 Plato, on the other hand, is intensely artistic. 
 He clothes his sayings in the form of myths, of 
 a story; he adumbrates truth. "With him it is, 
 and, it is not ; he wavers between light and dark- 
 ness. How really better this than to lay down 
 a fixed rule. Consider his myth of Atlantis ; that 
 even anticipated America. His was the power 
 of striding over centuries, over time. All this 
 
 5
 
 PLATO 
 
 makes hiin just as charming as difficult ; but 
 nobody is so easy to understand. 
 
 He lived in Athens, saw daily the glory of the 
 Parthenon, yet not a word is there in his writings 
 of this perfect incarnation of art, though he men- 
 tions the Erechtheum and the Odeon. The reason 
 for this will be seen presently. 
 
 The Greeks divide the arts into two classes ; 
 and Plato belonged to one of these classes. There 
 are arts which do not need representation to be 
 enjoyed; they can be gazed on; there they are 
 in their finished beauty, and they need no inter- 
 preter. Of these are Architecture and Sculpture. 
 On the other hand there are arts which need an 
 interpreter, some one to unfold the subtle, hidden 
 meanings which appeal to the emotions. To this 
 class belong music, the drama, singing, poetry, 
 and dancing. The first class is said to be Apote- 
 lestic, and the second Music. Plato is distinctly 
 music and not apotelestic. Plato cannot be ap- 
 proached as one would approach a piece of 
 sculpture. With him is needed a very fine in- 
 terpreter, as in music or the drama. And so 
 with Shakespeare, who also needs an interpreter. 
 The simple words of Hamlet to Ophelia, " Get 
 thee into a nunnery," may sound like the 
 "prattle" of Plato, but, like that "prattle," 
 these few words are a volume. 
 
 Plato was indeed a music artist (17 ttpglktlkvj, to 
 use a Greek word, as opposed to theoretics) — he 
 
 6
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 was music from beginning to end : and to under- 
 stand him thoroughly, a thorough interpreter is 
 needed ; more than a Cook's guide to indicate 
 what he really is. 
 
 It has been said that Plato is extremely simple 
 to understand ; indeed, the words he uses are 
 simple, every-day words. In drama the simplest 
 words are used. Shakespeare uses as few words 
 as possible, and of the simplest character. Not 
 so Swinburne, whose words are three times as 
 numerous. The difference between the two should 
 be carefully noted; where in the one case the 
 characters often jar on the nerves, in the other 
 they unburden the whole conflict of their souls in 
 the simplest of words. Aristophanes, being a comic 
 poet, had to manufacture words to meet occasions, 
 which are certainly not simple. Sophocles, on 
 the other hand, uses simple words, and his plays 
 have the true ring of music art. The difference 
 can best be understood when music is heard, which 
 has the effect of belabouring one's nerves instead 
 of appealing to one's artistic sense ; and such 
 music is known as enharmonic music. But is that 
 real music ? Mozart is as simple as Plato, and 
 his also was the true music art. Where this true 
 art does not exist, the effect is like that of a 
 passing emotion and shiver, a make-believe that 
 there are things in the world that do not exist ; 
 that there is neither cause nor effect. 
 
 In Philosophy there is no last word. It is a 
 
 7
 
 PLATO 
 
 never-ending stream of creativeness, or continual 
 thought. There is no end to it ; there is no 
 climax. It is made up of dramatic things, but it 
 is no finished drama; it is, in fact, going on all 
 the time. It is a music art, but not apotelestic. It 
 is like the dance in Sparta, which was considered 
 a great art. Dance and poetry were considered 
 one and the same thing, and no man in Sparta 
 was considered to have done his duty to the State 
 who had not cultivated the art. It appealed to 
 their artistic sense ; the fine outlines and the 
 rhythm and beauty of the movements speaks to us 
 immediately ; it is continuous ; the movements 
 are inexhaustible. 
 
 And so with Philosophy ; it requires continuous 
 interpretation. It is possible to write on Plato in 
 every age, but it is not possible to exhaust Plato. 
 It is when people are not artistic that they do 
 not care for Plato. 
 
 Imperial races are apotelestic and not music ; 
 they look to material things, and have no time to 
 cultivate the music arts. With them everything 
 is finite ; all must be by rule ; all approved by 
 some authority. England is a case in point. 
 Here we prefer Aristotle to Plato ; we say Plato 
 is a prattler, and is not to be taken seriously. An 
 Englishman is ashamed to learn music or dancing ; 
 he thinks it is unmanly. All this is a serious 
 drawback. Every nation is either Platonic or 
 Aristotelian ; but there is here in Plato a new way 
 
 8
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of making nations music, of giving them more 
 infinite ideas; that there is no beginning, no 
 middle, no end, but a continuous, never-ending 
 stream of life and thought; this is the vast 
 Platonic vista. There is a world of worlds. This 
 is music; this is Plato. It is not finite, it is not 
 architecture. It is impossible to add a column to 
 it ; it is equally impossible to take away or alter 
 a capital. It is not sculpture ; for great sculpture 
 is so perfect that even if a limb be lopped off, it 
 still looks perfect ; if the head be taken off the 
 body still gives a sense of perfect symmetry. 
 Philosophy is not like that; there is nothing 
 finite about it; it is all change; and of all the 
 exponents of philosophy, Plato is the greatest ; he 
 is music. 
 
 All the works of Plato exist at the present day ; 
 with trifling exceptions, none have been lost, and 
 his developments can be followed as his works are 
 read. There is in them constant development, 
 progress, change. What he said in the Laws he 
 unsaid in the Kepublic ; what he said yesterday, 
 he unsaid to-day ; and this constant change is a 
 characteristic of true philosophy. Philosophy 
 must not be likened to science or knowledge, where 
 some eminent scientist has solved definitely some 
 abstruse problem, and another has solved another 
 problem. In philosophy, each philosopher has 
 thrown his net into the same sea, and each has 
 picked out a few fish, and is well aware that he 
 
 9
 
 PLATO 
 
 has solved no problem. A Spanish proverb well 
 says that " every single man is a world by himself " ; 
 and in this light must philosophy be taken, that 
 it is circumscribed by no finite ideas ; that every 
 individual is partly apotelestic and partly music; 
 more music at times than at other times. 
 
 Philosophy cannot be reckoned as a consoling 
 power for mankind in their doubt as to what they 
 are. For a man and a woman in active life, 
 philosophy is not a consolation, it is the intensest 
 intellectual enjoyment that can be obtained. It 
 is like a man placed on a commanding position 
 in Greece, with a telescope in his hand. He 
 surveys the exquisite scenery of nature, and de- 
 rives from it the intensest enjoyment, and his 
 nerves thrill with the beauty before him. This is 
 real enjoyment. He has not made the panorama 
 his own, but ho sees it. So with Moses when he 
 saw the Promised Land ; he enjoyed the outlook 
 but never set foot on it or possessed it. 
 
 Lessing said, " If God really had in one hand 
 Truth, and in the other only a desire for Truth, 
 which would you take ? " The answer was, " I 
 would fall into his left hand and ask for the desire 
 for Truth, because Truth is after all only for God." 
 All this is true humility, a phase of mind which 
 cannot be expressed in Greek, a language which 
 has no word to express Humility. There is the 
 same want in other languages ; in French, for 
 instance, which has no word to correspond to the 
 
 10
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 English word joke, which is an English thing- 
 altogether, and yet the French have excelled in 
 wit. And so too with the German verb Ich 
 will; the strong-willed English have nothing 
 corresponding to it. Express all these in borrowed 
 language and it does not mean the same thing ; 
 the thing itself is wanting. Why does not language 
 express such things ? 
 
 There is another aspect of Plato to consider. 
 Plato was not only artistic ; he was intensely 
 religious ; he was the real introduction to the 
 study of religion, which has, since his time, occu- 
 pied millions of minds. And as it is from him 
 that the fundamental truth of art and philosophy 
 has been derived, so it can be claimed that from 
 him flows the fundamental truth of Eeligion. But 
 it must be interpreted, it must be understood. 
 Like a real artist he does not want to be clear. 
 Definiteness, explicitness, all these belong to finite 
 art ; for this an authority is needed ; it is, in fact, 
 the matter of a " coach." But when we come to 
 art, music-art, there is the beginning of art, phi- 
 losophy, and religion. It is the suggestion, the 
 veiled thought, the innuendo, the sous-entendu 
 underlying it all, and for these is needed, not a 
 " coach " but an interpreter. 
 
 Plato has been known as a teacher of politics ; 
 perhaps to most people the most interesting part 
 of the teachings of that philosopher. It was he 
 who invented what is called the Idea, and Europe 
 
 1 1
 
 PLATO 
 
 may be said to be separated from the rest of the 
 world by the fact of its adoption of Ideas. Europe 
 is full of them, and they have made the very life 
 of Europe. Idealism, more or less intense, was the 
 essence of Greek life, and it was Plato who brought 
 into the world Ideas. It may be truly said, " there 
 is no banquet of Ideas unless Plato is there." 
 There are religious ideals in the Catholic Church ; 
 artistic ideals in Gothic architecture, in sculpture ; 
 all history is, in fact, an attempt to realize ideals ; 
 there are ideals of literature, philosophy, politics, 
 and Art is the language of ideals ; unless, then, 
 ideals are cultivated no progress is made in the 
 work of Art. And it is for the reason that Europe 
 is so full of ideas that it is, as it were, apart 
 from the rest of the world. Perhaps America will 
 also have it so, for there is a cultivation of an 
 ideal, .the idea of Plato realized in one aspect. 
 An American, a friend of the author, once said, 
 "We have the old Platonic leaven in us," referring 
 to the propensity for large fortunes ; but the con- 
 fession was made that they were bored to death 
 with it. Life does not consist of money-making 
 only ; there is something beyond it, and unless 
 mankind have that something, they do not derive 
 that intense enjoyment that life should give, they 
 are not happy. Take China, for instance, there 
 they have no ideals whatever. Confucius teaches 
 the material, and that in mediocrity — mediocrity 
 in everything ; and the result is that 450 millions 
 
 12
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of people in China are at this time living on 
 sufferance, because they have no ideals. 
 
 It is from the Greeks that ideals came ; it was 
 the currents of their thoughts that crystallized in 
 Plato, and it is from Plato that they have filtered 
 and permeated Europe. It is this Platonic thirst 
 for ideals, this attachment to things that do not 
 pay, this is what keeps Europe going. This is 
 what divides the people of Europe from the rest 
 of the world, the conviction that they are still on 
 a firm basis of Platonic ideals. They are vitalized, 
 they are electrified by the hope of some ideals, a 
 constant, never-ending current of ideals, each 
 person setting up ideals for himself. 
 
 It once happened when two friends met, that 
 one, with a Bible in his hand, asked the other, 
 " Do you implicitly believe everything that is 
 written in that book?" The answer was, "Yes, 
 I do," and "No, I don't." He saw the object with 
 which the question was put — that he should agree 
 with the other's preconceived ideas that every 
 word in that book was divinely inspired, and, 
 therefore that every word must be true. That 
 was his ideal ; and he was perfectly right. But 
 the ideal of the friend questioned was quite 
 different ; he agreed to Divine inspiration running 
 through the book, and so believed it all. But an 
 opinion in such a case should be suggestive and 
 not authoritative. The friends differed thus in 
 the method of their conclusions, but they were
 
 PLATO 
 
 both united in believing that there was an ideal. 
 This has been done in the darkest centuries, and 
 it is being done to-day. Both are right ,1 because 
 both have ideals, and those ideals have crystallized 
 from Plato. 
 
 This ever-changing current of thought, guided 
 by no fixed rule, hemmed in by no laws, is well 
 exemplified by a saying of Bliicher's to his men at 
 Waterloo, when he saw them wavering at a charge 
 against the enemy, " Do you want to live for 
 ever?" cried he. Are we to live for ever with 
 our fixed thoughts ? No ; it is the Platonic 
 leaven that helps us along. We may be apote- 
 lestic, but we must be music too, for there are 
 certain propelling forces that will never fail us, 
 that will send a thrill of intense enjoyment 
 through us, that will give us new ideals of life, 
 and new ideals of thought, from the ever-flowing 
 current which had its beginning with Plato. 
 
 14
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 In the last chapter were characterized some of 
 the special features of Plato and his Philosophy ; 
 in this it is necessary to discuss some of the works 
 of Plato, and especially such as speak of the 
 criticism of Life. Plato, it is known, treated of 
 two departments of thought; the first of these 
 dealt with Life in all its phases, and affecting every 
 human problem of existence ; the second dealt 
 with Cognition, or Thought, so to speak ; that is, 
 How do we think, and how do we arrive at 
 knowing things ? 
 
 His theory of Cognition is somewhat subtle 
 and technical, and does not, perhaps, appeal to 
 all as it should ; on the other hand, his criticisms 
 of Life are really the thing which interests us 
 most, as it is to us of everyday interest. Plato 
 was a Greek, and he lived at a period of Greek 
 history when that nation was in a state of high 
 perfection; Greek life, indeed, was the richest 
 life men have ever led in history, being endowed 
 with those high ideals without which no nation 
 can ever rise to greatness. And it was from such 
 surroundings, in the depths of which his whole 
 
 15
 
 PLATO 
 
 life was lived, that he has handed down to us 
 those observations which have held mankind 
 through centuries, and which will be discussed 
 as far as possible in these chapters. His observa- 
 tions went deeper into the everyday occurrences 
 of life than those of any other writers have ever 
 done, and they will be found to be simple to 
 understand, though the form of these observations 
 may sometimes appear to be somewhat misleading. 
 One of his works was the " Republic," and in 
 this he gives us an idea of the State in which men 
 and women are perfectly happy. In modern life 
 the State is considered to be a very great institu- 
 tion, the object of its existence being to ensure 
 the bodily salvation of this life ; the second great 
 need, the salvation of after-life being left for the 
 Church to work out. Now, with the Greeks, the 
 State was their Church as well ; and the Greek 
 idea was that all salvation was to be worked out 
 here on this earth, and that it was the duty of 
 the State to ensure that the greatest of happiness 
 was reached by men and women. In the Re- 
 public, Plato delineates an ideal State in which 
 men and women are in a very peculiar position, 
 3ach in his or her way trying to reach an ideal. 
 Men often say, For what purpose is all this ? 
 And the question is frequently asked, What is the 
 use of the ideal State ? Surely, they say, we 
 cannot accept such an ideal State. What is the 
 use of Plato pnttiug down laws as guides to reach 
 
 16
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the ideal of such a State ? The ancients had 
 their " guardians" of State, who were appointed 
 to administer the State on lines leading to such 
 ideals. With us such a thing is impossible. The 
 tendency with savages is for men to want women 
 to minister to their pleasures. Such a thought is 
 necessarily revolting to our ideas, and it was also 
 revolting to the Greeks. No Greek was allowed 
 to have more than one wife, as he was a monoga- 
 mist as we are, and monogamy is the direct 
 outcome of an ideal. " Plato's Eepublic is purely 
 ideal; he cultivates the gifts of imagination," it 
 might be said, " and imagination can do no good 
 to us in a practical everyday life ; it does not 
 teach us anything." On the contrary, far from 
 being superfluous, it should be our guiding star in 
 our problems of life, appealing to us as mothers 
 and as fathers of families. Mothers should be 
 appealed to as the trainers of the young, to pay 
 the greatest heed they can to the teachings of 
 this philosopher. To man, the writings of Plato 
 come as guiding principles; they implant, or 
 should do, the first thoughts of the ideal. 
 
 And here it is necessary to give an illustration, 
 a very simple one. Suppose we have a practical 
 man, who cares nothing for ideals. He wants to 
 buy a garden and a house. How does he set 
 about it ? He goes to a house-agent, and says, " I 
 want a house with a garden of ten acres." The 
 price is told him ; but he looks to material profit, 
 
 17 c
 
 PLATO 
 
 and says, " No, I will give two-thirds of that, say, 
 ^£2000." The bargain is struck, and then comes 
 the question of seeing if he really has ten acres. 
 Nothing can be more terre d terrc than the whole 
 transaction. Are these ten acres really ten acres ? 
 They measure it. How ? By lines. Now con- 
 sider that a line is a purely imaginary thing. 
 Mathematically, it has length only but no breadth, 
 and to our imagination such a thing does not 
 exist. We have never seen such a thing nor can 
 we imagine it. We really cannot get at the idea 
 of a line. Nevertheless it is this ideal line which 
 measures the extent of the ten acres, and ensures 
 that the property bought is really what it is 
 represented to be. This gives us a fair means of 
 determining how the ideal State of Plato bears a 
 relation to the real State. 
 
 There are, in all, three States to be considered : 
 (i) the first State is the ideal ; (ii) the next State 
 is not quite ideal, nor quite terrestrial, but is 
 something between the two ; and this is the state 
 which is governed by the Laios of Plato ; (hi) the 
 third State is governed by reality. It is the 
 second of the above states with which we are 
 dealiug, and with which the Laics of Plato are 
 concerned. Such a state is the best for all prac- 
 tical purposes, as it affects every action of our 
 lives. Everything we do and think must come 
 down as if from an idealist. There is no such 
 thing as a materialist. Man must descend from 
 
 18
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the idealist. When a man wants to marry a 
 woman, woman, and a particular woman, becomes 
 his highest concept, his highest expression of the 
 ideal. We are each of us Platonists born, we have 
 each of us some ideal guiding the mind even in 
 our most practical and materialist ideas. 
 
 Now as to the No'/ach, the book of the Laws. 
 This is not the compilation of a dreamer in the 
 fifth dimension, far from it. The most unprac- 
 tical ideas of Plato bear on practical problems of 
 life ; he touches on questions that come to us 
 when we are quite alone ; when we know that we 
 have met the man or woman that will influence 
 our whole life, when we have been witnessing, as 
 it were, a good drama ; he touches, indeed, on the 
 essentials of life when, in fact, we have met with 
 a problem we must decide. We say, " What shall 
 we do with all that ? " We see Americans, Pari- 
 sians, Spaniards, each governed by separate ideals, 
 which put the world before us in different aspects, 
 and we say, " We don't want this or that type of 
 humanity." But humanity is all a question of 
 ideals, and it is before us too, though in a diffe- 
 rent aspect. It is there, and it is all to be 
 followed, or to be condemned. There is no 
 special erudition in Plato, nor will abstract philo- 
 sophy be found in him ; but his teaching is plain 
 and full of simplicity, and yet at the same time 
 it is full of wisdom. 
 
 It is the seventh book that is being dealt with 
 
 19
 
 PLATO 
 
 now, and it is the first of the books of " The 
 Laws " which ought to be read before the others. 
 In reading it carefully it will be found that he 
 treats there of education ; it will at once show 
 his whole attitude towards education. We have 
 no end of laws on education ; we have explicit 
 rules to show us how to bring up our youth from 
 the age of ten or twelve to eighteen or twenty. 
 But where are our laws on primary education, 
 that is, how to bring up a child from the age of 
 one to ten ? Our boys and girls of that age we 
 leave to obscurity ; they are left in the nursery in 
 the care of women of lowly origin, of lowly educa- 
 tion, who use their influence and form the cha- 
 racter of future generations. And yet this period 
 of a child's life is the most important, the rest is 
 a mere logical sequence of what has gone before. 
 There is a common saying that the man is what 
 the child is. If we have a good idea of what 
 the child has been in his earliest years, we can 
 also tell what the man will be. 
 
 Plato goes a step further. He wants to educate 
 the woman before a child is born ; and his advice 
 to the woman and mother is clear and simple. 
 Be cheerful and active, move as much as possible, 
 move violently, exercise your bodily strength, take 
 air into you as much as you can. A propos of 
 this, to what causes was due the greatness of the 
 Spartans? It was due to their laws, not only 
 for training the young, but also for training the 
 
 20
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 mothers. They had stringent laws to regulate 
 the conduct of mothers long before a child was 
 born ; stringent laws for the development of girls, 
 who had to go through a course of gymnastics to 
 render them strong, yes, as strong as men. Plato 
 says they over-did it, for they not only wrestled 
 with men, but they even defended their country, 
 they partook of the heaviest food so that they 
 might attain to all the breadth of development 
 that a woman can. And, after all, if we lose 
 sight of exaggeration in Sparta, what do we come 
 back to ? We come back to the teachings and 
 the principles of Plato. 
 
 In woman we have the riddle of creation, she 
 is the incarnation of the race, the incarnation of 
 the great riddle — the riddle of all riddles. We 
 might think that Plato is illogical in saying that 
 something comes out of nothing, but here we 
 have the very life of all life. Let us develop the 
 woman as best we can, for she is the point on which 
 all depends, and we shall verily have that some- 
 thing coming out of nothing. Having done all 
 we can for the development of the woman, the 
 child arrives. There is to be no dress, or only a 
 loose dress for the first three years ; it must be 
 constantly moved about, and allowed as much air 
 and as much freedom as possible to the limbs ; and 
 while thus moved about, you must sing to it, 
 and let it hear music with rhythmic movement. 
 There must be no toys of your own selection, no 
 
 21
 
 PLATO 
 
 toys from Whiteley's, made in Germany, which 
 leave nothing to the child's imagination. The 
 child must invent its own toys, a twig or a branch 
 will be a toy to it, from which it will make giants 
 and princesses and sorcerers ; but in no case 
 influence the ideas of the child. All experience 
 tells us that a child looks upon everything as a 
 toy ; your books, your valued treasures about the 
 house, are only toys to the child, and if you do 
 not select for it, you will be the means of develop- 
 ing that imagination which goes to make true 
 ideals in later life. 
 
 Let us now turn to our edition of Plato, that 
 edition of Stephanus, universally adopted by 
 scholars, and, according to his pagination, let us 
 look up page 794, in the margin. He says exactly 
 and precisely that toys given to a child is a 
 psychological error, and that every child will 
 invent his own. 
 
 And now let us come to the sixth year of a 
 child's life. At this age he says that boys should 
 be separated from girls, and the boys should be 
 free from feminine influence. Here we must see 
 what the great American nation teaches us. It 
 is a well-known fact that in America boys and 
 girls are educated together. What is it that we 
 find as the result ; it kills American literature. 
 True, for this there are also other causes. Thus 
 they have no language of their own ; their 
 language is the English language, and not their 
 
 22
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 own. Let us look to the history of other nations 
 similarly situated. There is Belgium, which 
 speaks and writes the French language ; there 
 are the Swiss, who speak German, French, or 
 Italian ; and what literature do these nations 
 possess ? It may be said positively that no nation 
 which has not a language of its own can possibly 
 have a great literature. The quarry of every 
 country must be its language, from which a man 
 must sculpture out his thoughts in the marble, so 
 to speak, of his own country. 
 
 Another result in America, in consequence 
 of the intermingling of the sexes at school and 
 college, and the teaching of men by women, has 
 been the death of all romance. A boy after 
 sixteen or seventeen years of age has seen too 
 much of girls, and they begin to pall on him. 
 The charm of life — the romance of life — is gone, 
 and the girl does not care for the man. For this 
 statement the author himself was the butt of 
 about sixty criticisms ; he was said to be the 
 most ignorant of men, a dastardly coward to make 
 such assertions ; perhaps the Americans are too 
 thin-skinned for criticism, yet it was just this 
 little thing that was exposed by the Moseley 
 Commission. 
 
 Now let us turn again to Plato, the same page 
 as before, and we find him saying the same thing ; 
 that girls must not be educated with boys ; it 
 kills manly individuality, it kills the individuality 
 
 23
 
 PLATO 
 
 of the girls; they get bored with each other by 
 too great familiarity, they know too soon all 
 there is to be known of each other. And yet it 
 must be said, in spite of all this, that there 
 are Americans who agree that the mixture of 
 sexes was the greatest of all mistakes in that 
 country, as it renders man callous to the poetry, 
 to the charm of womanhood ; and it is on this 
 that the Moseley Commission put their foot down. 
 From the point of view of a man, an instance 
 might be given of an American, who was certainly 
 a good type of the results of the system. Frank 
 
 "W was about thirty years of age, and as 
 
 handsome as a man could be, a specimen of the 
 jeunesse dore'e, and he had become utterly indifferent 
 to all social life ; he had, in fact, used up all his 
 emotions. It was said to him, " Why don't you 
 go to that picnic, you will meet beautiful, accom- 
 plished girls there ? " He said, " Now, look here, 
 friend, I am absolutely sick of it ; I have had too 
 much of it." And so it is; it has never done 
 that nation any good ; and the same thing is 
 happening to-day with South Americans, in Chili, 
 in Peru ; they are trying to put woman on the 
 same level with man, but they cannot do it ; all 
 history is against it. Plato again is our guide, 
 and, turning to the same page as before, we find 
 him saying that women and men must be educated 
 separately. A man must learn manly occupations ; 
 equitation, wrestling, shooting with arrows, and 
 
 24
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 games of all kinds ; a woman too has her occupa- 
 tions, she must be nimble, she must learn the 
 arts, and philosophy, but it must be separate from 
 men. These are the principles laid down, and 
 we may go through history, and wherever we 
 find man and woman have been thrown together, 
 and brought up on the same lines, there we will 
 always find something wrong. 
 
 Nelson, it is true, was a hero, but the greatest 
 victory of the hero was not at Trafalgar, nor at 
 Aboukir ; a greater victory was his love for Emma. 
 She was not his wife, we would say only a mis- 
 tress ; but there she was, he held her up as his 
 ideal, he loved her, and his greatness was due to 
 his love for that great and beautiful woman, who 
 was the mother of his children, and his last words 
 were for her. This shall remain for all time, this 
 one great love which was an incentive to his great 
 deeds. There is also the similar case of Pericles 
 at the beautiful feet of Aspasia. 
 
 Leave boys and girls together from ten to 
 eighteen years of age, and what will be the end ? 
 All romance is gone, all spell is broken, and how 
 can they have any drama in their lives ? A man and 
 a woman then are really sick of each other, they 
 are bored to death by each other's company ; and 
 this is said by a Frenchman in a recent novel 
 " Eve Victorieuse" and the French are versed in 
 the art of love. The author speaks of an Ameri- 
 can lady married to a man who was intellectual, 
 
 25
 
 PLATO 
 
 athletic, muscular, and yet she was bored to death 
 in a short time. How can people like these have 
 drama in their lives, when the woman is sick of 
 it all at twenty years of age, and the man bored to 
 death at twenty-five ? 
 
 And this, too, means death to all literature. 
 Literature is not a mere amusement ; it is a great, 
 a most important thing for a country. What would 
 Hungary be without her literature ? There we 
 have Petofi and Arany, these men hold us together. 
 What would Englishmen be without their Shake- 
 speare ? And not Shakespeare alone, but Milton, 
 Shelley, Keats, Byron. By England is meant all 
 that ; great deeds may be forgotten and lost, but 
 poets remain. 
 
 Now, it is for the producing of such as these 
 that mothers should use their influence. The 
 great error of our time is that we have no laws 
 how to train children from one to ten years of 
 age. No, said the Greeks and Plato, for these 
 we must have the most stringent laws. There 
 ought to be women appointed for controlling the 
 education of such children, they must go from 
 house to house, and see if the mothers are strong 
 enough, if the nurses are fit for the control of 
 their charges, if the games and play are properly 
 organized; for it is a serious thing, the proper 
 development of a child ; and for such development, 
 games, according to Plato, are the most serious 
 thing. 
 
 26
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Buecher, a political economist in Leipsic, wrote 
 a wonderful and charming book, in which he 
 speaks of rhythm and labour, that all work should 
 be accompanied by music ; that art preceded 
 labour ; that it was art first, and business or the 
 shop after; or to put it in another way, we are 
 artistic before we are " shopistic; " in fact, we want 
 art, for we are made so ; it is given us to promote 
 our growth. 
 
 To a child everything is a game ; every man a 
 playmate ; and everything he or she touches is a 
 toy for the purpose of play. If we refer again to 
 Plato, to the same page of the seventh book, it 
 will be found that he warns us to be very careful 
 that the games of children are regulated and 
 watched, for they form the real character of the 
 man. Now, sports are the greatest feature of 
 England. One could not have been at Oxford 
 and Cambridge and not noticed this fact. It is 
 not the abuse of sport that is referred to ; abuse 
 will creep into anything. But enjoyed and 
 indulged in, as it is in this country, it may be 
 said that they go to form two-thirds of the British 
 character — the real character of the nation which 
 is formed by golf and football and cricket. As 
 Plato says, give them games to form muscle, to 
 exercise power of control, to give them joy of life. 
 There is one point, however, against the English 
 games — they are not sufficiently cheerful. Com- 
 pare, for instance, the Greeks and their great 
 
 27
 
 PLATO 
 
 dyajves; there they dauced together, sang to- 
 gether, they had wrestling and athletic games 
 together — all to music. Compare too Sparta, where 
 everything was done in a public place, the ayamsrai 
 being practically in a semi-nude state, with music 
 and rhythm accompanying, and all regulated by 
 the State ; nothing was left to the initiative of 
 individuals, for fear that they might over-do 
 things. 
 
 This is why Plato carries conviction, the laying 
 down of stringent laws so as not to over-do things. 
 Take the case of music in Hungary; and the 
 author speaks as an old Hungarian. There is too 
 much music in Hungary. The country is steeped 
 in it ; it is its narcotic. Every country has its 
 narcotic ; with one it is opium, with another 
 hashish, with a third it is religious fanaticism. 
 The Hungarians take it in music. They rise to 
 it in the morning — there is never a cafe at lunch 
 time but where there is music. They are serenaded 
 with it, intoxicating melodies are heard all around; 
 it is charming music, but one is almost paralyzed 
 by it— it is saturation, over-saturation with music. 
 It is, as Plato says, too much. He relates too of 
 the sacrifices, dances, and ceremonials in Egypt, 
 of young men from eight to eighteen, which were 
 regulated by law. All songs in honour of a 
 goddess were regulated by law; and if any one 
 did anything against these laws, or sang a song 
 contrary to what was laid down, he could be 
 
 28
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 called to account by any private person in an 
 action for godlessness or impiety ; he could be 
 accused for singing a hymn which was not 
 according to law. 
 
 Now, in Hungary they intoxicate you with 
 their music; they go mad over it, with its 
 rhythm and its cadence. These beautiful 
 rhythms and cadences and melodies will be found 
 taken from Hungarian music by Beethoven, 
 Mozart, Brahms, any quantity of it. It makes 
 one sad to think of this poor country flooded by 
 all this music, ruined by it. If only there were 
 laws to regulate it ; but no, it is all Sitte or custom, 
 as we would say, and it is custom with us which 
 influences society. Plato is surely right, that 
 Sitte, or custom, should be subject to laws ; it 
 should be so with us, and there is no doubt it will 
 be in time, when we shall have our laws, like the 
 Greeks, to regulate future generations from child- 
 hood, and even before the children are born. 
 
 Now, it would be well to consider another 
 point. With the Greeks any man doing business 
 was looked upon as contemptible, and here in 
 England it is the same. Those who make money 
 by manufacturing shoes, coats, and trousers are 
 ignored, they are looked down upon ; business is 
 shameful kremastistihon ; socially, in this country, 
 this class does not exist. They may have made 
 last week 10,000 dollars, but humanity says they 
 are not in it. This class is very rich, but often also 
 
 29
 
 PLATO 
 
 fearfully unhappy. Carnegies are not necessarily 
 happy men, for money is not the real point in life. 
 It remains, indeed, true that we are, all of us, at 
 heart Platonists. But in this sense the man who 
 only cares for acquiring money has chosen ideals 
 which cannot lead him to those paths where he can 
 say, " I am happy." Let us look at it from another 
 point of view. It may be said that the Greeks 
 were more religious than we are, and we find 
 Plato talking of the immortality of the soul, and 
 of a future existence. Take Aristotle, the Stoics, 
 or the Neo- Stoics, with them all there was the 
 same problem to work out, of a future existence ; 
 and yet Plato and the Greeks maintained that we 
 should be happy here ; that life is not matter ; 
 life is in your belief, and in your firm grasp of 
 what we call ideas. If it is not there, it is 
 nowhere. There are people who have thought 
 that Plato was all mere bosh ; but from an 
 historical standpoint his writings are marvellous, 
 and have engrossed all ages. At Byzantium, a 
 thousand years ago, Phothius descanted on Plato. 
 In the fifteenth century, the ladies of Florence sat 
 and listened to Marsilius Ficinus ; and to-day we 
 are listening once more to the self-same topic. 
 Whether we are convinced or not, there is 
 something in the whole matter, something how- 
 ever small, a mere crepuscule of thought, the 
 forerunner of the rising sun ; perhaps that sun 
 has not risen yet, but it may rise. We may turn
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 round and say, " Master, what you say is so far 
 from reality, it may be mere dreams." Still 
 they are ideals without which we cannot live, as 
 they are the essence of existence, which is the 
 outcome of ideas. The crepuscule must indeed 
 precede the day. 
 
 Now, Plato has declared that nobody shall 
 come to the teaching of his Philosophy without a 
 previous knowledge of geometry. Do we, then, 
 know what an asymptote is ? Draw a straight 
 line on the blackboard and then another curved 
 line, and produce them ever so far, so that they 
 go on approaching each other, but yet never 
 meeting each other. This is the idea we get 
 from Plato and his philosophy. It is like the 
 asymptotes, we go on and on, getting nearer 
 and nearer the ideal, but never touch. There 
 are moments, from time to time, when we think 
 we have touched. There are moments, for in- 
 stance, when beauty is realized ; when we think 
 a certain woman is perfectly beautiful, and our 
 full conception of beauty is realized in just that 
 woman. Some one asked Francois Liszt if he 
 had ever seen an absolutely beautiful woman. 
 His answer was "Yes, twice only, but then she 
 lasted only a few months." 
 
 Is it not necessary for us to-day to try and do 
 something for the education of our children from 
 one to ten years of age ? Let every mother try 
 to realize something of Plato, and if she reads him 
 
 3i
 
 PLATO 
 
 and finds a passage which to her appears an 
 asymptote, let her not say I can never reach that, 
 but rather that after all it is my duty to try and 
 do something towards reaching it. If Raphael 
 the painter had been asked which was his greatest 
 work, he would have said the pictures I never 
 painted are infinitely greater than those I have 
 painted. And so with Mozart, who said that the 
 music he had heard within him unexpressed was 
 grander than any he had composed. So they go 
 on higher and higher to the highest of ideals, but 
 they never reach it. And so, if only ten or fifteen 
 women in London try to realize these teachings 
 and where they lead to, and try to bring up 
 children on those lines, others would do the same. 
 The force of example is strong in England, where 
 the middle class tries to imitate the upper class, 
 whose influence cannot fail to benefit the entire 
 nation. This is what makes Plato the greatest of 
 all teachers, he comes to you a mother, a sister, 
 to me a man of business, a brother, and he shows 
 us how to raise, to elevate ourselves, and others 
 through us. 
 
 Let us take the story of Socrates and the 
 cobbler; " My friend," said the sage, "and how 
 is business going ? ' ' and so he carried him along 
 from shoes to leather, to nails and every other 
 article of his trade, little by little, until he raised 
 the man's estimation of his calling ; a new wave 
 was coming into the man, and he exclaimed, " I
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 see much more in my trade than I ever saw 
 before." "Why," said Socrates, " I did not speak 
 of anything higher than your trade." 
 
 Now let us come back again to our volume of 
 Plato, p. 794, seventh book, and consider another 
 point to which he draws attention. " What 
 nonsense is this," says he, " that we practice our 
 right hand and not our left as well ; in educating 
 the young we never practice both hands equally ; 
 we make ourselves lame in our hands, and not 
 in our feet." There is a well-known saying that 
 our intellect comes from our brain ; but that the 
 brain is really the seat of our intellect has never 
 been proved. After all the elaborate writings of 
 physiologists and phrenologists here and abroad, 
 who tried to prove that such was the case, the 
 problem is still unsolved. Whether that semi- 
 fluid mass in our heads is, or is not, the seat 
 of our intellect, this much is certain that some- 
 thing is there ; and to get perfect action for 
 the brain and the heart, we must work the left 
 as much as the right arm. The left arm would 
 react on some part of the brain, and both arms 
 would develop both sides of the brain equally. 
 Now all this is most suggestive, and it is for 
 mothers to take the matter into consideration, and 
 to see if by their influence they can do something 
 for the childhood of their country by the teachings 
 we have here. Many a child with a weak heart 
 might gain something, but whether it reacts on 
 
 33 d
 
 PLATO 
 
 the brain as the seat of intellect remains to be 
 seen. 
 
 In reading Plato it will be found that, what- 
 ever subject he deals with, he goes straight to the 
 principle. With him, whether it be in the Ke- 
 public or the No'jaot, or any other of his works, it is 
 the Ouo-ta, the essence, or the principle of the 
 thing which he attacks. With music, dances, sex, 
 education, he goes straight to the principle ; and 
 he did infinitely more than what we are doing 
 now. We leave music entirely alone, and no 
 country in Europe legislates about it. Modern 
 music is thus the bane of modern life, and 
 instead of steadily improving, as it should, it is 
 degenerating. A man would be laughed at if he 
 went to an M.P. and asked him to propose a bill 
 in Parliament to regulate music ; and yet how can 
 we attain to the best unless we educate our men 
 and our women by proper laws ? And education 
 is the most important branch of all politics, for 
 never can a State become great without education. 
 
 Let us see what Abbe Galiani has to say on 
 the subject. He was a most gifted man, who 
 lived in France in the eighteenth century, and in 
 his Correspondance there are letters written to all 
 the grand ladies of the time. He had a peculiar 
 power of shedding new light on various subjects, 
 and ladies asked him all sorts of questions. In 
 one of these letters, when Mine. D'Epinay, refer- 
 ring to Athens, Sparta, and the Laws of Plato, 
 
 34
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 asks him whether we could apply these laws to 
 our modem states, " No," said he, "they were 
 only laws of education; with us it is only a 
 question of legislation." There is no doubt that 
 the upper classes must use their influence to make 
 things different. The more we strive to become 
 like these states, the better for our country. There 
 is no reason why we should not do now what the 
 ancients did ; and in the future, through women, 
 we might bring back those times when education 
 was the most important part of politics; when 
 women, by moulding the character of the children 
 in their earlier years, really were instrumental in 
 moulding the character of the State. Our women 
 might then truly say with the mother of the 
 Gracchi, " I have no treasure and no gems. My 
 gems are my sons Caius and Tiberius." 
 
 All this may not be realized at once ; indeed, 
 it may not be realized at any time But it is for 
 women to be up and be doing, and to make their 
 beginning with the study of Plato. Distance 
 now does not count, with our telegraphs and 
 telephones, railways and motor-cars. Paris and 
 Berlin and Vienna are nearer to us now than 
 Sparta was to Athens. Why should we not make 
 of Germany, France, England, a new Athens, 
 and by our influence, little by little, introduce 
 those teachings of Plato which will bring us 
 moderns to a state infinitely superior to anything 
 we have ever had, when men will be men, and 
 
 35
 
 PLATO 
 
 women, women ; when there will be a new Peri- 
 clean period, and new thoughts and new progres ? 
 A new Athens can be made only by new women ; 
 by women who are really women, and who will 
 form a man before he is ten years of age, and 
 before Law and Church and anything else can 
 step in. These pages of the seventh book of 
 Plato are the most important for forming such 
 new ideas, which will bring new intellectual 
 pleasures, and will thus add considerably to the 
 importance of this great country. 
 
 36
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 We now come to the consideration of another part 
 of the seventh book of Plato, which is of intense 
 interest to us modern men and women, though it 
 may be somewhat difficult for people obstructed 
 with their preconceived ideas, and stuffed with too 
 much book-learning, to assimilate the problems 
 dealt with. 
 
 In the thirteenth chapter of this book it is stated 
 that people ought to have common meals. Now, 
 this is most difficult for people in modern times to 
 realize, and it will at once be said that that cannot 
 apply to modern circumstances in the least, nor to 
 the conditions of our present life. But it is known 
 that this question of common meals has actually 
 come, in a way, into American life. And it has 
 come about in America through various causes, 
 chiefly through lack of servants. It is not neces- 
 sary now to discuss the servant question, but it 
 may be said that, to obviate this difficulty, people 
 live, not in flats, but in blocks of houses, a series 
 of houses made up of twenty or twenty-five of 
 them in one block ; and in the underground rooms 
 there will live a caterer, who will cater for the 
 
 37 
 
 4013
 
 PLATO 
 
 vast number of families in the block, and provide 
 for them all by one cuisine. It is not meant by 
 that that they sit for their meals in one and the 
 same room. Now, this is a caricature of the home 
 life, the same as the boarding-house system is a 
 caricature of the much-vaunted British home life ; 
 similar institutions in France are called 'pensions, 
 or living en pension, as the French say. These 
 boarding-houses are the nearest approach there is 
 in modern times to the common meals of the 
 ancients, a very caricature of what Plato lays 
 down in his book ; and with the twelve thousand 
 boarding-houses in London, and the vast area of 
 " blocks " in America, it is the most drastic 
 refutation of our pretended love for the home. 
 
 Plato insists that we should eat together, and 
 that this eating together educates the manners. 
 Boys and girls should therefore be educated in 
 eating and drinking together; in short, in table 
 manners. It was this great guiding idea which 
 the Spartans and the Cretans long ago realized ; 
 but with us to-day it is certainly only a caricature. 
 But there is the guiding ideal about it all to which 
 we might gradually aspire ; not only might it 
 improve our table manners, but our cuisine as 
 well, for, as the Americans truly say, our modern 
 cookery is manslaughter in the second degree. 
 
 In Greek life there was a series of continuous 
 banquets. No Spartan was allowed to eat at home, 
 but they had their great meal in common ; and if 
 
 38
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 we followed the same custom our cuisine would be 
 better and our table manners would be better. 
 A propos of table manners, an instance might be 
 given of a banquet, at which the author was 
 present, at Bremen, which was somewhat of a 
 caricature of the Greek banquets. It lasted from 
 four to eight o'clock, a most uncomfortable hour 
 to begin, it must be agreed. The Germans ate, 
 as Germans do, and their powers in this direction 
 can only be expressed by geometrical figures raised 
 to the second and third powers. All through the 
 repast they had but one knife and fork to each 
 person. Now, this was not quite right. We do 
 need, then, to study Plato and to act on his 
 advice, that boys ought to learn table manners, 
 how to eat and how to drink ; not only to sit 
 together, but to be educated in the proper manner 
 of eating and drinking. 
 
 Plato refers to another point, and a most 
 important one, and that is, the proper regulation 
 of sleep. It is a very curious point, which perhaps 
 with our preconceived ideas of modern times we 
 may find difficult to understand, and will say that 
 there is a great difference between the life led by 
 the Greeks and by ourselves. Plato says that 
 people make the greatest mistake possible in 
 sleeping too long. We have a common saying 
 that six hours is sufficiently long for elderly people 
 to sleep, seven or eight hours for younger people, 
 and up to ten or twelve hours for the child. Now, 
 
 39
 
 PLATO 
 
 Plato does not believe in all that. He says five 
 or six hours is quite sufficient for anybody, and 
 that during these restricted hours of sleep a public 
 person ought to get up two or three times during 
 the night to guard against evil-doers whom the 
 darkness might hide ; he would thus get to the 
 mind or heart of things ; and the free man ought 
 to get up and go about his house to see if his 
 servants are asleep, and if everything about the 
 house is in order. 
 
 Plato says we sleep too much ; and anything 
 above this limit of his is too much. All countries 
 go to excess in some matter ; one country eats 
 too much, another drinks too much, a third has 
 too much music. We sleep too much. With 
 the Greeks there was a reward for the boy who 
 regulated his sleep ; he was allowed privileges and 
 special exemptions not accorded to other boys. 
 All that seems to us in northern lands somewhat 
 strange — how if five or six hours of sleep is suffi- 
 cient for a man of forty or fifty, it should also be 
 sufficient for a younger man of twenty or thirty. 
 Perhaps we must attribute it to the purer air of 
 Greece, its lighter food. It might be possible 
 there, though not so feasible in our more northern 
 climate. But we are given by Plato the general 
 principle, and we might take this general principle 
 as our ideal in this matter. That we do sleep 
 too much there would seem to be not a shadow 
 of doubt. People from twenty -five to forty years of 
 
 4°
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 age sleep too much. There is an instance of Italy. 
 What Italian is there who does not take his 
 regular siesta in the day? Such a man, if he 
 existed, would not be considered a "gentleman." 
 In Spain they sleep two-thirds of their time. In 
 France, that most energetic of countries, they 
 are in bed by ten o'clock and up by five in the 
 morning. If we go into any provincial town we 
 will see the shops open at seven in the morning. 
 If we ask why they open their shops at this 
 hour, and if they ever get a customer then? "I 
 may not get a customer," is the answer, " but 
 still, I must open the shop." It will be noticed 
 that the more south one goes, and the more 
 eastward from Europe, the more the people sleep ; 
 and all this is decidedly anti-Platonic. 
 
 Plato is very distinct on the point in his Laws, 
 in his Republic, and also in his incidental remarks 
 in his Dialogues. Though we may not be able 
 to do in our northern climate with as little sleep 
 as they did in Greece, still, we would do well to 
 consider the Greek side of life, and see where the 
 difference comes in. That life was so much more 
 intense, so much richer and fuller than ours, that 
 we are bound to pause and consider whether a 
 man like Plato, whose experience went so far, 
 would lay down such a law unless it were abso- 
 lutely necessary to the strenuous life around 
 him. Let us take Plato on one or two other 
 subjects, on temperance and on teetotalism. He 
 
 4i
 
 PLATO 
 
 completely condemns them. When, therefore, such 
 a rich and experienced nation, living the intensest 
 of life, condemns a thing, we have good prima facie 
 reason for thinking our preconceived notions on 
 such a question must be totally wrong. 
 
 Perhaps it will be said that we are going too 
 far in such questions on sleeping and eating and 
 drinking. We to-day go too far in the worship 
 of woman ; the Greeks, perhaps, went too far in 
 the worship of man. There is at the back of all 
 this an infinity of infinitude that we cannot reach. 
 There is no end to anything. There is no Plato, 
 no Aristotle, and no other thinker in this world 
 who will exhaust everything. When Plato says 
 something is wrong, it may be taken for certain 
 that he had some very good reason for saying so. 
 His experience was gained from a variety of types, 
 from Syracuse, from Corinth, from Thebes, from 
 Sparta and Athens — all types totally differing from 
 each other ; and we may in our mind still have a 
 prima facie case against him and say, perhaps he 
 isn't right. But let us think of it all before we 
 come to such a conclusion ; let us think of the 
 question of sleep. 
 
 Now let us notice another argument. The 
 mere vulgar, ordinary man — a man quite common- 
 place — such as the Greeks would call absolutely 
 " Philistine," who, in the day, does not use his 
 imagination, will dream at night ; he alwaj^s has 
 dreams night after night, and will relate wonderful 
 
 42
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 dreams. It is the instinct of nations to indulge 
 in play. In England it is horse-racing ; in Austria 
 it is lottery. A man in Austria will dream of, 
 say, the number thirteen or seventeen, or a poplar, 
 or a white horse — they have whole books for the 
 interpretation of dreams — and he will at once, by 
 the supposed light of his dream in which he has 
 faith, go and put his money down on his particular 
 number, fully believing that the turn of a wheel 
 will bring him in a large fortune. All nations 
 have their excitements, and the Austrian has it in 
 his lottery. But men of higher intelligence never 
 dream, or dream very little. They are working 
 their imagination all day long with pictures, 
 drama, philosophy; and when they go to sleep, 
 they are tired, their imagination rests, and their 
 sleep is dreamless. Lessing, Goethe, Shelley, 
 never dreamt, or dreamt the most commonplace 
 things. With men who do not use their imagina- 
 tion in the daytime, it is active when they are 
 sleeping, and so it produces dreams. And so it 
 is if we take the later years of a highly imagina- 
 tive man — a poet, for instance, in the evening of 
 his life ; he has worked his imagination out in 
 the earlier years of his life, and so his later works 
 are devoid of it, and become dry, veritable dry- 
 as-dust. This is the case with Goethe ; but, 
 perhaps, one exception should be mentioned, the 
 present great poet of England, Swinburne, who 
 remains as fresh as he was in his earlier years. 
 
 43
 
 PLATO 
 
 The Greeks were so active with their intelligence 
 that they did not dream. We seldom hear of 
 a man of ancient Greece going to the Greek 
 oracles at Delphi or Dodona, and saying, " I have 
 had such and such a dream ; will you please 
 explain?" As a rule, this is not the case. The 
 Greeks, heing intensely intelligent, dreamt very 
 little. The whole economy of their life was so 
 totally different from ours that Plato's remarks 
 on sleep come to us as of a most profound 
 character ; of a deeper significance than mere 
 medical advice. They indicate the result of 
 experience gained from his surroundings of totally 
 different types of life, an experience of a life spent 
 among so great a mixture of men that his remarks 
 must be taken as absolutely convincing. 
 
 We now come back to children, and how to 
 educate them when they reach their tenth year ; 
 and here, again, we must look up the thirteenth 
 chapter of the seventh book of Plato. They were 
 not to be taught reading and writing until they 
 reached that year. This advice the author has 
 followed in the case of his own child, who was 
 not allowed to read or write before she was ten 
 (her father had read too much), as he thought 
 that Plato was infinitely wiser than he could ever 
 be, because that man lived in a country where 
 there was the possibility and chance of seeing 
 things in infinitely greater variety and aspects 
 than could possibly fall to his lot. 
 
 44
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 In America there are too many colleges, and 
 too much education in early life ; the average 
 Americans are, in fact, over-educated. The 
 author has been there long enough to know and 
 to say that in America all Americans are alike ; 
 they are all of one type. And it is this lack of 
 type among them that has been the cause of their 
 greatness in one aspect, and also of their weakness. 
 It is a great homogeneous nation, where one sees 
 a great number, all of one kind; but only a 
 number. It is different in London and Paris, 
 where so many types are met with, so many 
 shades and varieties of humanity all differing from 
 each other, which one never sees in a very homo- 
 geneous country. The London 'bus conductors 
 and drivers are a type of the most intelligent 
 people of the lower classes in this country, for 
 the reason that they see and deal with so many 
 different types of people in their daily work. And 
 so with the Greek cities, with Thebes, Corinth, 
 Athens, Megara. In a small compass, in a very 
 little circumscribed country, they had the whole of 
 humanity, so to speak. In Europe, too, there are 
 many diversities of types if we could travel and 
 see for ourselves; but how many travel thus, or 
 could speak the various languages without which 
 we could not reach the heart of the people ? In 
 Greece there was but one language, and all spoke 
 that language ; whether from Acarnania or Attica 
 or Thrace— all spoke the one language, however 
 
 45
 
 PLATO 
 
 the people might differ in type, and in spite of 
 what was considered good in Megara being con- 
 sidered a crime in another city. 
 
 When a deep-thinking man like Plato lays it 
 down that no child — and a child is a very fertile 
 germ — should learn reading and writing before it 
 is ten, we must be very much convinced ; and a 
 student of philosophy would think he was abso- 
 lutely right. He then proceeds to say that from 
 ten to thirteen a child should be taught reading 
 and writing only ; and at thirteen he should be 
 able to read and write anything. With the Greek 
 and our modern alphabets of twenty-two to 
 twenty-six letters this ought to be an easy thing 
 to do. Let us take a side glance at nations that 
 have overdone this sort of thing, the Chinese and 
 the Japanese. The Chinese have five thousand 
 different signs and six hundred different sounds 
 just for ordinary everyday purposes. For literary 
 purposes they have about ten thousand ; while 
 the full number of signs in Chinese literature may 
 be put down at fifty thousand. The labour and 
 time required to learn these sounds and signs 
 would be immense ; indeed, it would take any 
 ordinary man from six to ten years of his recep- 
 tive time in learning them — a sheer waste of 
 youth and the springtime of learning in acquiring 
 an abominable method. With the Greeks it 
 was the analytical method they learnt from the 
 Phoenicians, and our own alphabets are based on 
 
 46
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 that learning ; and the teaching of reading and 
 writing to children is thus made easy. Well, to 
 come back to the child. During these three 
 years, from ten to thirteen, he is not to be allowed 
 to learn poetry or prose ; neither geography nor 
 history — in fact, nothing else but to be able to 
 read and write. Let us compare this with our 
 own modern countries. Let us take the author's 
 own country, Hungary, and imagine the misery 
 the youth are subjected to from the age of ten to 
 thirteen. They had to go to the Gymnasia, where 
 they learnt Latin, Greek, geography, history, 
 physics, chemistry, and a host of other subjects 
 besides, not only the pourquoi des choses, mats le 
 pourquoi du pourquoi, all between the ages of ten 
 and thirteen ; every day of the week regularly 
 from four to six hours at school, excepting on 
 Thursdays and Saturdays, when the afternoons 
 were free. We come back to Plato, and he says, 
 "you must not learn anything; " and this from a 
 Greek who had the most fanatical interest in 
 everything, one of the most inquisitive nations 
 the world has ever had. What is the conse- 
 quence ? Why, the Government here, so ena- 
 moured of the Hungarian system, actually sent 
 a lady to report on it, and she returned with a 
 glowing, triumphant report of what she had seen. 
 The author was then asked by the Government 
 to give his opinion. He addressed an inquiry : 
 " Am I supposed to give an official report, or to 
 
 47
 
 PLATO 
 
 say just what is in my mind ? " The answer was 
 that he was to say just what was in his mind — 
 what he really thought about it. The answer was 
 written back with a motto from the seventh book 
 of Plato at the head of it, that a child from ten 
 to thirteen ought to learn nothing, except to 
 read and to write. 
 
 We may think our system is a wise one, and 
 Plato a fool ; but we should ponder over the other 
 alternative — whether Plato was not profoundly 
 right. The Hungarian system is too much ; all 
 Hungarian young men nowadays are top-heavy. 
 They have a rich, sonorous language which lends 
 itself to rhetoric ; they are good, brilliant talkers. 
 A Hungarian will talk of Icelandic institutions, of 
 Norwegian troubles ; he will discuss Shakespeare, 
 as few in this country can, c'est pour se sauver. 
 But there is nothing more in it ; it is all talk ; 
 and all because they would not follow the advice 
 of the great sage. So in France, in the Paris 
 Lycee, where they are taught to write erudite 
 essays, a boy was told to imagine himself Caesar, 
 and to deliver a discourse. The boy was proud, 
 and so was his father. But can we imagine a boy 
 of twelve trying to be Crcsar, and addressing the 
 Senate of Rome ! He tried to bo brilliant, to be 
 learned ; but all this was very amusing and so 
 absurd that it was impossible to witness the 
 thing without laughing for hours. His father 
 was angry at tho laugh, but all the author 
 
 4 8
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 could say was, pardonnez moi. All this is not 
 education. 
 
 In England it is different. Here the Eton 
 and Harrow boy is not overburdened with studies, 
 and it is a very right thing it should be so. The 
 author has had to teach thousands of young 
 men in this country, and ho can say that the 
 majority of them knew precious little. He once 
 asked a young man, Who was Herbert Spencer ? 
 Who was Goethe ? He did not know ; but he 
 could speak French very well. This is a very 
 good thing. They are manly, they are virile, and 
 all that a young fellow should be at that age. 
 This is more Platonic. Let not the young men 
 of this country imitate the Germans. The boys 
 at Eton and Harrow know quite enough, but they 
 might know a little more geography; one does 
 not like to be told that Lisbon is the capital of 
 Spain. This is going a little too far ; but all the 
 same, they have more grit in them than if they 
 had been taught to discourse as Caesar. 
 
 All this is said not simply because Plato says 
 it, but because Plato says it with the experience 
 of a great and experienced nation behind him. 
 We have in Europe more types than the Greeks 
 had, where there was only one language ; even 
 in this empire of England the types are number- 
 less, and yet how many have travelled and studied 
 them, and what impressions have they brought 
 back? There is no doubt that when one travels 
 
 49 e
 
 PLATO 
 
 at the age of thirty or forty, the impressions left 
 on the mind are not great ; it is in childhood that 
 they are vivid. The kodak of the mind has then 
 lost its power of taking impressions ; the time of 
 impressions is over. The remarks of Plato re- 
 garding education from ten to thirteen have more 
 than prima facie force. He is more than right, 
 absolutely right, that we must start with right 
 principles, and that our impressions, when young, 
 are the only impressions which remain. 
 
 Now let us see how Plato thinks a child from 
 thirteen to sixteen is to be taught. He must read 
 the poets. He meant something very different 
 from what we mean by poets. To the Greek, a 
 book of poems was a Bible, a text-book of science 
 and of amusement combined in one. Homer, for 
 instance, was a veritable Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
 infinitely superior to it, as it combined knowledge, 
 science, geography, and religion. A thousand 
 years later the Greeks had Strabo, of Amasia, 
 their geographer, and his town is still proud of 
 having been his birthplace. He quotes Homer 
 as we would a member of the Geographical Society, 
 and he puts it all down as absolute truth. We 
 think poetry is one thing, science another ; but 
 he found both in Homer. There is a Frenchman, 
 M. Victor Berard, and he determined to take 
 Homer au pied de la lettre. He said, "I will go 
 from Greece to Troy, from Troy to Crete, to 
 Sicily, to Gibraltar, and put myself in his place 
 
 5o
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 so as to test Homer ; ' ' and when he came to a 
 place he tried to identify it according to the 
 descriptions given by Homer as with a Baedeker. 
 He had no preconceived ideas, so he wrote a 
 beautiful book. With Ulysses he came to the 
 island of Calypso (that may be only a figure of 
 poetry, but the locality where Calypso was may 
 have been real), and there he tried to find a place 
 answering to Homer's description, and he did 
 find it completely true in every detail. Here was 
 Homer in real form ; and it shows us that Strabo 
 was right, and that Homer was right. Let us, 
 therefore, give Homer to our young men, not 
 only as a book of poetry, but as a text-book of 
 science, as a text-book of religion. The author 
 had to read law for some time with an old lawyer, 
 as dry-as-dust as possible ; who could see nothing 
 in Homer, or in poetry of any description. He 
 read him the Odyssey, but the old man talked 
 against it at first. As the reading progressed, 
 and it came to the meeting of Ulysses and his 
 wife, the old lawyer was absolutely dissolved in 
 tears, but he said, Die ganze Geschichte ist Unsinn* 
 This is Homer, and we can imagine what a nation 
 must be which has such an immense advantage 
 in having such a book of education. 
 
 This country has its Shakespeare, but Homer 
 is greater than Shakespeare, though there are 
 some qualities in Shakespeare which are superior 
 to anything the Greeks have written. But any 
 
 5i
 
 PLATO 
 
 country which has such a book as Shakespeare 
 is indeed fortunate; and that this book, brimful 
 of knowledge of birds, herbs, botany, etc., should 
 be the work of one man, considering the times he 
 lived in, is amazing. If the Greeks considered 
 Homer as the chief pabulum of education for 
 their children, surely here we have Shakespeare 
 as the book, with its multiplicity of knowledge, 
 to instruct our boys and girls with. If Homer 
 be scientific, philosophic, and poetical combined, 
 here we have the same thing in Shakespeare; 
 then why should we not do what the Greeks did, 
 and give it to our children to read from beginning 
 to end, and to study it ? It is sad to think that 
 every foreigner of education, even to the Mon- 
 tenegrin and the Roumanian, has read him more 
 and understands him better than the English have 
 done. How many English can say that they have 
 read all the plays of Shakespeare, and how many 
 plays have they seen on the stage ? Perhaps two 
 or three. Why not accept Plato, and say, if our 
 boys require educating, we must give them Shake- 
 speare ? Homer is so artistic, in spite of his 
 simplicity ; parts of him are so different, so foreign, 
 to our own modern atmosphere of teaching, that 
 only his tales should be taken for the education 
 of modern boys of thirteen to sixteen. 
 
 Though Plato lays down the reading of poets, 
 he is somewhat severe on poets, as a rule, and 
 hates tragedies. Let us consider the drama in 
 
 52
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 England. The real drama is practically unknown 
 here, and is far from playing the role it ought to 
 play in a great country. The various dramas seen 
 are, so to speak, wooden, and no dramas at all, 
 and yet England can boast of having had some of 
 the greatest dramatic writers of modern times. 
 Plato's advice is to read other poets as well. In 
 the schools of England, at Harrow and Eton, they 
 read poets ; yes, but they are only encouraged to 
 do so. Plato makes it a matter of law ; a boy is 
 bound to learn a poet by heart. Aristotle said 
 that poetry is infinitely more suggestive of great 
 things than history ; it is the great educative force. 
 But the English are afraid that if they teach their 
 boys poetry they will become romancers. It is 
 nothing of the kind. Goethe says that of all our 
 faculties the imagination is the most valuable ; 
 and we may be sure that that nation is the 
 greatest whose imagination is best cultivated. 
 What made such men as Newton, Stephenson, 
 Walter Scott great ? It was their power of imagi- 
 nation. Imagination in one went into science, in 
 another into railways, in the third into literature ; 
 but it is all one and the same thing. 
 
 We may take it as an absolute truth that 
 where there are no great poets in a country, there 
 are no inventions. In Canada, for instance, in 
 South Africa, young and strenuous colonies, where 
 are the inventions ? Whilst in " effete " England, 
 because Englishmen still have imagination, there 
 
 53
 
 PLATO 
 
 are produced not only the " Ode to the Skylark," 
 but also machinery for silk ; such great men 
 appear as Sir W. Kowan Hamilton, the mathe- 
 matician ; Darwin and Huxley ; there are new 
 vistas continually opening of biology or railways 
 or machinery. Where there are no great poets, 
 there are no great inventors. 
 
 Now, the invention of wireless telegraphy may 
 be considered almost superhuman. It comes from 
 Italy, and Italian literature has assumed an 
 entirely new fagon; a wave of imagination has 
 swept over New Italy, where there is a rush of 
 inventive^genius. And why ? Because they have 
 brought their imagination into play, and this can 
 be verified if we read the new Italian novels. It 
 is really a new country with a new history. It 
 was ten years ago the author was giving a series 
 of lectures at Cambridge, when he predicted that 
 the greatest modern inventions in the near future 
 would come from Italy, and five years after came 
 Marconi with his wireless telegraphy. A friend of 
 his who had ridiculed him sent him a letter of 
 apology; a nice little cadeau accompanied the letter, 
 begging his pardon. We now see the depth of 
 Plato's remarks ; give them Homer and Sophocles 
 and Pindar ; let our children read them and learn 
 them thoroughly, for where there is much power 
 of imagination in a nation, there will also be 
 found greatness. It is necessary to organize and 
 crystallize that great power of imagination in our 
 
 54
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 children. In Hungary, too, the imagination is 
 much cultivated, and the outcome of it is also 
 inventions. The great discovery in France of 
 radium was not by a Frenchman, but by the wife 
 of a Frenchman, a Polish woman, Mme. Cure, 
 her husband only assisting her ; and the Poles are 
 a highly imaginative people. We cannot expect 
 much from the French in the way of inventions ; 
 perhaps we may give them the credit of the motor- 
 car. Some of us think it a dangerous thing, but it 
 is useful. The Germans, again, have cultivated 
 the imagination of the people very much. A man 
 in Germany who does not cultivate the poets does 
 not count. For a man not to know his Lessing, 
 Schiller, and Goethe is considered a disgrace, 
 a personal insult. They have, in addition to this, 
 a great love for music. And with all this imagina- 
 tive force some startling things have been done by 
 them. They discovered the Ebntgen rays, that 
 startling discovery under which we can see the 
 live body under operation, and which is destined 
 to revolutionize the medicine of the future. We 
 may go far for causes, but we will find that it is 
 all in connection with the cultivation of the 
 imagination. That was the great disappointment 
 in Napoleon's career. He wanted some great 
 inventor, some great poet in his time, and that was 
 his cause of complaint regarding Chateaubriand, 
 that he wrote no great poetry. And it is true 
 that if we stifle imagination nothing comes of it ; 
 
 55
 
 PLATO 
 
 and Plato's advice to study poetry, to cultivate 
 imagination before anything else, has long been 
 found to be absolutely sound. 
 
 In America every one writes poetry ; poems 
 and ditties are to be found in every magazine, 
 every newspaper one takes up ; but of poetry, true 
 poetry, there is none in it. This is one of the 
 greatest of their mistakes, the want of proper 
 cultivation of the imagination ; and so important 
 is this to a nation that we never can exaggerate 
 its force. In England such things are not thought 
 of, but are left to chance. The English say it is 
 not needful for a boy to know poetry ; he must 
 know something of arithmetic, something of 
 astronomy. Plato does not advise us to study 
 these, though he puts it negatively, and says 
 u don't overburden the children with them;" it 
 is the cultivation of the imagination which is of 
 the first importance. 
 
 Now we come to another important subject, 
 that of music. On the Continent and here it is 
 left entirely to the whims of the people. We will 
 have a young lady to teach children music at, say, 
 sixpence an hour, or, if we wish to be fashionable, 
 at ten shillings an hour ; but that is enough, a 
 noise is made, and we feel we have done our duty. 
 To take the matter seriously, the idea does not 
 exist. Now, Plato and the Greeks applied to 
 music what they did to theology. Far from 
 leaving it to our own sweet will, they said that 
 
 56
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the legislator must regulate it ; it was the legislator 
 who was to decide whether a boy should learn the 
 flute, or the oboe, or the cithara; whether the 
 songs to be sung were to be the Boeotian melodies, 
 or those from Asia Minor, or those from Phrygia. 
 
 And so with dancing. That rhythm of move- 
 ment becomes in some countries, for want of 
 regulation, a mere melancholy scrubbing of floors, 
 while in others it resembles a funeral procession 
 of a lugubrious order. The Greeks, however, 
 divided it into two classes ; the light, frolicsome 
 dance, Emmeleia, and the Pyrrhic, or war dance ; 
 each expressed by its special movements. They 
 despised a man who could not dance, while to-day 
 most men of twenty or twenty-five are ashamed 
 of dancing ; they think it is not manly. To the 
 Greeks it was the chief psychological factor of 
 education. By the rhythm of a dance we can 
 tell a nation. In some nations it is the adagio, 
 as in Orientals ; in others, the legato, the staccato, 
 or the allegro. It comes out in their natures. 
 Take Spain, a country which is decadent now, 
 and all its glory gone; but it would not be 
 wrong to predict a great future for this nation, a 
 nation that can throw itself into the most rhythmic 
 and beautiful movements of dancing. The Spanish 
 dancing is, indeed, most graceful and perfectly 
 beautiful. 
 
 Plato says that harmony in body means har- 
 mony in soul. In modern times those things 
 
 57
 
 PLATO 
 
 are quite separate. To the Greeks it was a truth, 
 and we will find out, if we care to investi- 
 gate, that such nations, in which dancing has 
 been regulated and made to be a service to 
 humanity, will come to a head, and will do some- 
 thing great ; while, on the other hand, where there 
 is something staccato, something we cannot quite 
 swallow, there we will find not quite the thing, 
 not the rhythm, not the elan in the dance. In 
 Hungary they dance well. Suppose Plato were 
 to see them, what would he say ? The man goes 
 through graceful capers, while the woman sways 
 from right to left, as if sometimes hesitating, 
 sometimes yielding; the man becomes quite wild 
 as passion sways him. It is a poem in action. 
 Plato would say this is excessive ; this nation 
 must be lazy ; so bored by life are they that they 
 go into a hysteria of amusement. That is why 
 the Spaniards have bull-fights; after their lazy 
 existence it is strong pepper they want. And 
 so, too, the Thracians, who also liked this sort 
 of thing, were lazy and excessively fond of 
 pleasures. In England, where the people are 
 excessively active all day, they take their plea- 
 sures seriously. " Oh, come to the music-hall," 
 says a man, after his day's work. This is tame 
 in comparison with what we have in Hungary and 
 Spain; it is like lemonade to a bottle of cham- 
 pagne, with anodyne jokes, which are no jokes 
 at all ; but the Englishman is so intensely active 
 
 53
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 all day that, in the evening, any joke does for 
 him. Not so in countries where they do nothing ; 
 there they need cayenne to their pleasures. 
 Dancing, it must be admitted, is a finer palmistry 
 than the reading of our hands. Show us the 
 dance of a nation, and we will tell you the future 
 of that nation. We ought to see to it, then, that 
 our youth dance, and they should be proud to 
 dance well. We may think that our modern 
 times are not fit for such things, but we have 
 the views of Plato, and we have seen the ex- 
 periences of nations, and we must be left to 
 ponder it all over. 
 
 One more point. Plato says children should 
 
 be educated in being witty. The Greeks were 
 
 not humorous, as we understand the term humour 
 
 in modern times. They were witty. Modern 
 
 humour, such as American or English or Irish 
 
 humour, was entirely unknown to them. French 
 
 humour is Eabelaisque ; German humour has been 
 
 defined as " laughing in the midst of tears." This 
 
 definition is right. Humour is the outcome of 
 
 the wholesale mendacity of our times ; our society 
 
 abounds in false positions ; and where the contrast 
 
 between what is and what is said to be is strongest, 
 
 there humour is rankest. There is little humour 
 
 in France; Frenchmen have, in fact, no sense 
 
 of English humour. We may all remember the 
 
 well-known remark of Mark Twain when he saw 
 
 the announcement of his death in a newspaper. 
 
 59
 
 PLATO 
 
 He wrote off to the editor: "Sir, the report of 
 my death is grossly exaggerated." To this a 
 Frenchman would shrug his shoulders, and say 
 et puis? he does not understand it at all. To 
 him everything is "net." In such a country 
 humour is impossible. In Greece, too, everything 
 was absolutely net — he was either a slave, or a 
 mercenary, or a freeman — no false positions, but 
 nevertheless the Greeks were wonderfully witty; 
 and Plato says that this form of wit ought to 
 be taught the boys when they are fifteen or 
 sixteen years of age. The method of teaching 
 in England is grave ; with them it was necessary 
 that the young should see the comical side of 
 things, for, they said, if they do not know the 
 funny things, they will never learn to be serious. 
 So it should be in this country, as Plato said, 
 "Humour should be left to slaves and hired 
 mercenaries." A humorous woman is like a 
 painted man. But the real, comical side of 
 things must be learnt. Tell the boy what is 
 really funny; he cannot know T what is serious 
 without knowing what is funny. 
 
 And lastly, let us anticipate by a few words 
 what we are going to discuss in the next chapter 
 — that is, the drama. The English are sound in 
 everything ; sound in politics, sound in religion ; 
 and soundness brings dramas. Take the Italians 
 who wore, until recently, absolutely morbid ; nor 
 had they any dramas. No sound life, and no 
 
 60
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 dramas in them, is the rule of nations ; the very 
 life assets, in fact, of a nation is the drama. 
 Calderon and Lope de Vega were the Spanish 
 dramatists in the golden age of Spain ; and here 
 we see that drama and soundness go together. 
 We shall see in our next chapter what Plato has 
 to say on this subject. 
 
 61
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 In the previous chapters several points connected 
 with the seventh book of Plato have been treated ; 
 and there are several other points remaining which 
 are just as interesting as they are important. But 
 before we take up the important questions, let us 
 settle what at first seems a trivial and less impor- 
 tant one, the question, for instance, of hunting. 
 
 Now let us see what Plato has to say about 
 hunting. At the present day there are plenty of 
 people who worry themselves and are eager to put 
 down cruelty to animals ; they do not think of 
 cruelty to men and women, but to dear animals ; 
 they must not be badly treated. Plato would 
 appear to us to go very much further than this, 
 for he forbids — absolutely forbids — the sport of 
 fishing. He says that any man or boy who is 
 allowed to indulge in fishing will naturally be- 
 come inured to a sort of cruelty ; and cruelty does 
 not excite manly vigour, but makes a coward of a 
 man. It is cruelty to the defenceless fish to throw 
 a hook out while sitting quietly on the bank, and 
 then to tear him to pieces. It sounds awfully 
 cruel when one thinks of it calmly. Perhaps the 
 
 62
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 
 never thought of fishing in that light : the cruelty 
 to animals which are wholly innocent of any 
 intent to harm. Now, hunting the quadruped, 
 the lion and the tiger, is a very different thing ; 
 and this, Plato says, ought to be cultivated, for in 
 this there is risk, and risk brings out a man's 
 courage and endurance. In this he must be 
 brave, have a good eye, and, perhaps, be a good 
 horseman besides. 
 
 Plato would seem to be quite right, for in 
 fishing there is absolutely nothing of courage, 
 but patience only is required. A man will go to 
 a river, and will sit and hold his line for two and 
 three hours at a time without moving, until he 
 catches a fish. Patience is said to be a virtue ; 
 but it will be found that such a man, though 
 patient in fishing, is the most impatient of men. 
 Such a man the author once met, an enthusiastic 
 angler, at Kouen. He was most patient when 
 angling, and thus indulging his sense of cruelty on 
 the fish ; but in ordinary society he was the most 
 impatient of men, because he dare not practise 
 his cruelties on men and women ; and in his 
 heart of hearts he was the most cruel of men. 
 
 Now, our ideas of sport must be entirely re- 
 constructed by Plato's remarks. It is like eveiy- 
 thing else Plato says, and his remarks on sport 
 are worth considering. He has told us what he 
 thinks about fishing, but he says nothing against 
 
 6*
 
 PLATO 
 
 the hunting of wild animals. The Assyrians, we 
 know, were a great nation, and they were mighty 
 hunters, and the name of Nimrod has grown into 
 a proverb ; they went in for the hunting of lions, 
 and we see the chase depicted over and over again 
 in their sculptures. This necessitated the exer- 
 cising of their courage, endurance, and prowess, 
 and it was the exercise of these manly powers 
 that made them a great nation. Of all this 
 Plato approves thoroughly; but fishing was an 
 unnecessary thing ; the hunting of fish, as he 
 calls it, was to him abominable. And this view, 
 coming from a man like Plato, is worthy of our 
 consideration. 
 
 And now let us continue what we anticipated 
 in the last chapter ; let us take up the question of 
 the drama, and see what Plato has to say on 
 this subject. There are only a few lines about 
 the drama in his seventh book, but he speaks 
 of it at greater length in his Eepublic and his 
 Dialogues. To the astonishment of most people, 
 Plato considers the drama as unnecessary ; as it 
 has been said before, he hates tragedies and the 
 poets. 
 
 The Greeks were an artistic people, and they 
 were the people who really invented the drama. 
 There may have been dramas extant before the 
 Greeks invented theirs ; for instance, the dramas of 
 Indian literature, such as the Sakuntala by Kali- 
 dasa. The date of Kalidasa is, however, a matter 
 
 64
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of dispute. They were not real dramas, which por- 
 trayed men and women of everyday life, but were 
 representations of life in a form which was merely 
 poetry and religion combined. We must go to 
 Aristotle for a true definition of a drama. He says 
 dramas are intended to elevate our whole being, 
 to purify our passions ; they should be the means 
 of a thorough purification. When we go to see a 
 drama we do not want to see interesting tales and 
 scenic effect only, but something that will give a 
 shock to our senses, so that we can say we have 
 gained something, we have been raised, as we 
 would be, by the real drama of life. This was 
 what the Greeks considered a drama should be, and 
 after two thousand years we know that it is true 
 to-day. And if we do not, we shall know it in time, 
 that a real drama is a great moral lesson, such as 
 nothing else can give us. It will appeal to all, to 
 young and old, to any and every person, and to all 
 ages, on account of its real ethical force. 
 
 With us to-day all this is an exception ; we 
 do not have real dramas, and, not to be tender 
 on a point, it may be said that we do not have 
 great preachers either. Now, there were very 
 great preachers in the seventeenth century and 
 the eighteenth, who themselves were artists — 
 Tillotson in England, Bossuet in France, to 
 name two only. A really great preacher may, 
 and does, affect people very strongly. The 
 author heard such a one once in the Notre 
 
 65 f
 
 PLATO 
 
 Darae in Paris. Whether we were Catholic 
 or not — whether we agreed with all the tenets 
 of his creed or not — we felt that from that man 
 came a great ethical force, which got at us, 
 reached us. Why ? Because he was a dramatist, 
 a great artist himself. With the central figure 
 of all that great religious drama he identifies 
 himself; he is himself not the Saviour, but one 
 of them, a friend of the Saviour, and an eye- 
 witness, an actor in the great drama, the execution 
 of the Saviour; he speaks in that capacity, and 
 he feels he can teach us a life-lesson from that 
 memorable Friday, and tells us of things which 
 exalt us. He brings it all back to us in reality, 
 and makes us one with him in it by his great 
 ethical force ; and this is drama. Was not 
 Aristotle right when he said, "it will purify you " ? 
 Yes ; we go away with a higher ideal of life, with 
 the thought that we have gained something, a 
 thorough shock to our inner senses. 
 
 If the Greeks, then, thought so highly of the 
 drama, why does Plato say, "I do not want 
 dramas and dramatic actors " ? He positively 
 forbids it ; and calls Homer, Sophocles, and the 
 rest of them corrupters of youth. Why? We 
 have, no doubt, seen Greek plays acted at West- 
 minster School, or at Cambridge, and they may 
 have seemed lifeless to us. Plato disapproved of 
 them because they seemed too trivial by the side 
 of the great drama of Greek life that was being 
 
 66
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 enacted all around them in the ideal State of 
 Plato. That was drama, and that was what Plato 
 wished to idealize, and that is why he would 
 have none of the counterfeit, which seemed to 
 him too trivial. But none the less there was 
 true drama in the Antigone of Sophocles, and 
 in the (Edipus Tyrannus. Apart from our more 
 or less traditional interest in the works of the 
 ancients, we cannot fail to be touched even 
 now by the power and effect on our whole 
 system of the characters portrayed by these 
 artists ; what effect, then, would they have had 
 on the Greeks, in their intense richness of life, 
 who saw them played, not once or twice, but 
 frequently ? 
 
 We have, perhaps, been shaken at times by 
 the music of Mendelssohn or Beethoven. Well, 
 it was the dream of Beethoven to write music 
 to such themes as these, and especially to that 
 great theme of (Edipus, the awful anti-climax in 
 whose tragedy was that, having married his own 
 mother, he was both father and brother to his 
 own children. The whole subject is too grotesque 
 for our imagination; we feel the terror of the 
 thing, and it is a true terror which purines our 
 passions, and drives us to the thought of a higher 
 ideal. With the Greeks it was the man who 
 was perfectly happy who was hated by the gods. 
 The gods will not allow us to be happy under any 
 conditions. When we are happy, the gods come 
 
 67
 
 PLATO 
 
 down on us, and say, "You are the unhappiest of 
 men, and nothing remains for you hut madness or 
 suicide." All this shakes us up, and it is rather 
 of an ecstatic shock; and we may not think so, 
 but it is pleasurable to be shocked in this manner. 
 It is a true saying that whom the gods would 
 destroy they first made mad, really drunken with 
 his own happiness. And thus it is that Euripides 
 deals with his Heracles. We feel that reading 
 Euripides is not a matter of erudition ; it is too 
 bad altogether ; it is as if we had been told of the 
 death of a mother or a son, and we are possessed 
 with a feeling of poignant pain and sorrow. We 
 might say it is too bad, and that it is painful to 
 any man of feeling to read these things. It is, 
 however, what the Greeks called KciOapaLs, a 
 purification by means of the dramatic art. We 
 have it, too, in our own Shakespeare, in his 
 Richard III., in King Lear; we feel something is 
 happening to our very selves; our own feelings 
 are being racked and torn in sympathy with the 
 characters. 
 
 Here we have Plato, one of the greatest sages 
 of the world, and he is not an abstruse thinker, 
 but a man of simple words — a man who uses words, 
 but rarely uses terms (except, perhaps, his ova-La 
 and his idea) — not like our Oxford and Cambridge 
 professors, who are fond of big words and ferret 
 out "terms" to apply to their subjects — such a 
 man, then, as Plato, an essentially practical 
 
 68
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 thinker, tells us in plain and simple words that 
 we must have no dramas. He is fully aware of 
 the effect of dramas ; he understands human and 
 divine passions ; and that man forbids it. Why ? 
 It takes more than knowing Greek to know Plato. 
 We may be able to read Greek thoroughly, and to 
 read Plato, but to understand him is a different 
 thing. Kant and Spencer both said Plato was an 
 idealist, and, like all idealists, he went too far. 
 But this is all nonsense. 
 
 French novels are seldom intense ; but in 
 France the drama plays a wonderful social role; 
 and it does the same in Austria. There Anzen- 
 gruber wanted to teach socialist doctrines through 
 the drama, and won lasting fame by his charac- 
 terization of common peasant life. It is in the 
 quiet home life of small places that the dramatist 
 is produced. We will find him in Germany — many 
 such — as Germany had not become an empire yet ; 
 it was only just beginning, and bound to become 
 one in the future. Here we have Goethe and 
 Schiller, and they came from quiet places, and lived 
 in a country where drama has a great influence. 
 Their country had reached the phase that Eng- 
 land was in under Elizabeth, when the English 
 dramatists came. And if the drama gives us 
 not only pleasure, but is also a great social force, 
 ought we to say with Plato that we shall have 
 no dramas, and ought we to expel our dramatists ? 
 
 Let us venture to say, with reference to that 
 
 69
 
 PLATO 
 
 passage of Plato, that he was not childish, but 
 that he was perfectly right. He puts down 
 extreme cases. As we have seen in a former 
 chapter, that even to measure a field we must 
 assume there are lines — a purely imaginary thing, 
 which has length only, but no breadth — and that 
 we thus apply a purely ideal thing every time we 
 measure anything. So it is with Plato. We 
 must not take him literally. In his ideal state 
 no dramas were needed, because the state itself, 
 and every part played by the intensest of people, 
 was a drama in itself. " We are ourselves a 
 drama, and what we say and what we do are parts 
 of that drama," is what he would have had the 
 Greeks to say. But what we want is to be unlike 
 ourselves ; to teach other ideas, and not to teach 
 what we really are. So in a nation which is a drama 
 of its own : it will repudiate other dramas. This 
 is what the profound remarks of Plato refer to. 
 
 Now, what is going to be said is not quite 
 pleasant, although it is with no wish to tread on 
 any one's toes. There can be no doubt that real 
 Imperialism is unfavourable to literature ; it is 
 certainly not favourable to drama. The Eomans, 
 for instance, with their mighty empire, had no 
 dramatists. They had comedies by Plautus, there 
 was Seneca — all very clever ; but they were only 
 book dramas. Merely eating and drinking and 
 smoking does not really affect us, nor did it the 
 Eomans. There was no /ca^apcri? about all this. 
 
 70
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 The late Professor Nettleslrip of Oxford said the 
 same thing to the author once, as to the reason 
 why the Boinans had no great dramas, that the 
 Koman nation were so proud that they would 
 never permit a poet to represent them on the 
 stage. The Censor, like our Lord Chamberlain, 
 would at once step in, and say, " We cannot allow 
 you to make such representations." The women, 
 too, appealed against it, and said, "No; we cannot 
 permit ourselves to be portrayed on the stage." 
 Whatever they might be in private, they were too 
 prude in public ; and when real women are not 
 allowed to be represented on the stage, what can 
 the dramatist do ? In France, too, the dramatist 
 cannot do anything. He cannot represent an 
 innocent girl ; she is too colourless, from the 
 manner of her bringing up, in France; so he 
 fetches the married women, and the result is that 
 literature and drama are both spoilt in France. 
 And so it was with Eome, where Lesbia and 
 Catullus in a fine drama would have played an 
 exquisite role. But no ; the Eomans said it would 
 never do. 
 
 Lessing had another explanation of the failure 
 of the Eomans in producing dramas ; it was their 
 great love of gladiatorial games. There they 
 were, hired men killing one another in right 
 earnest. Here was gladiator A fighting with 
 gladiator B, and the victor would look round, and 
 when he saw the fingers stretched out he would 
 
 7i
 
 PLATO 
 
 stab the vanquished to death. Of what use is 
 drama to a people like this ? When the audience 
 sees real death, sham death on the stage cannot 
 affect them ; it is real live death that they want. 
 Yet the Spaniards, too, had real gladiatorial fetes, 
 such as bull-fights, which brought out the quali- 
 ties of strength and courage, and many were the 
 toreadors who were killed in these fights. But in 
 spite of this, they had some wonderful dramas in 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century; works 
 of those great men Lope de Vega and Calderon, 
 who enriched Spain and the world with a wealth 
 of dramatic literature. What is the explanation 
 of all this? We have it in Plato negatively. 
 He is art all through, and he will tell us any 
 number of stories more by what he does not say 
 than by what he does say ; his sous-entendus and 
 innuendoes contain latent truth ; and all this 
 is a fine work of art — a work of art which we 
 never see so fine in other workers. He is 
 right when he says in an ideal state we want no 
 dramas, and he explains his reasons better by 
 what he does not say than Nettleship or Lessing 
 explained by what they did say. Of them Plato 
 might say, "They are bred in a state that is petty; 
 but we Greeks are ourselves dramatic, therefore 
 we don't want you or dramas." 
 
 Let us consider Napoleon. After the great 
 tragedy of Austerlitz and Jena he was practically 
 ruler of the world. There was his great drama. 
 
 72
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Times without number he said he would like to 
 have a great dramatist, a great poet, a great 
 painter ; as if he could command them to be made 
 and have them ; but it could not be. David's 
 picture of the Coronation was grand, but Napoleon 
 would say to him, " Cannot you do anything 
 better?" He was not satisfied, and wanted some- 
 thing greater. In conversation with Goethe at 
 Erfurt, Napoleon said, " There is no fate in 
 dramas ; politics is fate, I am fate." So great was 
 the drama that he himself enacted at Marengo, 
 at Austerlitz, at Jena : what could a poet do 
 after these ? A state, then, in which dramatic life, 
 at its highest pitch, is still going on, does not 
 want dramas. 
 
 Imperialism is a great drama in itself. Take 
 America, where nothing is thought of but the 
 great art of dollars. There if a man wrote a great 
 drama, he would be a millionaire in a week, for, 
 with their wealth, they would advertise it and 
 run it all over the world. It is needless to say 
 that thousands have essayed such a thing, but 
 not one has succeeded. And the reason for this 
 is that their greatest conflict is in political life 
 and in the making of money ; and they say, like 
 Plato, " We will do without dramas ; we have our 
 own great dramas of life, and besides these 
 everything else is puny." 
 
 If we think closely we will find that this is 
 also largely the case with England. The English 
 
 73
 
 PLATO 
 
 have the greatest of modern empires ; they have 
 many enemies around them, and war may come at 
 any time, perhaps with Germany. All their 
 doings are so intensely dramatic that all the minor 
 conflicts of life appear entirely silly. Continental 
 people are petty. They will keep one for two 
 hours, discussing a matter of two pounds — any 
 " tuppenny " thing. No Englishman will ever do 
 that ; time is too precious to him, in the drama of 
 life in which he is engaged, to trifle with petty 
 matters. And no American will do it either; 
 when he is bankrupt, he says he is bankrupt, and 
 there that particular part of the drama is at an 
 end. An Italian, on the other hand, would be 
 most dramatic over the matter of a penny. Such 
 petty, puny dramas are impossible where the 
 whole state is permeated with a great drama ; 
 and that great drama with the English is the 
 British Empire. 
 
 This we see exemplified in the English theatres. 
 Where is the modern English play that has the 
 effect of the Greek KdOapcns ? It is all hopelessly 
 poor, and it never touches the heart or the senses. 
 It is only another form of the music-hall. Such 
 as these there are in England, but no dramas ; the 
 English are a drama in themselves. This is what 
 Plato means when he says it is revolting that 
 people, after their hard day's work and conflict, 
 should go to a music-hall to feast on lemonade. 
 There can be seen nightly the kaleidoscopic, 
 
 74
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 maddening titbits in the form of yodeling — yode- 
 ling with the legs as well as — yodeling with 
 the voice, with the eyes and arms. How can 
 people stand it ! The Spaniards have their bull- 
 fights, the English and the French have their 
 anodyne amusements ; and these are no amuse- 
 ments whatever, because they are in the midst 
 of their great drama of life. At such a period of 
 existence the production of a Shakespeare would 
 be impossible. Has not the author been taken 
 to task by at least fifteen English papers because 
 he stated that Shakespeare existed when the 
 English had no empire ? Scotland and Ireland 
 in Shakespeare's time were not parts of the 
 empire — at least, Ireland only partially, and Scot- 
 land not at all ; while in France the English had 
 not a single village : a few adventurers, yes, who 
 went afar to colonize as they wished ; but England 
 had no imperial drama of its own. Then the 
 English war ted and did have a dramatist of their 
 own, who could portray the passions of men; 
 and so rose Shakespeare, that great mind, who 
 tore up kingdoms, and probed deeply into humanity 
 with his Kontgenizing eyes. When the Chathams 
 and the Pitts came, the days of the Shakespeares 
 were gone ; and the people of this country could 
 say then that the British Empire was lumped 
 together into one gigantic Shakespeare. There 
 are English poets — many of them — and they try 
 to be dramatic. There is Mr. A. or Mr. B. 
 
 75
 
 PLATO 
 
 He is a great poet, and very melodious ; he has 
 written many a drama; very nice they are — but 
 nobody wants to see them or to read them ; 
 they are bought for their bindings. But drama 
 cannot be got from them. 
 
 The English, in their easy-going way, say, 
 " We will have a great war with Germany very 
 soon, and we shall do great things." There is no 
 doubt they will, as they have done before ; but 
 in the mean time they read their Tit-Bits. 
 
 Think of Littre, the writer of the French 
 Dictionary, a Herculean task undertaken by a man 
 of Herculean build, and it took him all his life- 
 time. When he had finished it he was thinner 
 than the thinnest letter in his dictionary, and he 
 talked like a child. It may be taken as an axiom 
 that that man, when he has finished his day's 
 work and talks like a child, that is the man who 
 can laugh. That seems very frivolous, but no one 
 is so frivolous as he who is a great worker. And 
 so with nations. When a nation has a tremendous 
 drama going on for, say, two hundred years ; when 
 it is undergoing its Kadapcris, and is engaged in 
 the intensest of conflicts, that nation cannot have 
 a dramatist. 
 
 It is only small nations, with quiet, homely 
 lives, that produce them. Where did the great 
 German dramatists come from ? Goethe from 
 Weimar, a town like a picture, with its quiet, 
 homely surroundings. Lessing wrote in a small 
 
 76
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 place, Wolfenbiittel, where he was a librarian. 
 Where did Bach get his music from? Leipsic, 
 which was then a small place, where he lived with 
 two wives (in succession, of course) and his 
 numerous children. If we read his Biography we 
 shall find it all there. Living a most small life, 
 yet having ideas bigger than an empire; and 
 having received such a very big mind, he was 
 enabled to give it out, from the ideal life that he 
 led. We talk, too, of Dante. Where did he 
 come from ? He came from Florence, which was 
 then a small town, and not from the great Holy 
 Roman Empire ; and in that intense city of 
 developments he was able to find those wonderful 
 images which we find portrayed in his works. 
 This is the meaning of Plato when he says, 
 " Don't come to us ; we ourselves are damatists." 
 In the author's time there was a great struggle 
 in Vienna as to which party one belonged to, 
 Wagner or Brahm." It was a case of believing in 
 one or the other. Franz Lachner was asked 
 which party he belonged to (Sind Sie Brahm- 
 sianer ocler Wagnerianerf). "I am myself," said 
 he (Selber aner), "I am neither the one nor the 
 other." This is the comical, the humorous side of 
 the explanation of Plato. With him the ideal 
 state does not want the drama ; they corrupt the 
 manners of the young ; but it is not the intention 
 that the dramatic art should be altogether lost. 
 If dramas are impossible in a great empire, can 
 
 77
 
 PLATO 
 
 nothing be done to replace the functions of the 
 drama ? If the English expect to produce another 
 Shakespeare, that is impossible, either here or in 
 America, and they may make up their minds to 
 that ; their modern drama is the modern novel. 
 We may not be able to prevent the primary cause 
 of the death of the drama; but what are the 
 secondary causes in England which prevent the 
 rise of the drama ? Let us see what they are, and 
 if we can tone them down. The people of this 
 country say they would like their sons to go and 
 see a great drama — something not quite of the 
 music-hall stamp, something that will rouse up 
 their inmost feelings, something that will make 
 them undergo a true KaOapcns. Well, they will 
 not like what is going to be said ; but let the truth 
 be told. The secondary cause which is causing 
 the death of the English drama is Protestantism. 
 Protestantism has undoubtedly helped this country 
 to become a great, a powerful nation. It has 
 helped the people to establish order and method, 
 by which they do great things. They feel that 
 when they say A, they must follow with B, and so 
 on. But they must take the good with the bad ; 
 and there is no doubt that in Protestantism the 
 clergy want to " ethicalize " them : they take up 
 the functions which, with the Greeks, were left to 
 the theatres. They want to speak to the people 
 as Horner, as Sophocles did, and they have made 
 them pass a law not to have theatres open on 
 
 73
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Sundays. Now, where will we find it in the 
 Bible, excepting by distorting words, that people 
 may not go to a theatre on a Sunday ? It might 
 have been prohibited on a Saturday, but why on a 
 Sunday ? Surely a play of Shakespeare might be 
 acted, if not on a Sunday, then on a Saturday. 
 Take the labourer, who has never come out of his 
 provincial life — take him out of his dull, daily 
 routine, and make it a sort of custom that he will 
 see every Saturday, if not on Sunday, something 
 of the country's great dramas, something of Shake- 
 speare. Give it to him in the crude, nude state 
 without elaborate costumes and elaborate scenery, 
 which only go to raise prices. For the costumes 
 are truly absurd, as a friend of the author's in the 
 British Museum, who has made costumes a study, 
 told him that the costumes put on the characters 
 of Shakespeare are grotesque and untrue in the 
 extreme. The man will thus be given a chance of 
 a little KaOapo-is. Talk to him as Plato would ; 
 for religion only leaves him callous. And when 
 he has been sent to the theatre to see King Lear, 
 the difference in him will be at once apparent ; 
 he will have undergone an entire change, he will 
 be an altogether new man. His eyes will start 
 out, he will be all alive, this bourgeois des bourgeois. 
 This, then, is the power of poetry ; this is the 
 power of the drama. 
 
 It will be found from experience that Imperial- 
 ism is great in power, great in money, but not 
 
 79
 
 PLATO 
 
 great in intellect. But that cannot be if we 
 cannot have, like the Greeks, something near to 
 the ideal which the Greeks had. The clergyman 
 must be told that he must open the theatres on 
 Sundays. We must ask him if it is forbidden in 
 the Bible ; for if we search the Bible we will find 
 it is an ordinary day. The people have made a 
 law about the Sunday, but if they abolish the 
 law they will do their nation a world of good. 
 
 It is said that a law cannot be made that a 
 man must drink only water, and must not drink 
 alcohol, because it cannot be proved that alcohol 
 is bad. But is it not possible to reduce the 
 opportunities of drinking too much alcohol ? The 
 people should be given amusements, they should 
 be given the theatre on the Sunday, and then it 
 will be found that they are automatically taken 
 away from the horrid bar. A man must take 
 something. If he does not take alcohol he will 
 take opium, or hashish, or even eau-de-Cologne. 
 It is necessary to stop the cause before attacking 
 the effect. The remedy is to give him amuse- 
 ment, to let him have that KaOapau^, and all this 
 can be done with the drama of the country. And 
 such a step would add immeasurably to the great- 
 ness of the nation, for the drama is not only an 
 aesthetic, it is a great social force. And it was 
 this social force that led to Irving's being made 
 a knight. 
 
 The whole thing in Plato means that, unless 
 
 80
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 we have reached that perfect ideal state, we do 
 need dramas. It is when that perfect ideal state 
 is reached, when we are our own drama in per- 
 fection, and only then, can we afford to say, " I 
 don't want dramatists ; I don't want a drama. 
 Don't come to me." It was remarked in a previous 
 chapter that Plato said we slept too much ; that 
 we ought to get up during the night and see that 
 things were in order, and so on. To us it all 
 seems very horrid because we are not in the ideal 
 state we ought to he. And so it is with the 
 drama. There was one state that came very near 
 to this ideal, and that was Sparta. They never 
 had a dramatist, and never wanted dramatic 
 actors. When any one of that calling came to 
 Sparta, the Ephors said " We do not want you." 
 Their life was too full to stand such mimicries 
 and trivialities. If they did come at any time, 
 and happened to be received, the plays were 
 witnessed with derision. 
 
 And so it is with Englishmen. It is their 
 country, their empire, and their riches that make 
 their drama. But whether they have reached 
 that ideal state yet, must be left to the people to 
 consider. It can, however, be said that Plato 
 was perfectly right. As a great practical thinker 
 he knew the meaning of a drama. Are not his 
 Dialogues dramas ? Is not his account of the 
 death of Socrates most dramatic ? Because he 
 condemns drama, must we think he did not feel 
 
 81 g
 
 PLATO 
 
 what he wrote ? The best thing for ourselves, no 
 doubt, is to be in that ideal state so as not to need 
 dramas ; but that ideal state we must go on 
 striving to attain, higher and higher, nearer and 
 nearer. But we must not assume we have 
 reached it if we want to be really great. 
 Raphael, as we have heard in a previous chapter, 
 had on his imagination a painting infinitely 
 greater than anything he had ever painted. Had 
 he not always that imagination he would never 
 have become the great painter that he was. 
 
 So with musicians. Why does an ordinary 
 pianist fail? Because he has not the power of 
 tearing his inside, as it were ; of realizing that there 
 is an execution far greater than anything of his 
 own can ever be. It is the case of the asymp- 
 tote : it is nearer and nearer we go, but we never 
 reach. "It is all very well," people might think, 
 " these sayings of Plato. They sound nice, but 
 they are beyond us." No, it might be stated 
 positively, they are wroug. We must have such 
 ideals, and strive to get nearer and nearer to the 
 highest. Without such ideals we will do nothing. 
 If Raphael had been born without arms he still 
 would have painted, he still would have risen to 
 the height he did. On the other hand, the 
 musician just referred to, that we all know in 
 our drawing-rooms and elsewhere, who has just 
 played something really good, turns round to 
 see what effect it has had, and hears it said, 
 
 82
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 " Isn't he a divine player ! " That is enough 
 for him, and he is satisfied. That alone has 
 undoubtedly prevented him from becoming a great 
 player. 
 
 Let us try, then, to think of reaching an ideal. 
 It is not necessary for each man to strive after the 
 same ideal. There are a thousand ways that lead 
 to it, as there were many roads that led to Rome ; 
 and unless we have such a higher ideal — and they 
 are not merely dans le bleu — we will never reach 
 the less perfect thing, much less the highest. 
 And he who has not got such an ideal is lost. 
 
 And so it is with nations. A self-centred 
 nation is lost. We have only to look at the 
 positive self-satisfaction of the Americans ; every- 
 thing is " all right" with them. But assuredly 
 there is something with them that is not " all 
 right ; " everything is all wrong. Englishmen 
 are grumblers ; but if they are grumbling they 
 are, at the same time, trying to get higher. That 
 is the right way ; but it is necessary to think 
 pessimistically, to become advanced. 
 
 Why was Paganini a great player ? He went 
 about and was over-praised, yet he used to say, 
 " What I hear here " (pointing to his forehead), 
 " I can't do that. I begin to think, but I can't 
 reach it." Nevertheless, he went on his tour, 
 and the whole world went mad over him. Had he 
 not had that feeling, that ideal which seemed un- 
 attainable, we would have had no Paganini. 
 
 8*
 
 PLATO 
 
 We have heard something of the sayings of 
 Plato. Let us not only hear them, but let us try 
 to realize them ; otherwise it will be found that 
 life is not worth living. Our ideals will lead us 
 through conflicts, no doubt, but they will lead 
 us higher; and it is only through conflicts that 
 we become great as a nation. And so it is with 
 individuals. We each of us become great by our 
 conflicts with ourselves, with our ideals. 
 
 s 4
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 We have finished with the seventh book of Plato 
 in our previous chapters. And we now come to 
 deal with his eighth, and in this we find him 
 treating of all manner of festivities and sports 
 which were so utterly different in their character 
 from what we are doing now, in these modern 
 times, that they are altogether unsuitable for us 
 to waste our time over. Passing over these we 
 come to a subject which neither Plato nor any 
 one else can exhaust ; it is a subject of intense 
 interest to us all, to young and to old; and it 
 has been so for all ages, and that is the subject 
 of love. 
 
 Now, in Plato we will find no strict system 
 laid down on this subject. With him there is 
 no consistency; he gives nowhere in his book 
 anything that would lead us to suppose it was 
 his last final solution of the problem. Plato 
 consists of just one doctrine, and that is of ideas ; 
 but for the rest he is dealing with infinity, in its 
 vast aspect. In every one of his opinions he 
 has the character of continually changing; he 
 contradicts himself freely, and he never appears 
 
 85
 
 PLATO 
 
 to be consistent. He never is the schoolmaster 
 laying down fixed rules, but directs our attention 
 to vital points. He says to us, as it were, " I stand 
 on the shore ; before me lies the sea. I do not 
 know, I do not assert that the shore lies on the 
 other side ; it may not, for it may lead to a wider 
 sea, and so on beyond. I tell you only of what I 
 find here — a few shells, a few curiosities on the 
 shore. Come, and let us seek the treasures of 
 the deep." He will not say, " I think so," or it 
 is so ; but all his opinions are open to change ; 
 and this we must not look upon as contradiction, 
 or a conflict of opinion, but a growth. 
 
 With these preliminary remarks let us con- 
 sider the subject of love. It is so full of various 
 aspects. It changes with countries and with the 
 thoughts of different times. Plato, in dealing 
 with the subject, treats it quite differently in his 
 Symposium, in his Laws, and in his Eepublic ; 
 and we cannot wonder at it. To bring this 
 enormous subject into a few lines is quite im- 
 possible. We must consider how the Greeks 
 expressed love in their mythology. They had 
 their Yenus, and Amor, and Eros, and Cupid, 
 and others, not all representing the same idea of 
 love, but each representing one separate aspect. 
 The Symposium, wo know, was really a banquet 
 where people met to talk love — young men and 
 old men. Socrates himself and old men met to 
 deliver themselves on the subject ; it was on love 
 
 86
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 paternal, maternal, and fraternal ; on the abstract 
 ideals of love ; on the love of women ; on the 
 love of art. It is for man the starting-point of 
 interest; where there is love it shows that man 
 has an interest in the subject, and that love grows 
 to desire. We remember Newton's answer when 
 he was asked how he had made so many profound 
 discoveries. " I have loved them, I have constantly 
 thought of them," was his answer. Love is the 
 desire, the interest, whether it be for knowledge 
 or for another person, be it man or woman. It 
 is that incessant desire to be present where the 
 object of our love is. A young man thinking of 
 the woman he loves desires to be where she is. 
 If it is love of country, we desire to suffer with 
 the country — to be there, to take part in its life ; 
 it is love of place ; we want to be in the same 
 place with the object of our love. If all this were 
 not so, love would not last. 
 
 In these days it is necessary to go a little 
 beyond Plato. For what makes Plato Plato is not 
 any peculiar brain power he may have had. A 
 man is no greater for a little more of the matter 
 we call brains. This, as we saw in a previous 
 chapter, has been argued out with physiologists 
 and various phrenologists, and nothing of the kind 
 has yet been proved for us to attribute greatness 
 of intellect or thought to that mass of peculiar 
 substance which we call brains. No, it is not 
 brains but experience which made Plato what 
 
 87
 
 PLATO 
 
 he is. He lived in a country where humanity 
 was varied ; and in his travels, circumscribed 
 though they were to our modern minds, found 
 many varied types from which he could draw 
 his profound conclusions. Although we are two 
 thousand years after Plato we have discovered 
 few new types ; but still, on the basis of another 
 two thousand years, it must be assumed that we 
 have had a wider experience, and with such 
 added experience we feel justified in adding a 
 rider or commentary on the subject as dealt with 
 by Plato. 
 
 Our experience shows us that in each country 
 they love differently; each nation has its own 
 peculiar way of showing love. The English are 
 in this, as in all things, serious and grave, and 
 they will not talk about it. French love, on the 
 other hand, where it exists, makes men cheerful 
 and gay ; they will tell extraordinary stories to 
 each other whilst in love. Then, again, the greatest 
 music has been inspired by this passion ; it is the 
 heart of love. Take the Cmalleria Rusticana by 
 Pietro Mascagni. It is to Italy we must go for 
 music as the outcome of love. There we have the 
 accents of passion which we hear nowhere else. 
 We say to an Italian lover, " Are you unhappy ? 
 Does the girl not return your love ? " " No no," 
 he says. He is sure of her, but in his love there 
 is a deeper note ; his passion at once grow T s into 
 something dark — something which we cannot 
 
 88
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 understand. Prosper Merimee gives the love of 
 the people of Spain, of Corsica, of Minorca. 
 There they are quite wild, resembling the old 
 Spartans in many ways ; living in towers in 
 their villages — towers which they live in for 
 years sometimes, or perhaps never leave them. 
 Here we will have vendetta with or without 
 reason. It is terrible when it is without reason. 
 It is all a play of love and passion. Prosper 
 Me'rime'e knew them thoroughly, and his are 
 the best novels dealing with the subject of these 
 wild people. They give us an entirely different 
 aspect of love to what we are accustomed to. 
 The opera of Carmen, taken from Prosper Merimee, 
 gives an excellent idea of this peculiar aspect 
 of love. 
 
 In England love is absolutely mute, and her 
 greatest writers and poets seldom find means of 
 expressing themselves about it, or giving words 
 to it, except in the final scene, and then they 
 never get above mere platitudes about love. They 
 take for granted the passions which sway men, 
 as if they were everywhere alike of a dull level. 
 We hear Alcibiades saying to the people that 
 Socrates resisted his love. This is rather grating 
 to our senses, because we do not understand the 
 Greeks. We do not understand their love of man 
 for man, any more than the Greeks would have 
 understood our relation to women. If we compare 
 Stendhal's Sur V amour with Plato we will see the 
 
 89
 
 PLATO 
 
 difference, though he himself had a wonderful 
 experience in the time of the great Napoleon ; 
 agitated times, in which were many aspects of 
 love which hit one badly. 
 
 Far greater, however, is Balzac, the man who 
 introduced the modern woman, and the modern 
 love of man for woman. Supplement Plato with 
 Balzac, and we will have what love should be in 
 modern times. Balzac is not a philosopher ; he 
 is gross and brutal, and scarcely proper at times ; 
 but for all that, he was great in his insight into 
 the human heart. We would have expected 
 Shakespeare to have brought forward the ideal 
 of love in all its highest bearings, but he does 
 not come up to our expectations. It will be 
 remembered in the Symposium, when Plato speaks 
 of the speech of Socrates, where he has referred 
 to Alcibiades as saying he had resisted his love — 
 all this, says Plato, is not love. What it is, he 
 clothes in a myth which will be related later on. 
 Love is immortality; it is the desire to live 
 beyond our physical existence. This is what 
 comes nearest to love, and the consequences of 
 love. No matter what sort of love it is, or where 
 it is — here, or in America, or in India — it will be 
 found to be an appetitus, a desire for immortality. 
 It is often also a great excuse for many of the 
 crimes of people, and thus it is another aspect of 
 the passion. 
 
 Between ourselves and the Greeks there is 
 
 90
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 another great difference. Women, as we see thern, 
 are radically different from women as they were 
 in Greece. In the Greek city-states they did not 
 suffer from that peculiar rupture that we see 
 between ourselves and the society of to-day ; their 
 life was in regular spheres, in concentric circles, 
 so to speak. The life we live to-day may be 
 divided into three circles; and these circles are 
 by no means concentric. First of all, there is 
 society, which has one set of rules, with its con- 
 venances, its exigencies, its boredom ; the second 
 circle is that of practical life, in which may be 
 included officialdom and the various businesses 
 of life ; the third circle is the Church. 
 
 To be perfectly frank, these three circles do 
 not agree at all. In the first and second circles 
 men will send each other to prison for half a 
 crown ; and what we say in church on the Sunday 
 we undo on the other days of the week. We will, 
 in the third sphere, swear we will forgive each 
 other's debts 'and shortcomings, and immediately 
 afterwards we proceed to do the contrary. Perhaps 
 there are persons who can reconcile these circles ; 
 it would seem, however, as extremely difficult; 
 and yet there they are, these terrible contradictions 
 from which we suffer. These are what we would 
 call absolute contrasts, the wholesale mendacity 
 of our present life, and they are the price we have 
 to pay for our civilization. 
 
 Such things did not exist in Greece. With 
 
 9i
 
 PLATO 
 
 us a woman marries for reasons of society. What 
 she wants may not he what society wants, but 
 still she has to marry the man. What they want 
 is one thing, what they get another. How can 
 we reconcile these contradictions ? Where the 
 man and the woman marry for love, and the two 
 spheres are reconciled, there we see the man is 
 happy, and the evidences of it we see in his 
 children. They are strong and happy, as the off- 
 spring of love should be. But how many men 
 and women do we know who are so placed ! There 
 is another side to this case whence come the 
 divorce cases. We know from experience that 
 there are men and women married who are in 
 utter contrast to each other. Plato says these 
 are already in Hades ; if they do not go wrong 
 to-day they will to-morrow. Such contrasts, it 
 may be said, are utterly irreconcilable. In Greece 
 the three circles were more concentric ; the desires 
 of people were much toned down. If, for instance, 
 a Spartan had been asked if he wanted to go 
 anywhere else, to see other places, to live a life 
 of different surroundings, he would have laughed 
 at the question. " Sparta is our ideal," he 
 would say. " All that we desire is there ; and 
 our own desires and the desires of state do not 
 clash." 
 
 The inwardness of their life, their whole desire, 
 centred in their love for their state, and they 
 were perfectly happy. We see this well shown in 
 
 92
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Xenephon, who has some exquisite passages on the 
 life of a gentleman farmer and his wife — a life of 
 absolute contentedness. He brings his artistic 
 observations to bear out all this, and such observa- 
 tions are better and truer than any other. He 
 shows us the reposefulness of such a contented life ; 
 it is like the composure of Greek statues. It 
 may be possible to have fuller busts, and finer noses 
 chiselled out ; but, as Eaphael Mengs said, look 
 at the reposefulness, it must have been in their 
 hearts ; from these it went into their limbs ; from 
 the arms into the fingers ; everything, in har- 
 monious contentedness, from the toes to the curls. 
 On the other hand, let us examine the sculptures 
 of the Komans. In them there is none of that 
 reposefulness, but instead we have rugged lines ; we 
 see the restlessness of man, his fidgetiness ; and 
 this is when the three spheres have ceased to be in 
 connection ; when the concentric and harmonious 
 nature of their action has been disturbed. To 
 talk as did Plato, we should say the spheres were 
 epicyclic; there was always one thing in the 
 machinery which was jarring, not quite in the 
 normal position. Is it not necessary, then, that 
 we should try to reconcile these non-concentric 
 spheres of modern life ? 
 
 We have all heard of the famous French novels 
 of Paul Bourget. It would be well, perhaps, not 
 to say much of the English modern novels. They 
 are mostly unnatural ; there is something in them 
 
 93
 
 PLATO 
 
 that merely touches, but does not interest the 
 heart ; they bore, and one cannot comprehend how 
 any man can read them. Paul Bourget has also 
 tried to tackle the difficult and delicate problem ; 
 bat the ways of Plato are not our modern ways ; 
 they do not touch us as Merimee does. There are 
 the Kussians, but there is nothing special in them. 
 There is M. Jokai ; he is dreamy, and the effect 
 is not lasting ; in a short time the reader forgets 
 what he has read, because he has no earthly 
 interest in the problem, if there be one. The 
 French do, in a measure, tackle this problem. 
 Bourget does it in his Cruelle Enigme ; his femme 
 is a lady of society ; has nothing whatever to 
 do, and spends her life in idleness ; she is hand- 
 some ; eats, drinks, goes to theatres ; and in the 
 400th page he tells us she has gone wrong. It 
 is a marvel she has not gone wrong long before 
 this page is reached. 
 
 All this is merely physiology ; it is not amour, 
 and there is no problem in it. Plato says such 
 people cannot love, and then he proceeds to hide 
 what he has to say in a myth, and there are buried 
 truths in his myths. " Eemember my myth," 
 says he ; it is artistic and correct ; for such things 
 we cannot make rules or language ; we cannot 
 articulate the deepest forces of our heart ; it is all 
 poetry or it is song. Here is his myth. " I will 
 tell you," says he, " how love arose. There was a 
 large party and great festivities in honour of 
 
 94
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Venus ; there they were, all the gods and god- 
 desses, and Poros among them. Everything was 
 excellent ; they talked, they sang, they danced, 
 and ate and drank, and they went into the garden 
 where Poros, overcome by all he had gone 
 through, fell asleep. Then there came along a 
 poor wretchedly dressed woman, Penia; and she 
 thought to herself if I only go into the house, 
 where there have been all these festivities, I 
 might get something to eat and drink. So she 
 passed unnoticed into the house, and having 
 satisfied her wants in eating and drinking, she 
 walked into the garden. Now this woman, though 
 poor and wretchedly dressed, was very beautiful. 
 Poros awoke, saw her and met her, and their child 
 was Love." 
 
 Plato shows us in this fable that for the 
 growth of love, wealth is not needed. It is 
 all ideal, it is sublime ; and it is just by what 
 he does not say that he condemns Paul Bourget. 
 Love needs two, and it must be affection without 
 care, without worry in their hearts. But if we 
 work the woman, or the man, up artificially to fall 
 in love, there is then no harmony, no children ; 
 we do not have our circles concentric, but they 
 overlap ; these are contrasts, and for that reason 
 we do not have love as we have seen in the case 
 
 of Poros. 
 
 Now let us see what our greatest poets have 
 
 done in this matter. It is no use discussing 
 
 95
 
 PLATO 
 
 Shakespeare. His women are not quite like our 
 modern women. Romeo and Juliet was written when 
 he was young— and it never takes our hearts com- 
 pletely — not as Goethe has done in his Faust, 
 where " Faust " has all and " Gretchen " nothing. 
 Plato, in the Banquet, says love cannot come from 
 contrasts ; it can only come where the two are 
 similar ; and we have the myth again where the 
 man and the woman were one with four arms and 
 four legs, and this creature revolted against the 
 gods. The gods then came down and clove them 
 in two, and now the one half is always going 
 about searching for the other. Love, then, can 
 only be perfect when it comes from similars ; 
 never when it is between contrasts. 
 
 In our modern times we see this emphasized 
 very largely, these contrasts in love. We are not 
 now talking of the love of father or mother, but 
 the love of man for woman. And if we look at 
 national experiences, what do we find ? Take 
 Nelson, a typical Englishman. It was not an 
 Englishwoman that he loved, but the mother 
 of his children was Welsh ; and this was not 
 according to what Plato lays down. Then, again, 
 Napoleon. Did he love a Frenchwoman ? No ! 
 He had two loves — one was a Creole, the other 
 a Polishwoman. And it is so in all history. We 
 have Caesar not loving a Eoman woman, but 
 Cleopatra. With us it is the contrasts that have 
 an attraction. It is the blonde that appeals to 
 
 96
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the dark, and this is especially noticeable in 
 France, where we have beautiful statistics to show 
 the different departments where there are blonde 
 and dark, and how the blonde will go away from 
 one department to another and come back with a 
 dark man. The German women who were captive, 
 and led in chains through the city, sent the 
 Romans mad over their blonde hair; and so it 
 is in Italy, where it is typical of great beauty ; 
 as it is in Hungary, where blonde hair is considered 
 a noble hair. These are, however, mysterious 
 attractions, but it is not the essence of love. Why 
 does Plato say that contrasts are not required ? 
 We must not take what he says as final ; but we 
 must not, at the same time, condemn him when 
 he says that there is no true love in contrasts. 
 
 Let us now take another aspect of the case. 
 The best and truest part of love is friendship, and 
 in this we need a goodly number of similarities — 
 more than we do in the love of man for woman. 
 And instances have been known of great friend- 
 ship, where the similarities of taste, of character, 
 of thought, of temper were extraordinary ; where, 
 in fact, their minds had become one. Such were 
 the two Goncourts ; Erckmann-Chatrian — the two, 
 Emile Erckmann and Alexander Chatrian ; also the 
 brothers Grimm, whose thoughts were so sympa- 
 thetic that it was not possible to tell where 
 Jacob stopped and where William continued. 
 This is all true in friendship, but whether in love 
 
 97 h
 
 PLATO 
 
 similarity can do such things we cannot under- 
 stand. 
 
 Why does Plato say what he does ? Has he 
 any ideas that may control modern ideas ? And 
 this is what needs bringing home to us, what 
 every modern man knows — that what Plato means 
 is that love means immortality, and that it is 
 essentially selfish, and that in this sense we are 
 working for our own immortality. We do not 
 articulate the ground bass of our nature, of the 
 music that is in us. Bach, Mozart are infinitely 
 great as masters of music, but they failed to 
 articulate their bass ; nor did Beethoven, who was 
 so tender in his higher flights. We know what 
 we want, a something that is great, something 
 immortal ; but society comes in the way and 
 raises a conflict between the three circles. And 
 this conflict between our hearts and society is so 
 great that it often leads to tragedies, and these 
 tragedies are caused by a profound and noble 
 selfishness to ensure our own immortality. We 
 cannot forget the terrible law of the Spartans. 
 " She must have a child," they said ; and they put 
 their law into force with absolutely relentless 
 logicality. " How long have you been married ? 
 Five or ten years, and no child ! Why, you 
 must have a child." That was a conflict which 
 Balzac has tried in vain, in his works, to articu- 
 late. It was altogether obviated by the Spar- 
 tans. With them it was an operation like any 
 
 9 3
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 other, and all operations are painful. The man 
 who introduced the Spartan and the Cretan laws 
 must have seen very deeply into human nature. 
 " You may go wrong ; anyhow, what is the use of 
 waiting for it;" such is the very mild commen- 
 tary on it, and the knife of Lycurgus cuts through 
 the difficulty. 
 
 These ancient Greeks, these great artists in 
 happiness, with the examples before them, and 
 with their deep insight into the conflicts of the 
 soul, had propounded a law that should produce 
 content. No matter what we say, happiness is 
 goodness ; but it can be said, without fear of 
 being contradicted, that not one man of fifty has 
 done good without suffering for it. What we 
 think we earn by our action in the third sphere 
 of the Church, is embittered by the grossest of 
 ingratitudes in its many aspects, from the inter- 
 ference of the other spheres. It is not in know- 
 ledge but in harmony that we should try and 
 reconcile the three spheres in which we live. We 
 moderns cannot do it, but the Greeks have done 
 it ; and that is what we admire in them ; that 
 is why we have the reposefulness in their statues, 
 rather large perhaps in the bust or the limbs for 
 our tastes, but there is harmony in them from 
 head to heel. It is impossible that we could 
 excel them in this wonderful harmony, which only 
 comes from a reconciliation of the three spheres. 
 Why we differ from Plato in his ideas is that he 
 
 99
 
 PLATO 
 
 lived in a country where cleavages between the 
 different spheres were non-existent. In modern 
 times the ideas of life are so totally different from 
 what they were with the Greeks. With us life is 
 a study in pathology ; we suffer for breaches in 
 the spheres, and we cannot therefore be abso- 
 lutely certain of immortality. We hope for some- 
 thing, but we are not sure of it. 
 
 The Greeks had their mysteries of Eleusis, a 
 place near Athens. These mysteries referred to 
 the next world, but they kept them all as the 
 deepest of secrets. We have explored all round 
 Eleusis, but we have found no trace of anything 
 that will reveal to us the smallest inkling of these 
 mysteries, though we can reconstruct line for line 
 all else in their lives. With them these things 
 were too holy, things that must not be talked 
 about. We, on the other hand, talk so much 
 because we are in doubt. The really rich will 
 never speak of the dollar, but in America there 
 is the nouveau riche, and he is continually talking 
 of his dollars. From Homer downwards we may 
 look through all the works of the Greeks and we 
 never find them talking of immortality. Rhode, in 
 that great and erudite work of his, which he calls 
 " Psyche," tells us what the Greeks thought of 
 immortality. They had the assurance that it was 
 love, which was the greatest asset we have in 
 life. Such an asset had the Theban guard who 
 fell at their posts at Chaeronea ; these men loved 
 
 ioo
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 one another deeply and passionately, and that was 
 pure love. 
 
 And now let us consider, not as theologians, 
 but as students of history, how some of these 
 ideals have been realized in modern times, and 
 in the next best state to what the Greeks had, and 
 that in the Roman Catholic Church. We find in 
 that Church another expression of that love, the 
 beauty of immortality in raptures in that one man, 
 St. Francis, who was a complete incarnation of 
 the idea of love. He was so full of love that he 
 loved everything and everybody. A plant, a 
 stone, a man, even a man covered with ulcers, 
 and he would kiss and love the ulcers ; and in the 
 light of this great ideal nos amours sont des 
 amourettes. It was, indeed, the Greek ideal 
 realized by the Catholic Church. We cannot 
 love as he loved, and the Catholic Church was 
 right in calling him a saint. We call it ideal, 
 but he incorporated the great ideal we call love. 
 Spinoza, again, was very nice and kind and 
 humane, but there was something wanting in him. 
 We can talk of him and say there is grace in 
 this or that he did, but he had not the gratia 
 lacrymarum as St. Francis, who often wept in an 
 ecstasy of love. With St. Francis it was an 
 enthusiasm of enchantment; he was like one of 
 these Greek statues, in perfect repose, and an 
 absolutely sure guarantee of what we call 
 immortality. 
 
 101
 
 PLATO 
 
 In comparing, then, the ancient Greeks with 
 ourselves, we find the differences in all sorts of 
 relations so great that we must not expect to 
 have more harmony, but we must try to be less 
 morbid, less cankered, less eccentric. The last 
 word cannot be with Plato for the reason that 
 we are not centred in one circle ; our circles are 
 not those of the Greeks. Our civilization is more 
 complicated, and when we treat of the great 
 subject of love and take Plato as our guide, we 
 must make allowances. 
 
 Let us take in the next place our poets. Plato 
 would have said that they are all unsound. If we 
 read them at different times, and at different ages, 
 we will find the funny experience that what we 
 admire at the age of twenty will seem stale to 
 us when we are forty ; or the experience may 
 be the reverse. It is the test of all books ; we 
 cannot say that what we have read in such and 
 such a book is the final word that can be said 
 on a given subject. It may survive or it may 
 not. Without in the least wishing to pose as 
 Hellenes, or as Neo- Hellenes, we may be per- 
 mitted to say that from Shakespeare downwards, 
 and from Moliere downwards, there would appear 
 to be something unsound; something quite dif- 
 ferent from the ideal state ; we dare not, in fact, 
 love. In the Greek writers there was an absolute 
 lack of all redundance ; they had ideals. Love is 
 the rarest of all things. Thousands of people 
 
 102
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 would like to love ; they do for a few weeks. But 
 is that love ? Let us examine the Greek stories ; 
 let us take Euripides. With him it does not 
 indicate barbarous brutality, but a full, boundless 
 force — a full-fledged force. 
 
 In modern times it would be difficult to say 
 
 What is love ? We should perhaps divide it into 
 
 classes. In the first class we should place the 
 
 love between parent and child, which is of a less 
 
 passionate character, and we see different phases 
 
 of this in different countries. Then there is the 
 
 love of a young man and a young girl. Plato 
 
 only incidentally refers to this, but he tells us 
 
 enough to give us a hint of his meaning. Next, 
 
 there is that which is considered love by society. 
 
 It is on that that we get special lights from Plato. 
 
 He gives us the perspective to show us the real 
 
 inwardness of it, and it is for us to consider and 
 
 see whether, with our modern experiences, those 
 
 ideas he gives us ought to be changed or not. It 
 
 is the dealing with love where there is no sin yet, 
 
 but where there may be sin. In this connection 
 
 we should be reminded of those Spanish authors 
 
 who have written some very great novels. They 
 
 are modern and wonderful in their way, and they 
 
 excel the French novels in that they are grave, 
 
 and they tackle the real problems of love. And it 
 
 is right, when dealing with this question, that we 
 
 should have the views of Spain, as well as of Italy 
 
 and France. 
 
 103
 
 PLATO 
 
 Having treated of all this we shall come back 
 to our Symposium, and then we will read the 
 speech of Socrates ; and though surrounded by 
 myth, there we will find the bloom and blossom 
 of Plato, and by the light of that we will compre- 
 hend clearly our own times and the times of the 
 Greeks. This subject will be left for our remaining 
 chapters. 
 
 104
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 
 Our subject now is the subject of love ; but we 
 will not deal at once with this subject of love in 
 all its many different aspects. The aspect we 
 have to dwell on at the present moment is pre- 
 eminently the aspect of parental love ; the love of 
 father and mother for their children. It is impos- 
 sible to give a connected story or description of 
 that powerful passion ; it has an intense interest 
 for all of us, whether our thoughts are dwelling on 
 Plato or on other thinkers. In Plato we find a 
 most suggestive passage wherein he says that love 
 is the aspiration of the mortal for the divine ; that 
 love is the desire of the deepest force, something 
 between mortal and immortal. We know the 
 Greeks had a certain being that was not a god, 
 their Sou'/awi/, an intermediary existence between 
 something absolutely divine and ordinary mortals ; 
 and it was this idea of theirs that love was some- 
 thing beyond mortal. 
 
 Now, it has always seemed that this great sub- 
 ject of love which the schoolmaster or the ordinary 
 teacher never touches upon — they pass by it as if 
 it were no concern of theirs — is nevertheless of 
 
 105
 
 PLATO 
 
 very great concern to most of us, whether it be 
 love of parents for child, or man for his country, 
 or love in its many other aspects. Plato, when 
 he speaks of love, speaks of it as the general 
 principle of the universe, the real cause behind 
 all, which keeps it all going; it is the unifying 
 force of everything material and spiritual, but it is 
 so complicated that we cannot treat of its many 
 aspects all at once. 
 
 Love consists of two forces, and that is what 
 we need to have clearly before us now. These 
 two love forces, are best expressed in Greek terms 
 which will give us the essence of their meaning. 
 The first is /mjo-i?, which means possession, a 
 virtual possession ; "something," one might say 
 " I haven't got, but will eventually get it ; I am 
 certain to get it in time." The second is efts, 
 which means actual possession, when one has 
 actually got the thing desired. Let us hold these 
 definitions strongly before our minds. Before we 
 can see what is love, whether it be paternal or 
 patriotic ; whether it be of a vulgar and of a 
 material kind ; or whether it be ideal and spiritual ; 
 Venus or Cupid or Eros ; no matter what sort of 
 love it is ; we must keep the distinction clearly 
 before our minds between the virtual and the actual 
 possession ; and between them there is a great 
 difference. 
 
 And unless we do, there is the danger that we 
 fall victims to Schopenhauer's idea of love, which 
 
 1 06
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 in itself is very true. And so we shall find in 
 Spinoza a very beautiful passage on the subject. 
 But philosophers as a rule avoided the subject ; 
 and* Schopenhauer was not married, and it must 
 be contended that those who are not married 
 cannot speak of love ; they have not the ex- 
 perience, they cannot have a true idea or know- 
 ledge of love. But Schopenhauer knew the thing, 
 the great subject of love, and he puts his idea 
 forth in his great work ; his chapter on the 
 metaphysics of Sexual Love is very great indeed, 
 but it does not complete the thing. It has a 
 ricochet effect, it is brilliant and also true but not 
 complete. As men and women of the world, we 
 know, and it needs no emphasizing, that love is all, 
 it is the heart of everything ; and it requires no 
 great flight of fancy to suppose that a man who 
 had loved very much — loved sincerely and honestly 
 — might discover the essence of love. 
 
 Let us take Eouchefoucauld, who lived in the 
 time of Louis XIII. He was loved passionately 
 by one of the most beautiful of women, the 
 Duchesse de Longueville, and when he speaks of 
 love we say that he ought to know what it is. 
 And what is it that he says of love ? He says 
 that love is like a spectre, everybody talks a great 
 deal about it, but nobody has seen it. He had 
 what the French call tine time seche, his was an 
 absolutely dry soul; there was no shudder, no 
 emotional warmth in him. Whether we consult 
 
 107
 
 PLATO 
 
 such a one as this, or the greatest of modern philo- 
 sophers such as Schopenhauer we will find them 
 unsympathetic ; it is like Wagner in music ; and 
 when we consider and think over it, as men of the 
 world should, we will find that it is not complete. 
 
 Love is indeed the whole of life in one shape 
 or another. All good ideas come from the heart, 
 and if we stifle the emotions, we kill the intelli- 
 gences, we kill love ; it is, as Darwin tells us, by re- 
 pression we kill the emotions ; the emotions that 
 are repressed become, in fact, atrophied. That is 
 why we admired, in our last chapter, St. Francis 
 d'Assissi, the embodiment of love ; and it is so 
 with children. We love them ; they come to us 
 and say, " Do you love me?" It is any amount of 
 love that they want, and we love the naivete of a 
 silly child. Mozart, too, always asked this, though 
 he, with all he did, could not be called childlike ; 
 it is with them indeed the transcendental idea 
 that love is the essence of life ; without it life is 
 nothing. 
 
 What is it that covers all the various aspects 
 of love ? We cannot help thinking that Plato 
 does not cover the whole subject, though he helps 
 us to understand the two distinct ideas of virtual 
 and actual possession. We shall find, too, in 
 his writings, more than one allusion to make us 
 understand love very much better than we would 
 understand it from the writings of any other 
 author. All the ideas of Schopenhauer that we 
 
 1 08
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 have been talking about were expressed by Plato 
 long ago, and we may sum them up in the defini- 
 tion that Love is the love of immortality. We 
 should try to comprehend that whatever we love, 
 it is not the subject or the object we love, but 
 something which assures us of something of im- 
 mortality. It may be our country, for instance ; 
 that we see is going on for ever, how can our love 
 affect it ? No, the love of country is for the glory 
 and immortality of our race, of the country with 
 which our whole life is bound up. It may be for 
 our children ; there it is the love of children in 
 whom we ourselves are re-incarnated. It is not 
 the child we love, but immortality ; we trace the 
 idea that our own individualities are being per- 
 petuated in that child ; we love therefore im- 
 mortality, eternity that thus comes to a vanishing 
 point within us. And it is when this fails that we 
 get what is called the tragedy of love ; that is the 
 tragedy. 
 
 We see it perpetually. We go to a little 
 village in Bavaria ; we enter an inn on a Sunday ; 
 there will be dancing and drinking of heavy beer ; 
 there will be great coarse peasants making their 
 jokes, behaving awkwardly and vulgarly ; and there 
 in a corner we will see a girl. She is not dancing, 
 she is not singing, or amusing herself with the 
 rest, and we ask why ? She is beautiful and 
 young, and we see that she is treated with great 
 delicacy and with great consideration. The reason, 
 
 109
 
 PLATO 
 
 the story, is that she loved a man, and he has 
 deserted her ; and even the rough, coarse peasants 
 are aware of the tragedy of love ; they are in the 
 presence of immortality. Let us picture, too, a 
 young man and a girl, she the mother of a child, 
 and the young man has deserted her, there is the 
 tragedy of love. The author has seen a picture 
 in Austria where a young girl is depicted kneeling, 
 and clasping a crucifix hy the roadside, and at the 
 feet of that emhlem of love lying her new-horn 
 habe, whilst on the other side passes the man who 
 has seduced her, walking with his bride, a richer 
 woman perhaps. But there is the tragedy of love. 
 The German peasants have a way of caricaturing 
 things in what they call " four-liners," Vierzeiler, 
 they will use this on the people of Austria, on 
 the criticism of life ; but when it is on love, there 
 is no humour in it, there is no satire. When a 
 girl loved a man it becomes a sacred thing ; it is 
 a respect for immortality which no satire should 
 touch. 
 
 Love, then, in all its aspects is the love of 
 immortality; it is the guarantee of immortality, 
 and it is the most important of any passion, for it 
 is not a passion for the individual but for the 
 whole future race ; for the re-incarnation of our- 
 selves. Let us suppose Venus to come down now 
 from Olympus, and to need a mortal man, is there 
 a man who would love her ? No, he could not 
 love her, because she is immortal. We naturally 
 
 no
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 feel something in us which is the echo of some- 
 thing much greater ; it is something at the back 
 of us, a force behind us which is impelling us to 
 greater things, to immortality. We, mortals, 
 being what we are, how can we love persons 
 necessarily immortal ? 
 
 We must bow to Plato and to Schopenhauer, 
 but we are sanguine that love is not the love of 
 what we feel and think, but at the behest of our 
 inmost soul, by the impelling of that force behind 
 us, we shall realize the ideal that love is the love 
 of our species, to perpetuate humanity, to get to 
 something immortal, a new life, and new men, 
 new women, and new children. An author is 
 really not the exponent of love, he is only as it 
 were the table, the table on which Shakespeare 
 wrote Hamlet ; he is not the writer, but only the 
 table on which is written love. We ourselves are 
 the living tablets of love. There are entirely 
 different ideas of it, and it is infinitely beyond 
 everything we know of. It may be love of wife, 
 or child, or of country, but it is always beyond 
 the individual or the object. We, indeed, think 
 we love ; we say, love fills me to the brim, that 
 nothing is more my own property than my love. 
 Let us not deceive ourselves, such is not the case. 
 It is the force that comes to us from something 
 higher ; and that is the reason why it has driven 
 men to ruin. Patriotism will drive men to neglect 
 everything, to forget wife, child, and all other 
 
 1 1 1
 
 PLATO 
 
 cares of life ; another will be driven to the seek- 
 ing of glory, another to that of happiness ; another 
 again to the finding out of some abstruse mathe- 
 matical formula ; all these may drive men to rain. 
 A man cannot help himself, it is the something 
 beyond him which drives him. 
 
 When we speak of St. Francis, every one of us, 
 whether a Jew or a Mohammedan or a Catholic, 
 must bow before him, for he is the presentment 
 of the love of that vast thing we call the Church, 
 to which he was impelled by the impulse of that 
 greater force behind, something which was infi- 
 nitely beyond him. And so it is with us, it is 
 what we feel when we are loving a child, an idea, 
 a profession, we are as it were, walking on clouds ; 
 we are acted on by living forces in a sphere which 
 is totally different from ours. This does bring us 
 into contrasts with many of our conventional 
 ideas, but it is love of immortality, in any shape 
 we like ; love forced on us by our species, by 
 something higher than ourselves. It is something 
 so great that it is not we that love, but something 
 very much higher that loves in us. We will see 
 this better when, in a future chapter, we have read 
 the speech of Socrates, in which he says that this 
 something higher alone gives us the assurance 
 that love is not only passion, but that love is life 
 itself. In ordinary life all this might be considered 
 exaltie, an exaggeration, but it is not so. It may 
 be stated positively that we ourselves are only 
 
 112
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 playing a secondary role where love is concerned. 
 Behind us is the real propelling force, and, how- 
 ever much it may impel us we can nevor really 
 seize the essence of love. It is not to be done, 
 it is infinitely more than we can reach. But the 
 two Greek terms we had signifying virtual posses- 
 sion and actual possession, alone give us the key, 
 the clue to our grasping the meaning of it all. 
 
 Now, love is essentially altruistic, it thinks of 
 the other person, how to make another happy ; 
 but this is not the nature of passion as a rule. 
 Passion is essentially egoistic ; but with love it is 
 the love of immortality, and ifc is dictated by 
 something behind us and which is treating us 
 like a puppet, and so it is that it can be 
 both egoistic and altruistic. What is the love 
 of the parent for the child ? We see it in 
 animals, in dogs, cats, lions, and tigers, and it is 
 the most astounding thing we know of; it is, no 
 doubt, in the lowest form of animals too, that 
 same blind devotion. As it is in the man loving a 
 girl, or dying for his country, so it is with the 
 tiniest bird which will try to defend its nest against 
 the eagle at the cost of its life ; and it is this 
 parental love, which is one of the general pheno- 
 mena of life, which is a proof to us of the existence 
 of God. This parental passion or love runs 
 through man, animals, birds, even down to insects ; 
 for we see insects depositing their larvse at the 
 risk of their lives in the nest of other insects 
 
 113 i
 
 PLATO 
 
 or animals. How can it be otherwise than 
 wonderful this world filled with parental love ! 
 What is it ? It is love of immortality ; it is 
 not the love of this child or that, it is the per- 
 petuation of that genus we call humanity. 
 
 When we have travelled we see all sorts of 
 parents ; in each country parental love is of a 
 different kind. In the author's own travels he 
 has seen how very different it is, and how much it 
 varies. It is another and a great form of love, the 
 love of thinking that through that child one is 
 perpetuated ; that through that child one's life is 
 likely to be re-incarnated. It is immortality, for 
 we think that we go on for ever in our descen- 
 dants. We will try and make a scale of parental 
 love from its highest and deepest to its lowest 
 form. If we were to try and discover which is 
 that mother who loves her child more than any 
 other mother does, we will find that it is the 
 Zingaree or gypsy mother. If we have not seen 
 her as a mother, we cannot imagine what she is, 
 her wealth of love, her passion with which she 
 will address her child and which she expresses in 
 her own language, a kind of Hindustani; she 
 loves every hair of its head, every nail on its 
 fingers. The child may be an infant, or two or 
 five years old, it is most wonderful music with 
 which she talks to that child ; and this passion 
 continues for years and years. It is such ecstasies 
 of love, that it would be impossible for any modern 
 
 114
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 poet to describe such love as that. She will roll 
 it about, play to it, caper to it, amuse it in every- 
 way, sing to it, play the violin to it. It is an 
 enormous physical force she devotes to it, and 
 never seems to get tired of doing it. We never 
 see this in civilized countries. To the Zingaree 
 the child is her world, her only country ; and all 
 her love is centred in that child ; all besides is 
 nothing to her. 
 
 Next to her comes the Jewish mother, by this 
 we mean the orthodox Jewish mother of Poland. 
 For it is known that there is a marked distinction 
 between Jews who are orthodox, and those who 
 are not ; the orthodox look upon their religion as 
 the only true one, and all the rest who are not 
 orthodox are considered as heathens. It is truly 
 wonderful to see such a Jewish mother play with 
 her child and amuse it. Her actions are not so 
 intense as those of the Zingaree we have just 
 described, but it is still astounding. It is nothing 
 to her that there are other mothers ; her child is 
 the one, the sum of her life. At Brody, at Lem- 
 berg, in Galicia, we will see this. A girl is about 
 fifteen or sixteen when she is married, but her 
 husband does not exist for her when she becomes 
 a mother, the world around her does not exist ; it 
 is only her child baby she cares for, and she knows 
 it by heart, this is her life, her love. This extra- 
 ordinary love exists not only amongst the Zingaree 
 and the Jews, but also amongst the Poles, the 
 
 115
 
 PLATO 
 
 Czechs and the Irish, people who are under the 
 bondage of more powerful nations. In all these 
 nations they have no fatherland of their own and 
 they hate the country they belong to, so they con- 
 centrate all their affections on the child; their 
 country is their child. And for the same reason 
 we find that the Irish women are the most 
 virtuous in the world ; in Ireland we find the 
 smallest number of illegitimate births, much as 
 the Irish women are endowed by nature with 
 extraordinary charm and beauty, and therefore the 
 more likely to go wrong. And it is no wonder 
 that we find it so, because they are so motherly 
 and fond of their family, and with them it 
 is a fearful crisis to go wrong. The Zingaree 
 woman too, in Hungary, has never been known 
 to fail. She is a force majeure, being very beauti- 
 ful, and well-developed, and exposed to wonderful 
 temptations, but she never yields to passion 
 because for her there is something behind, she 
 must belong one day to one alone, her child, and 
 her child will be her empire ; and it is for the 
 child's sake she will never fail. Amongst the 
 orthodox Polish Jewesses there may have been 
 cases of failing, but they are exceedingly rare ; 
 with them the seventh commandment is rarely 
 transgressed ; with them, too, it is none other but 
 the child. These are the extreme cases we have 
 to consider in the first stage or scale, where 
 parental love is of the deepest kind, where the 
 
 116
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 child is the country, is every thing the mother 
 cares for ; and she naturally cares not for Europe, 
 the state, the world. 
 
 In the next stage is the Italian woman. To 
 her, her bambino is not exactly her only thing, but 
 it is a little more than it is in England. She will 
 talk to it, and amuse it with silly nonsense, ex- 
 pressing herself in language we could not under- 
 stand. This parental love is more strong and 
 intellectual in France, but it is very feeble in 
 England. Without any intention of being dis- 
 agreeable, it is at the same time not an agreeable 
 task to tell mothers that they are not what they 
 ought to be. But here in England children are 
 sent away at ten years of age, away from the 
 loving tenderness of home life, and thus the hearts 
 of the children are stifled. 
 
 In an Empire like this a woman counts for 
 little. In America it is even worse, for there, 
 beyond the fact that a woman becomes a mother, 
 she is of no importance whatever as far as her 
 child is concerned. She does not exist, nor can it 
 be otherwise. The mother has no influence, she 
 is not needed. It is her country she lives for, and 
 knows no child ; the reverse of what we saw with 
 the Zingaree mother, who knows her child, but no 
 country. It is their overpowering country that 
 becomes a power and force behind the Americans, 
 so the mother becomes superfluous beyond the 
 act of giving existence to the child. She is not 
 
 117
 
 PLATO 
 
 required, a case of " needn't apply here, no point 
 in her," is what they say; whereas maternal love 
 is the love of immortality, and is caused by some- 
 thing beyond us ; we cannot resist it, it is too 
 strong for us. It is an absolutely certain fact 
 that maternal love is dictated by a force behind 
 us that is greater than we are, and if that is not 
 enough, let us add our historical conditions, and 
 we will find that we must be compelled to act 
 under that force. The Jewish mother may come 
 and ask, " Am I right in keeping my child away 
 from outside influences ? " The answer is that she 
 is not right, because it indicates that she does not 
 love her own country. Though she may speak 
 the language all right, still to her it is not her 
 country. In America it is the reverse. They love 
 their country ; it is their one great passion ; they 
 have a wonderful system of education, and by 
 that system the love of country eats up all the 
 rest. With them the love of immortality is the 
 immortality of America. They hate children, and 
 do not want to be mothers ; but want to have a 
 good time. Well, they will see what will come of 
 it, and their own President, who is a great man, 
 President Roosevelt, told them so, he told them it 
 meant ruination to them, the decadence of their 
 country. In America we have the other extreme 
 of the Zingaree woman. 
 
 However, in a philosophical lecture we must 
 be careful to distinguish between degrees ; there 
 
 118
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 is not only one kind of parental love, but several 
 degrees of it, and we must find the juste milieu, 
 the golden mean. To find the right thing, how- 
 ever, is very difficult. It is not right to think 
 that our system in England is the best. Tho 
 author has handled over two thousand young 
 Englishmen, and he can say that he found that 
 what they needed, what they had missed, was 
 maternal love. He had once in his house a 
 young man who was very ill, indeed, very nearly 
 dying, and he was getting worse. He said to 
 
 him, "Look here, my dear X , where is 
 
 your mother, why does she not write to me?" 
 His answer, a very striking one, was, " She respects 
 herself far too much to interfere in my affairs." 
 There we have the crux of English life. There is 
 no need for us to go to the extreme of the 
 Zingaree women, but we ought to do a little 
 better, something better than the American. The 
 mothers of this country do need to exercise a 
 larger influence over their children. They will 
 then help to keep this great nation what it should 
 be. They will make heroes of their men. The 
 man who has had the most cuddling, the most 
 kisses, and the most of a mother's love and tender- 
 ness, that is the man who will make a great hero. 
 It is the women who make the men. The man 
 who has not had all this will get tired of a battle- 
 field in half an hour. We know that the Irish 
 have always made the best heroes. Why ? Because 
 
 119
 
 PLATO 
 
 they are greatly addicted to women, arid are as 
 tender as a flower at home. There is, too, 
 England's greatest hero, Nelson. He was frantic 
 about woman, and there would have been no 
 Nelson, no Trafalgar, without Lady Hamilton. 
 He was as delicate and tender to her as he could 
 be ; but to his enemies he was as hard as he 
 was delicate to her. If women thought more of 
 being true women there would be greater heroes. 
 Heroes are men who have been loved by their 
 mothers, kissed by them to any extent. It is 
 not enough for sons to have a kiss now and again, 
 they should be kissed all day, five hundred, five 
 thousand kisses ; and on the battlefield he will kill 
 five thousand of his enemies. He will be like 
 Achilles, who was the terror of the Trojans. 
 Napoleon cried like a child'; he always was his 
 mother's bambino, and he was the terror of all 
 Europe. It is by the mother's tenderness that 
 she will make heroes. Let her not be afraid of 
 showing it, it is all nonsense for her to think that 
 by doing so she will make him effeminate. Let 
 us, therefore, finally decide, in showing maternal 
 love, neither to go to the excess of the ( Zingaree 
 woman, nor to the other extreme of the American 
 mother, but let us do something, do what is in our 
 power, to combine both. 
 
 It is necessary, too, for the mother not to 
 keep her son too long with her, like the Jewish 
 mother in Austria. She wants to dominate him, 
 
 120
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 and does do it, when he is twenty-five. And so it 
 is with the Frencli mother ; they go too far. In 
 France, Madame will dominate her son until he is 
 thirty-five, and this is the opposite extreme. All 
 this requires pondering over with the greatest of 
 earnestness. We are dealing with immortality ; and 
 when dealing with immortality we ought to conquer 
 ourselves. What is required is not to do too 
 much, and at the same time not to do too little, 
 but surely a mother has the right to say that her 
 son ought to belong to her till he is sixteen. 
 What is it that the English mother does? She 
 sends him away to a public school when he is ten. 
 Now that, assuredly, is wrong. When a mother 
 does not exercise her maternal influence over him 
 how can he be expected to keep straight ? One of 
 the great evils of the English public schools comes 
 from the lack of this maternal influence. It is 
 maternal tenderness the boy wants, and when he 
 cannot get it, he has it from another boy or a silly 
 schoolmaster ; thus he loses love paternal and 
 maternal ; the love of immortality par excellence. 
 We ought to consider these differences. 
 
 Why should not the influence of the mother 
 extend to the age of fifteen or sixteen ? It is this 
 which causes so many to marry women older than 
 themselves, and this is unnatural. A young man, 
 when he is twenty or twenty-five, comes and says 
 he is going to marry, to marry a girl eight or ten 
 years older than he is, but she is such a sweet 
 
 121
 
 PLATO 
 
 girl. And why does lie do this ? Because he has 
 never been satisfied by the love of a mother, and 
 he wants some one older than himself to give him 
 that love. The mother not having done her duty, 
 she lets him go, and so he goes astray. The 
 author knew twelve or fourteen young men, and 
 ten of them married women older than themselves. 
 It is a common saying that this great subject 
 cannot be talked about in public, but it can be 
 stated without fear of contradiction that what has 
 been said here is the truth, God's own truth. In 
 dealing with their sons, mothers ought to be able 
 to say that they want them to enter that temple 
 of Love's immortality ; and so to attach them to 
 themselves rather than to the silly schoolmasters. 
 This is a great matter for the mothers to think 
 about in this country, where paternal love is not 
 what it ought to be. But in the interests of 
 English imperialism it is necessary not to over-do 
 it like the Zingaree, the Jewess, and perhaps the 
 Italian and the French woman. With them, their 
 excesses, their going to extremes, is the secret 
 cause of their slow development; and no more 
 must the English go to the other extreme of the 
 Spartan, whose children were sacrificed to the 
 State. In what did the Spartans ever excel ? 
 They had fine muscular fellows, yes, but they did 
 nothing else ; no, Sparta could never become an 
 all-round State. In England we might surely 
 come to some understanding in dealing with boys. 
 
 122
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 They should be kept at home till they are twelve 
 or fourteen. A boy should uot be sent to a public 
 school till he is fourteen, and until he is sixteen 
 he should come home every evening. A mother 
 should not be afraid to kiss him and love him, and 
 to call him by nonsensical names, and so to 
 attach him to her. She is afraid he will not be a 
 man, but in this she is wrong. He will then be a 
 man, and a stronger and a braver and a better man. 
 Wellington, for instance, loved nobody ; perhaps 
 there was a Fanny, a nobody ; and he was not 
 within ten thousand miles of Nelson. If we com- 
 pare the two, we can tell which was the real man. 
 It is a mistake to give in to the silly notions of 
 the schoolmasters. It is a known fact that at 
 English public schools, at Eton and Harrow, boys 
 are in many cases ashamed to put up on the walls 
 of their rooms the photographs of their mothers. 
 Should such a thing be ? and who is responsible 
 for it but their own mothers ? England will have 
 terrible wars some day, and she will want heroes, 
 she will want enormous men, men as great as 
 Nelson. It is not predicted that she will be beaten 
 in the wars that are coming, she will repair the 
 mischief, but she will want great heroes, perhaps 
 even greater than Nelson ; and such men she will 
 never get unless the mothers exert their influence 
 over their boys, unless they love them all they 
 can, keep them with them as much as they can 
 till they are fourteen and sixteen. We must, 
 
 123
 
 PLATO 
 
 therefore, decide here to do that something that 
 will render us happy ; but to ignore that some- 
 thing, to see our boy once, or perhaps two or three 
 times a year, that is clearly not right ; it is 
 assuredly the wrong thing that is being done for 
 this country. 
 
 Thus we have come to some practical results. 
 It is no small thing, no mere " titillation of our 
 senses ; " it is something deeper than what Spinoza 
 says ; it is no enjoying of the material or sensual 
 pleasures of our present life; it is, indeed, the 
 seeking after immortality. Let us do what ought 
 to be done ; let us find the juste milieu, not like the 
 Zingaree, or the Italian or the French, not like 
 the American at the other extreme ; but let us 
 have a certain medium. We want heroes who are 
 tender and delicate ; kiss them when they are 
 young, let them cry. A hero is like a thinker, he 
 needs a heart ; all courage comes from the heart ; 
 and he who cries best, fights the best. Take the 
 Irish heroes, none are more charming than they 
 are, the charmeur des charmeurs, and they are the 
 terror of all terrors to their enemies. Like Conde\ 
 for instance, writhing at one time on the ground 
 because he had lost his love; and a few weeks 
 later, winning his great battle of Rocroy that 
 saved France. Let us take a leaf out of the book 
 of some other countries ; let us see what the 
 Jewess mother has done, what the French, the 
 Italian, the American has done ; and let us consider 
 
 124
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 what their action has led to in those other 
 countries, and the English will have no difficulty 
 in deciding what is best for their own country. 
 And it cannot be stated too emphatically that it is 
 all in the hands of mothers, that it is not only our 
 own generation that they have to think of, but 
 they have to think of ensuing generations for their 
 country's sake. They should remember always 
 what is the most beautiful thing of all, that the 
 end and aim of all love is Immortality. 
 
 125
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 We have come now to another section of our 
 great subject which, strange to say, is not dealt 
 with in any part of Plato's works. There is love 
 for the highest, or God ; love for the next highest, 
 the love of country, or as we call it, patriotism ; 
 these he does not touch on. The third part of 
 the subject, love of science, or philosopher's love 
 he has dealt with largely. When Plato deals 
 with this subject his ideas will be found to be 
 so different from ours that they will need modi- 
 fication. It is not only important to follow 
 carefully what he does say, but it is also im- 
 portant to note what he does not say. 
 
 In the Symposium, old and experienced men 
 met, they were great tragedians, great philo- 
 sophers, great politicians, the flower of the age. 
 Men such as Pausanias and Phaedros, Aristo- 
 phanes, and Socrates, met and talked about love, 
 and took it in every possible aspect, each person 
 looking at it from a different point of view, but 
 we never find them speaking of the love of 
 country. Though the Greeks were deeply im- 
 mersed in love of their country, they never speak 
 
 126
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of it. And as for the word "patriotism," it is not 
 in their language, the word being neither Greek 
 nor Latin, but is made up partly of one and 
 partly of the other, being coined by later 
 writers. Patriotism was with them au every- 
 day natural fact, like eating and drinking, and 
 so they did not talk about it; and that is why 
 Plato never mentions it. It was afterwards, and 
 under altered circumstances, that love of country 
 in its modern aspect became one of the most 
 passionate of loves, so passionate that it fre- 
 quently drove men to extremes. 
 
 We find that in the Symposium the Greeks 
 meet with the set intention to talk of love, to 
 talk of Eros in all its aspects, and we have a 
 series of men and they take it in turns to discuss 
 it, each viewing it from a separate aspect, and 
 then we find Socrates winding up the whole dis- 
 cussion with his speech. And in all this we never 
 read of the strongest of loves, the love of God, 
 ever mentioned. Now, with all of us, whether 
 we consult our hearts, or our confessors, it cannot 
 be denied that the love of God comes first as 
 the source of all other love. We find St. Bernard 
 saying that the love of God, and the power to 
 love God, come from God himself. It is a peculiar 
 sentiment which we can neither realize nor can 
 we articulate. It means that that love must come 
 from something bigger, something much vaster 
 than ourselves. Some of our greatest thinkers, 
 
 127
 
 PLATO 
 
 Spinoza for instance, devotes very much time to 
 this, and he goes on to say that if a man loves 
 God he cannot even attempt to be loved back 
 by him. There is a famous passage too in Goethe 
 which says the same thing ; but he applies it to a 
 woman, to whom he says, wenn Ich dick liebe, was 
 gehts dick an? "If I love you that has nothing to 
 do with you." That is, perhaps, the other extreme. 
 We love God because we cannot help loving him. 
 Spinoza and Plato both characterize such love 
 as the strongest of loves, though Plato never 
 dwells on it at length. We have a passage too 
 in Aristotle, where he says that love created 
 the world out of love for the world. Plato also 
 says that the gods were so fond of beauty that 
 they created the world out of love for beauty ; 
 to feast their eyes on the many beautiful things 
 around them. We devote no end of attention 
 to this love of God, we think it the centre of 
 all love. Not only do we think of it when we 
 go to church, when we go to our confessions, 
 but we feel this love in us when we love wife, 
 or father, or mother, or country. It is not suffi- 
 cient for us to restrict this love in any way, we 
 thirst for the love of the Infinite, the love of 
 God. If such is our feeling in modern times, [it 
 will be said that what ancient history teaches 
 us is that the love of the ancients was based on 
 the love of the finite, that it was altogether 
 restricted. And so it is, their love was restricted. 
 
 128
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 It was after the fall of the Roman Empire that 
 these restrictions were loosened and they wanted 
 something immense ; they wanted God. Aud all 
 through mediaeval history this will be found 
 exemplified in Frenchmen and in the Crusaders. 
 If the French had been asked why they did not 
 drive out the English from France, why they 
 did nothing ' for their country ? they would say, 
 " No, let us leave France to take care of herself, 
 let us go to Palestine to fight for the tomb of 
 the Saviour." Such was the intense feeling that 
 seized hold of the people, so unpractical, so 
 pointless, that we find that great Crusader, 
 Godfrey de Bouillon, saying, " France is not my 
 country, my country is the universe." Now, 
 with us it is the other extreme ; patriotism is 
 so strong in us that we will not go out of our 
 way to defend God's tomb ; and so the idea of 
 God, the love of God has become much weaker 
 in us. 
 
 Are we to be encouraged in thus going to 
 extremes in what we might say are vague things, 
 or must we, like the Greeks, moderate our ideas ? 
 The Spartans loved Sparta, and did not trouble 
 about other countries. We, on the other hand, 
 send out our missionaries to convert nations for 
 the love of humanity. Such an idea would have 
 seemed absurd to the Greeks ; they would have 
 said they had nothing to do with the people of 
 Asia and Africa, who might be let alone to love 
 
 129 K
 
 PLATO 
 
 their own country. To send missionaries to con- 
 vert people, the Greeks could not see that ; that is 
 another kind of love which they did not under- 
 stand. And the ancient Hebrews were the same 
 in that respect. 
 
 It is so difficult to say the Greeks were wrong. 
 Any man who has studied these people, their sur- 
 roundings and the rich abundant life they led, 
 would find it extremely difficult to say that these 
 people were mistaken in the views they held. Let 
 us look at the matter, too, from the other side ; 
 from the side of him who says, " Surely the life 
 of the negro is not the proper life to lead, and I 
 must go and see what I can do to help him." Can 
 we then deny our admiration for so many Catholic 
 orders, the Capuchins, the Jesuits, and others, 
 sending out men at the risk of their lives to impart 
 to other people who were not so favourably situ- 
 ated, the great idea of God? Can we say that 
 such and such a person who gave up his life in 
 the cause was an ass or a fool for doing it ? No, 
 we can do nothing of the kind. 
 
 Well, we turn to Plato and say, " You never 
 teach in your writings that any one should be con- 
 verted, you never tell us that the love of God 
 must be imparted to others. With you everybody 
 that is not a Greek is a barbarian. Are you right ? 
 We cannot help thinking you are wrong." Well, 
 there is no doubt, and it is with reluctance we 
 admit it that the idea of the love of God was 
 
 130
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 pushed to grotesque extremes in the Middle A^es 
 and from these came the crusades and inquisitions 
 those excesses and excrescences which grew round 
 the main fundamental idea. But the bottom, the 
 foundation of the idea is right. Surely we ou^ht 
 to make a propaganda of the love of God ; and 
 Plato in this was mistaken. There is a book 
 of a German writer who is almost unknown, a 
 German of the Old Catholics, named Michelis, 
 though it is not written in very good German, 
 yet it is the deepest thing ever written on Plato. 
 He admires Plato, but he says Plato has not seen 
 the force of the love of God. Even if we grant 
 that monasticism is wrong, we cannot help feeling 
 that the Catholic Church is right in having taken 
 upon itself to teach the love of God to all humanity. 
 And whether we be Catholics or Protestants, and 
 the latter have even more missionaries, we do 
 realize the Infinite. We all believe in that one 
 love of God, and technically it is the love of in- 
 finitude. Spinoza says in his writings that the 
 Infinite is not negative, but positive; it is the 
 finite that is negative; and that we must love 
 something that is infinite. And so it is that the 
 strongest love of woman is the love of immortality 
 — it is infinitude. 
 
 Alas ! there are many here and in America 
 who say, " Why take these things so seriously, 
 for, after all, love is of an ending thing ; " women, 
 for instance, who say they do not want a child. 
 
 131
 
 PLATO 
 
 Let it be emphatically stated again that this is 
 not so ; the love of the father, or of the mother, 
 for a child, or of the statesman who procreates a 
 State, is the love of immortality. A bachelor is 
 condemned before all the world. He has not 
 solved the problem of life or of love. Schopen- 
 hauer never felt love, Spinoza never felt it. They 
 saw some aspects of love, but when they came to 
 love itself, they went astray. The story that 
 Spinoza loved the daughter of his teacher is ex- 
 ploded, for he suffered from a terrible malady 
 which precluded all thoughts or possibility of 
 marriage, and he loved nobody. Yet he con- 
 stantly speaks of love in his Ethics ; ho says he 
 thinks there is only one love, and that is the love 
 of God. We might venture to say that love 
 proper, whether it be directed to God, or woman, 
 or child, or country, or to glory, or to ambition, 
 are one and the same thing ; it is the one oceanic 
 passion that defies death. The burden of the 
 song is the same ; it is the same negation of 
 death. "I don't want to die; I don't want to 
 decay." As Horace so well puts it, non omnis 
 mortar; " As long as the vestal virgins will go up 
 the steps of the Capitol, so long will they sing 
 my odes." And he was right ; for to this day 
 these odes of Horace are known all over the 
 world. It is this feeling of immortality that 
 causes love, and when we differentiate and speak 
 of God as something special, we must not think 
 
 132
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 it is the only love. All love is the same, and 
 from one source. So it is that Spinoza was wrong 
 when he speaks of one and only love— that of 
 God ; and Plato was wrong never to speak of the 
 love of God with much insistence. 
 
 Now we come to the love of country, and it is 
 startling to find that Plato never speaks of it at 
 all. In the Symposium there were six persons 
 who talked about love. These men were the pick 
 of Greek culture, and yet they never speak of the 
 love of country. With us in modern times 
 patriotism is one of the strongest of passions, and 
 it was even so with the Greeks. At the sound 
 of it all, our nature is completely changed; we 
 get a cruel person out of a sweet woman ; a bold 
 man out of a coward ; a generous person where 
 he was niggardly. And to do all that, it must be 
 a great and strong and intense passion. Charlotte 
 Corday, who was so gentle that she could not kill 
 a chicken, yet found courage to rid her country 
 of the monster Marat by stabbing him in his bath. 
 Even with people who are so afraid of death, of 
 the hereafter in fact, it is wonderful to see what 
 an incredible change comes over them under the 
 spell of patriotism. A man who will not venture 
 out in a street brawl for fear of risking his skin, 
 will go smiling to certain death because it is for 
 the sake of his country. The love of country must 
 thus be an 'exceedingly strong love. Women who 
 have been so mean as not to spend a farthing more 
 
 133
 
 PLATO 
 
 than they could help, have been known to give 
 their jewels, their last bracelet, for their country. 
 Men who were butts for cowardice have become 
 heroes. Surely Plato might have talked about 
 such a passion. What is such love as this ? and 
 why does Plato not say a word about it? It is 
 because in Greece, to talk about the love of one's 
 country appeared altogether superfluous. It was 
 a foregone conclusion with them that they did 
 love their country ; or as they put it, we live in 
 the State, through the State and by the State, and 
 there is no other life for us. 
 
 It is because we do not live as the Greeks did, 
 that we are astounded by the love of country, and 
 it raises in us that intense passion for it. There is 
 one word that is hated in this country, and that 
 is conscription. It is incredible that the English 
 should be so averse to it. What does conscription 
 mean ? It means that one is eventually forced to 
 die for one's country. If a man does not want to 
 die for it, the object of his love, it is pretty certain 
 that he never loved it. Love, let us remember, 
 is absolute ; it has no conditions, and it exacts 
 complete surrender, just as, in the Catholic Church, 
 a man is told that he must give up the world to 
 go into a monastery. That is quite right, if one 
 wants to make a specialty of the love of God, one 
 must go to a monastery. This was what Spinoza 
 did, and he was called a God-intoxicated man. 
 All this is perfectly logical, not only with the love 
 
 134
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of God, but with every sort of love. And if we 
 have love of country we must give up everything 
 for it; if one is not willing to do this, vous ne 
 Vaimez pas, vous badinez. This was as true in 
 Plato's time as it is to-day ; that in things absolute 
 there are no conditions. If time has no limit, no 
 more has infinite Love. In connection with con- 
 scription the people of this country say they do 
 not want to serve in the army ; they are horrified 
 at the idea of shedding blood. Why, their empire 
 was founded in blood; and if they do not want 
 to fight for it then it is clear that they do not love 
 it. Love of this kind is unconditional even in the 
 smallest animals. Look at the little bird that 
 defends its nest. The eagle or the falcon may 
 tear it to shreds but it will fight to the last; it 
 thinks of no conscription, but its impulse is to 
 fight first, and what is this love but absolute love. 
 It is not possible to believe that Englishmen love 
 their country, unless they mean to fight for it; 
 and the love of country is as absolutely uncon- 
 ditional as the love of God, as the love of the 
 parent for the child. If people do not want to 
 die for their country, then they should go away 
 from it, go away to South America, to foreign 
 colonies, to Madagascar, they are not Englishmen. 
 It is horrid this love of country, to have to die 
 for it ; yes, and so is it horrid to owe money, 
 to be ill, to be bored; but if people really have 
 the love of country they must do as with the 
 
 135
 
 PLATO 
 
 love of God. The only people who loved God 
 were the Catholic monks, and they carried it out 
 to the last point. We may not agree with St. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, with St. Bonaventura or St. 
 Francis d'Assissi, but the impression of these men 
 was something full, round, and complete. They 
 were as Hero and Leander, as Romeo and Juliet, 
 ready to die for their love ; for they really meant 
 to do it, and this impresses us as all great things 
 must. Now with most people they do not mean 
 to do it. 
 
 The love of country is the greatest historical 
 and political force we have to deal with in modern 
 times. The Greeks had small States, but now our 
 States are great, and the more intense becomes this 
 passion. Let us then promote that passion as we 
 ought to do. In Germany, where they hate this 
 country, there it will be found that they cultivate 
 this love. But it must be unconditional and 
 altruistic ; and of the truth, the absolute truth of 
 this, there is no question. We cannot now love 
 God as they did in the Middle Ages, but that love 
 we show now in a different aspect, in the love of 
 our country. 
 
 In the times of the Greeks, woman was alto- 
 gether a secondary consideration, and they never 
 spoke of the love of a woman ; we find nothing 
 about it in Plato, nor is there any mention of it in 
 the Eleusinian mysteries. There is an old treatise 
 by a Spartan about their State, and yet not a word 
 
 136
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 is said in it about that love of a woman. Do we 
 not know that the deeper a love is the less we 
 speak about it ? We speak of things that are 
 indifferent, but when we feel intensely we never 
 utter a word. The father who loves his children 
 never speaks about the love, it is too deep, like 
 the depth of the ocean ; there are no waves on it, 
 but a wonderful and deep silence over all. And so 
 it is why Plato never talks about it, because passion 
 in the Greeks was stronger than anything else, and 
 it would have been superfluous to mention it. An 
 Athenian would as a matter of course die for Athens, 
 a Corinthian would at once lay down his life for 
 Corinth. To philosophize on such a matter seemed 
 so silly ; we might as well philosophize on the eyes, 
 the ears, and nose. Not speaking about the thing 
 proves that it is the deepest of all passions. We 
 cannot all go and devote our lives to the love of 
 God ; that is set apart for the blessed, for the 
 privileged few. In the hustle of our modern life 
 it is impossible that we should ; for unless we 
 devote our entire lives to it, it becomes impossible. 
 But the love of country is a different love. In 
 America it is the all-absorbing passion ; and there 
 is no love of man, wife, child, or anything. It is 
 what the monks did for their great love ; they 
 gave up mother, brothers, sisters ; and it was 
 St. Bernard who said, " You must walk over your 
 mother's grave to get into my monastery ; you 
 must love God and drop everything else." It is 
 
 137
 
 PLATO 
 
 exactly so with the American. We are a gigantic 
 country, they say, and we have an infinite love for 
 our country ; that country is too immense to allow 
 us to have two loves ; all our care is for one 
 thing, America, which is our great absorbing love. 
 Every American, therefore, goes on his knees before 
 America like as the monk goes on his knees before 
 God. Why ? Because he cares for no woman or 
 child; no, his God is America. St. Francis well 
 puts it that God loved him, and he loved God ; 
 and that is precisely the feeling with the American. 
 If a man cannot get the object of his love it is 
 better that he should go and commit suicide. 
 
 And now we come to the love of science, the 
 love of thought, and there are very few people who 
 care for this love. It is with this aspect of love 
 that Socrates winds up his speech in the Sym- 
 posium. We find some of the phenomena of this 
 love to be absolute, unconditional, cruel and all- 
 absorbing. It is like the cruel, egotistic in- 
 dividuality in Faust, where he wants to know the 
 essence, the ideas of things ; it is a passion for 
 knowledge, to know what holds the world. To love 
 like this one must sell one's self to the devil ; there 
 must be no obstacles of any kind. It is not 
 necessary to love like that ; not even like the 
 men, for instance, in Hungary in '48, '49, who 
 said to their wives we know you will be beggars if 
 we go and fall, but we must fight. And they did, 
 and left their families absolute beggars. This is 
 
 138
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 what may be called tlie love of country uncon- 
 ditional, the love of glory ; and the love of in- 
 tellectual glory, the love of science and of thought, 
 is equally unconditional. 
 
 The Greeks said there were two kinds of love ; 
 one they called celestial love, and the other, vulgar 
 love. What Plato calls real love is celestial love, 
 but let us not think that by this he means that it 
 is a different kind of love. It is the same as the 
 other kinds, unconditional and cruel. Let us look 
 at Faust, first he sells himself to the devil, then 
 he meets a girl and ruins her, he then goes from 
 crime to crime, until he kills her own brother, and 
 crushing his way to ruin in pursuit of his passion 
 he touches the deepest depths of infamy. Then 
 there is Don Juan, that type of vulgar love of 
 pleasure. The Venus vulgar ruled him, and he 
 does everything until he spells rack and ruin 
 around him, and then goes down to hell. Love 
 absolute is a tragedy, whether it be of God, or 
 country, or woman, or child, or anything. For- 
 tunately very few people are capable of love of 
 this description. As to love of science or know- 
 ledge, the author may be permitted to say with 
 regret that, though he has been more or less in 
 the teaching line for years, he has never yet found 
 a young man who was really filled with the thirst 
 for knowledge. They are eager to know enough 
 to pass an examination or to shine in society, but 
 as to that demoniacal thirst for knowledge, of which 
 
 139
 
 PLATO 
 
 Socrates speaks, he has never found one that had 
 it. Perhaps it is good that it is so, for it ruins like 
 any other passion. It is, in fact, a tragedy, and 
 to be a Faust one must go to the devil. In English 
 literature there is a book called "Eugene Aram." 
 If read carefully it will be found to be infinitely 
 more than an ordinary novel. He is the Faust of 
 English literature. He wanted to know, but it 
 was not for money ; and he became a murderer 
 and sold himself to the devil. There is also that 
 terrible story of Palissy's last bedstead, which he 
 threw into the fire to discover his enamel, to know 
 the chemical substances of which enamel was com- 
 posed. He died a beggar. Galois died when he 
 was young ; he was a wonderful mathematician 
 who was not known, but he wanted to know, and 
 he has left but sixty pages, and these pages are 
 now immortal. Mary Somerville too, and that 
 French woman Sophie Germain, who nearly exas- 
 perated her family because she wanted to know. 
 Anybody then who loves must be prepared for a 
 tragedy ; to love absolutely can lead to nothing 
 else. That is what is meant by the envy of the 
 gods. "You want to love," they say; "no, it 
 cannot be, that is for us, for the immortals ; if you 
 meddle with that you perish." It is the story of 
 one of the famous dukes in England, who met a 
 poor man with the gout. " Gout," said His 
 Grace ; " won't rheumatism do for you ? Gout is 
 aristocratic." 
 
 140
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 We are now in a position to approach the 
 subject of love for man as held by the Greeks. 
 They had the real love of man for man ; sympathy 
 with them meant absolute friendship. It was this 
 love which inspired that Theban band who fell to 
 a man at the battle of Chaeronea. In this there 
 is something infinitely deeper than anything we 
 will find in Schopenhauer, it is really love. 
 Friendship, then, is the one love that mortals can 
 indulge in without risk. We cannot love God, as 
 we have seen, without walking over graves ; love 
 of country means we must go to the wars with 
 a smile on our lips ; all these loves lead to 
 tragedies ; but this one sort of love may be 
 allowed to mortals without being tragical. In 
 Plato, then, love means the love of man for man, 
 the love of Plato for Socrates, or of Damon for 
 Pericles. It was this deep intense love which 
 made the man of Megara go to Athens to sit and 
 listen to Plato. Such love in these days is the 
 rarest, absolutely the rarest thing in the world. In 
 history we rarely meet with it, in practical life, 
 never. 
 
 Friendship, then, is the one love which is not 
 only eternal and unconditional, but it is absolutely 
 pure. It is what we mean when we talk of 
 Platonic love. It is the glory of Goethe that he 
 not only wrote about, but he really created friend- 
 ship. Witness the relation between Goethe and 
 Schiller, between Shelley and Byron. Byron was 
 
 141
 
 PLATO 
 
 imbued with the Greek spirit and he loved Shelley 
 more than women. Here we have something pure 
 without its being tragical ; and of this sort of love 
 we see in Plato very much. In these days we 
 would be almost annoyed, we would treat with 
 contempt, if any one spoke of the love of man 
 for man. The Greeks, however, knew the mean- 
 ing of it ; in everything they did they tried to 
 reach the height of perfect art. They tried also 
 to reach perfection in love, and their experience 
 taught them that it could not be attained in the 
 love of man and woman ; in that there was 
 tragedy. It was, indeed, more likely that perfec- 
 tion was to be found in friendship than in love of 
 man and woman. 
 
 Woman has not kept pace with our historical 
 development. She is in the thirteenth century, 
 while man is in the twentieth. Perhaps there 
 will be another phase of development which will 
 bring her more into line in the future. Now, we 
 do not quite see why we waste so many words 
 on a love which is quite indifferent to them, that 
 is, love which is not tragical, between man and 
 man. Has such a love ever been known between 
 woman and woman ? We may say that there is 
 no example of it in history. Love is certainly 
 the great L/xepos, cqjpetitus, the desire for immor- 
 tality. It is the desire for infinitude, no matter 
 what the object ; and that desire is somewhat 
 presumptuous on the part of mortals, and likely 
 
 142
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 to end tragically. The Greeks thought, therefore, 
 that it was better not to have such a love, but 
 that they ought to be satisfied with some of the 
 minor aspects of it. They knew, too, that this 
 world could not go on very long with mediocri- 
 ties ; so they with their intense life wanted to be 
 like Pericles, like Socrates. It was too much, it 
 could not be, and so they disappeared, and like 
 flowers they have left their perfume behind them. 
 Their ideals were not for large countries and 
 empires, not for millions of people, but for small 
 States. Let gigantic empires try for mediocrities 
 because they cannot hope to reach infinitude. 
 Our life, indeed, is not meant to be lived as the 
 life of immortals. We will find love in a poem, or 
 in music, or in art, when we cannot find it in 
 life. The unrequited lover writes the best. We 
 know of the jilted lover, the man who wrote the 
 sonnets of Petrarch in such beautiful sonorous 
 language ; he, too, could not get at his ideal, for 
 Aphrodite eluded him. After all the greatest 
 lesson of philosophy is humility. If we cannot 
 climb up to the top of Olympus we can at least 
 have our breakfast at the foot of it. 
 
 Love is an immense subject, and it is a risky 
 thing. If a man does not find it when he is a 
 lover of a woman, he will find it as a father. 
 What is King Lear? There we have the deep 
 passion of a father. He will find out what love 
 is, that it is a cruel thing they call Aphrodite; 
 
 H3
 
 PLATO 
 
 he will not find it out in the way of science, but 
 he will in his own child. We find it in " Pere 
 Goriot," by Balzac, where we see a type of this. 
 Love and everything connected with it is dangerous. 
 The Greeks went to the temple of the goddess 
 and kissed the stone ; this is a terrible goddess, 
 they said, it is best to be humble, and not to 
 expect too much. Napoleon was never loved by 
 wife, brothers, or sisters ; they did not believe 
 in him, not even his wife ; and he was burning 
 to be loved. The Greeks would have said to him 
 you have conquered the world, you cannot con- 
 quer love as well; the gods are too envious, be 
 humble and do not try to get too much. Such 
 things are very rare, let us not try to become Dr 
 Faust. The love of woman is a desperate tragedy, 
 we cannot know very much of it, and it will make 
 us as bitter as possible. 
 
 There is a legend of the statue of the goddess 
 Isis in Egypt. That statue was always veiled 
 over with a white cloth, and it was said that 
 whoever saw that statue would see truth. A 
 young man was determined to lift the veil, and 
 one night he ventured to go near and to touch 
 the cloth aside, and the next morning they found 
 him dead there by the statue. He had seen 
 truth, and he could not live. And so it is with 
 every object of love ; it teaches us humility. 
 Fontenelle, who lived to be a hundred, said, " If I 
 held truth in mj hand, I should never open my 
 
 144
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 hand." We cannot all be like St. Francis. Only 
 just a part of love is for us ; full love, full truth, 
 is only for the gods. If we can enjoy love, only 
 a few sparks of it, that will do for us. If we want 
 to take it in stronger doses we must be ready to 
 take the tragical consequences ; and if we are not 
 ready, we deceive ourselves, and we also deceive 
 others. This is what we wanted to arrive at in 
 this chapter, that the love of father for child, 
 man for country, of man for knowledge, often ends 
 in tragedy, so let us not seek to desire too much. 
 In the next chapter we will discuss the love of 
 man to woman proper. 
 
 H5
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 We have now reached the last chapter of the series 
 in which we are treating of the subject of love. 
 We have dealt with love in several of its aspects ; 
 we have said something of the love of God, the 
 love of children, of country, of knowledge, and we 
 have now reached the concluding aspect, a subject 
 on which the Greeks have never said much, and 
 that is the love of the young man for the young 
 woman. It is the aspect of love of which our 
 modern literature is full nowadays, and yet the 
 Greeks never touched on it. It is characteristic 
 of both Greek and Roman literature, this absence 
 of all elaborate treatment of it, and yet the litera- 
 ture of those ancients was so incomparable that 
 we cannot vie with them ; they have exhausted 
 all subjects except this one. 
 
 In fact no language is so perfect as the Greek, 
 so full of expression, so sonorous; it is the very 
 language to give expression to love. And yet why 
 is it that they are so silent on this one subject, 
 the very topic on which all modern literature is 
 more than explicit ? It has led to so many 
 tragedies, to so much happiness, so much sorrow ; 
 
 146
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 it is, in fact, bound up completely with our social 
 life in one form or another. 
 
 There is a famous reply of a great French 
 lady, a lady seventy years of age, who was asked 
 when woman ceased loving. What she said was, 
 " Monsieur I il faut s'adresser aux dames plus vieilles 
 que moi>" meaning that maturity in love is 
 never reached. We contend, then, that youth 
 cannot appreciate love, for it means immortality, 
 perpetuity, infinitude, and those thoughts are far 
 from youth. The subject indeed is so interesting 
 to us that it naturally strikes us when reading the 
 Greek authors, why they never talk about it. We 
 have Corinna, the Greek poetess of Tanagra, who 
 gained her victory over Pindar at Thebes; there 
 is Sappho herself, in the few poems of hers that 
 we have left to us, and she talks of the love of 
 woman for woman ; it is the same with them all, 
 they all refer to other loves, and not to this love 
 of the young man for the young woman ; there is 
 only slight indications of it in any of their poets. 
 If we take Homer, what do we find in his Iliad 
 and his Odyssey ? The love of Ulysses is based on 
 the love of man for woman, it is that bourgeois feel- 
 ing in Ulysses for his wife. Ulysses goes through 
 innumerable wanderings and temptations; Circes 
 and Calypsos are nothing to him, it is his own 
 wife that he loves, and it is that that endears 
 him to us. In later poetry there are very few 
 indications of such love. We have a sister's and 
 
 H7
 
 PLATO 
 
 brother's love such as that of Iphigenia and 
 Orestes ; we have the love of a father and daugh- 
 ter as illustrated by the Antigone. In Roman 
 literature too, even in the most intense and 
 deep passages on love, what do we find but the 
 love of Catullus, who loved Lesbia? She was a 
 married woman'; but he loved her intensely, and 
 he died of that love. 
 
 But all this is not what we are treating of 
 here, which is the love of a young man for a 
 young woman. On this subject the ancients are 
 silent, and may we not ask why they are silent, 
 why is it that Plato does not speak of it, why is it 
 he thinks it is really not worth mentioning ? 
 Does it not relate to human life, is it not a part of 
 it ? Far be it from us to be cynical in order to 
 be interesting, but it has often occurred to us, is 
 it because it does not exist ? Plato, we might say, 
 you are very interesting, you are very profound, 
 but it seems to us that there is a great deficiency 
 here in your writings. Here is something which 
 occupies so much of the time of the young man 
 and the young girl, and yet you pass over the 
 subject without a word. Surely, you could not 
 have sifted the matter to the foundation, or you 
 would not have ignored a subject which is most 
 interesting to us. The author himself when a 
 young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, really 
 thought that Plato had ignored the subject 
 because it had escaped him. But he has travelled 
 
 148
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 since, and he has noticed and studied this and 
 other subjects dealt with by Plato, in all countries, 
 and now he can say that he does not think that 
 Plato was so very much mistaken in his attitude. 
 It is of the true and real that he always speaks, but 
 of this love of the young man and the young girl, 
 he and the Greeks did not think it existed, and so 
 he never mentions it. As we have seen in previous 
 chapters, it is not only from what Plato says that 
 we learn, but also from what he does not say, and 
 we are to infer from this silence of his that there 
 is no such reality in the love we are now dis- 
 cussing. 
 
 If we look through history we find it so strange 
 that so many great men have never loved ; or 
 some of them only when they were of mature 
 years. The author himself loved Lessing most of 
 all German writers. He thought him the one man 
 who combined in him the greatest forces of the 
 soul. He made a hero of him, he devoured that 
 man, he bought his portraits, one by Tischbein 
 was the best, and he got to know his life very 
 well. He could not help thinking him an exceed- 
 ingly beautiful man. He followed him from town 
 to town in his career, from Leipsic to Berlin, 
 from Berlin to Breslau, and he never found a 
 woman who loved him. And when he arraigned 
 Plato in his mind for his great deficiency in 
 ignoring this phase of love, he could not help 
 thinking why was Lessing never loved ? True he 
 
 149
 
 PLATO 
 
 was fiance to a woman, a widow, who kept liiui 
 going for six years ; she could never have loved 
 him for keeping him waiting all that time. How 
 could she ? She loved her first husband and his 
 honour more, thus she did not love Lessing, for 
 with love one must go to the end of a thing, one 
 wants to possess ; and if a person waits six years 
 or even two years, that person cannot love at all. 
 The author, therefore, hated that woman with a 
 posthumous jealousy, for she never loved Lessing, 
 and he never loved that woman ; and when a son 
 was born to him at the age of forty-seven, he 
 wrote that famous letter in which he said, " I have 
 wanted to be like other men, but it could not 
 be for me." " Ich wollte es audi einmal so haben wie 
 andre Menschen, aber es ist mir schlecht bekommen." 
 Nor does it mean much what Goethe says on the 
 subject, as he was never loved when young. If 
 Frederica had loved him, it was only biscuit love, 
 something that could be broken very easily, very 
 brittle. And when he left her, she cried a little, a 
 very few tears, and then it was all over. 
 
 Wben we come to this country and look at the 
 lives of her great men, we find Byron very inter- 
 esting. There are six cantos in Don Juan which 
 are incomparable. There is in them the Greek, 
 German, and French spirit all rolled into one, 
 but that man was never loved by a woman. And 
 with such instances before us we can say, perhaps 
 Plato was quite right ; perhaps the love we see so 
 
 150
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 much written about in novels does not exist. The 
 Greeks were terribly cruel, and they were also 
 terribly sincere ; and they were a people who called 
 a spade a spade. These people found out that 
 young girls do not love young men ; what they 
 really do is they love themselves. A young girl 
 only cares d crever le cceur de V autre jeune file I 
 Or, as the mistress of a girl's institution once 
 said, they love two things, cold beef and to put the 
 knife into the heart of other girls. If then love is 
 such a rare thing, how can we imagine that we can 
 find it in ordinary immature boys and girls who are 
 not yet complete ? So we think that Plato was 
 quite right ; it does not exist, and it is vain to 
 look for a Hero and Leander, or a Borneo and a 
 Juliet from such incomplete material. If it comes, 
 it comes later on, but not at the ages of sixteen 
 and eighteen. The heart must have experienced, 
 must have suffered indeed, before it can know love 
 in its intensity and purity. 
 
 Seven-eighths of the marriages in France are 
 manage de convenance ; love does not enter into 
 them ; and we find the importance of Plato just in 
 this, that he is as fertile in what he says as in 
 what he does not say ; and when he does not refer 
 to a thing, it means that it does not exist. That 
 is why it pleases us to read about them like fairy 
 tales ; they are not real, but they please the 
 imagination. Fairies, as we know, are things of 
 the imagination, mysterious, and they certainly do 
 
 151
 
 PLATO 
 
 not exist. Sir Thomas Browne says in one of his 
 books in the stately language of the day, over two 
 hundred and fifty years ago, that when he went to 
 a theatre he saw an actor shamming some tragedy, 
 and he wept like a child. Our imagination, then, 
 is the strongest force we have ; it is so to-day 
 when we go to the theatre, and when it comes to 
 the love scene, and the young girl confesses her 
 love for the young man, there is breathless silence. 
 It touches our imagination, but we know it is not 
 the real thing. 
 
 It is the modern novelist who has started the 
 idea of the love of the young man for the young 
 girl, simply because it appeals to our imagination. 
 Plato, who was right after all, would have said it 
 does not exist ! He would have said he had never 
 seen it, so why should he write of the non-existent. 
 Our own hearts are the greatest of deceivers, the 
 greatest of ruffians ; and so it is that young girls 
 imagine that they are in love ; they, in fact, 
 suggest it to themselves, and it is all fancy on 
 their part. Max Nordau, a Hungarian writer, has 
 a very interesting chapter in his book called the 
 " Paradoxes," where there is a passage which is 
 very true and very fine. He says that it is said 
 that life reacts on literature, but it is juster to say 
 that literature is reflected in life. The Germans 
 have an excellent word which expresses this, 
 nachempfinden ; that is, to try and feel what we 
 have read, to put ourselves in the position of a 
 
 152
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 character in a book, to imitate, for instance, a 
 Faust or a Werther. The author has seen numbers 
 of young men try to imitate Shelley. He has 
 seen in Cambridge, young men try to play Dr. 
 Faust, even with the daughter of their boarding- 
 house lady. This was imitation, they were trying 
 to nachempfinden what their imagination had gained 
 from their readings. One young man of Christ- 
 church College, Oxford, told him he loved a 
 girl beyond expression. He retorted that that 
 was too much, surely he might be able to express 
 it. The whole thing was really too hollow, he 
 had had his imagination stirred by reading Keats 
 and Shelley and Goethe, for he knew German 
 very well. He wanted to feel as Faust felt when 
 he met Gretchen outside the church, in the hour 
 of his triumph, when he said, " Here, my Gretcheu, 
 might I offer you my arm." There is the story, 
 too, of how Goethe met a young man who had 
 read Werther and was imitating him ; Goethe 
 kept his identity a secret, and tried to point out 
 to him that suicide was wrong, was morbid, and 
 all for imagination. Thus we see that it is not 
 literature which is always the reflex of life ; but 
 that life is frequently the reflex of literature. 
 
 The Greeks, in their cruel sincerity, did not 
 believe in all these things, and they only wrote of 
 the real and what they felt was true. The social 
 intercourse in those days was very charming. 
 Athens, Thebes, Megara, Sparta all had their 
 
 153
 
 PLATO 
 
 types. In Thebes they danced together, men and 
 women. In Athens, though they did not dance 
 together, they mixed freely. They saw all the 
 intensity of life around them, but the one thing 
 love, they did not see ; and their philosophers tell 
 us the truth about love, that it is almost impossible 
 for it to be found in such ages as those of a young 
 boy and a young girl. It is such a serious thing, 
 so grave, something meaning immortality, infini- 
 tude, that at the age of a boy and a girl they are 
 too selfish, too egotistic, to have an idea of what 
 love is. It leads to the greatest of pleasures, the 
 greatest of solicitudes for others, it is in fact 
 altogether altruistic, and how can we attain to all 
 this when we are so young ? 
 
 So we see why Plato, if he had read our 
 novels, would have called them vapid. Now, 
 ancient Egypt had thousands of novels, and they 
 read as if they were written but yesterday; for 
 they contain the same old story of the love of 
 a young man and a young woman. The Greeks 
 knew of ^all that, and we see Greek writers giving 
 their contents and making fun of them ; they 
 said they were made up of mere imagination, of 
 fancy, and did not touch the nerve of life. The 
 Greeks had their novels after the second century 
 B.C., when their artistic sense had long been spent 
 and disappeared. When, in fact, they were a 
 decadent nation that they gave us their novels. 
 We, on the other hand, think that our novel is the 
 
 154
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 modern epic. How mistaken we are, and how 
 many years do we lose of our life in reading them ! 
 All this is totally wrong, and it misleads many 
 young minds, for they feed their imaginations and 
 not their hearts, and it is from the heart that 
 greatness comes. This may be a subject which 
 is painful, but when we are seeking truth it must 
 be mentioned, otherwise the whole truth cannot be 
 explained. We cannot doubt for one moment that 
 the real cause of there being such a large number 
 of old spinsters, both here and in America, is due 
 very much to present-day novels. In America, 
 where there are two millions more men than 
 women, we would expect to find very few old 
 spinsters, but seven-eighths of the women over 
 forty will be found unmarried, and why? Their 
 President Roosevelt, and excepting Abraham 
 Lincoln, he is, perhaps, the greatest of their 
 Presidents, in his sincerity and his straightforward- 
 ness, put his finger on the spot, their one great 
 fault, when he said to the women of America, 
 "You do not want to be mothers, and unless you 
 do you cannot hope to form a nation." 
 
 The one great cause of all this is that the 
 modern young girl reads too many novels. She 
 reads so much of this sort of thing, that her head 
 becomes full of imagination, and she sees nothing 
 but ideal men. When she comes down terre d 
 terre, into the street, and there sees the ordinary 
 commonplace man, she does not like him ; he is 
 
 155
 
 PLATO 
 
 very different from her ideal, and so she will not 
 marry. The French girls, it may be said, are 
 not allowed to read novels, and the French are 
 absolutely right. Here, in England, we buy 
 novels for a penny — those dreadful "Penny 
 Novels " — and they have done more harm to 
 England than anything else. They are abso- 
 lutely unnatural, and depict life, as it were, com- 
 pletely out of gear. It is after the reading of such 
 trash, where the smallest personage is a countess 
 or a duchess, that the young girl meets a man 
 whom she finds not equal to her ideal, so she 
 refuses to marry him. 
 
 Other well-known novels, again, ought to be 
 forbidden, quarantined ; they are a perfect plague. 
 They nourish ideas that do not exist, and give the 
 young women, from servant girls upwards, entirely 
 wrong ideas. Who ever heard of a child like that, 
 having doubts on theological problems, found 
 no other way out but that of committing suicide ? 
 The thing is not real, it is too absurd, too 
 morbid. Such authors are like Don Quixote ; 
 they are fighting windmills instead of fighting 
 heroes. Let us then give our young people 
 something to read that will form their ideas, 
 and not something that will fire their imagina- 
 tions. We are not now speaking from theory, 
 but from concrete experience, having seen life 
 in all its aspects, not only on the Continent, 
 but in America as well. In France, if a girl is 
 
 156
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 inclined that way, they put her in a nunnery, and 
 that is the best way of disposing of her, and the 
 quickest ; but to fill her imagination with things 
 that are not real, that are not love, that, we say, 
 is distinctly wrong. 
 
 It is the same with the young man in Germany 
 with his senseless ideas about woman ; he will be 
 shocked at seeing his lady-love eating a peach. 
 Now, is not this absolutely morbid? And such 
 are the ideas which are engendered by the class 
 of literature which we call novels ; a plague on 
 such literature, for they contain distorted, hybrid 
 ideas of love ; and love like this does not exist. 
 Love is, indeed, like truth, like beauty ; it is ex- 
 ceedingly rare; and friendship, which is greater, 
 is even rarer. We are not now speaking of a 
 mother's love, that happily is not so rare, though 
 in some countries it is not so strong, but we are 
 speaking solely of love proper, the love of a young 
 man for a young woman, and that is the rarest 
 thing in the world. Do we think it would astound 
 us so much if it were an ordinary thing, like a 
 glass of beer ? Do we not, in the theatre, when 
 we see love and warmth of feeling portrayed, 
 listen in breathless silence ? 
 
 Plato, then, was a thousand times right to 
 avoid such a subject. " Why should I speak of 
 it," he might say, "when it is so rare? I speak 
 of the ordinary occurrences of life, but of love 
 between young men and young women I see no 
 
 J 57
 
 PLATO 
 
 necessity to talk about, as there is no such thing." 
 Among the Greeks, then, we see such love very 
 rarely, but in the Middle Ages there is hardly any 
 trace of it. It is really a disease of modern times ; 
 the girl, with fired imagination, going out into the 
 street to meet her ideal. But when we go to the 
 bottom of things, there is really nothing in it. It 
 is quite different when we come to deal with love 
 between mature people. Here it is possible, and 
 it does occur, and when it occurs it may turn out 
 to be a paradise, or it may turn out a hell ; for 
 love without realization is hell. 
 
 And in this phase of love, history does not 
 leave us in the lurch, but we have great examples 
 of it. There was Horace Walpole, a man of the 
 world and of great charm, who fell in love with a 
 woman, Madame Du Deffand, who was sixty-five 
 and much older than himself, and blind besides, 
 and he loved her passionately. She, of course, 
 could not see him, but he could not help seeing 
 her, that she was no longer young. That is what 
 is called real love, and it may come at any age. 
 Goethe, when he was seventy, was loved for the 
 first time by that Bavarian woman, who wrote 
 that most beautiful amongst his poems. He 
 never said it was hers, but there it is. She loved 
 him with that absolute love which knows no 
 conscience. 
 
 We will now give a definition of love, pre- 
 supposing, of course, that it is between mature 
 
 158
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 people. There may be exceptions, but we hate to 
 believe in exceptions. We give no exceptions, 
 only rules. We say, then, that if there be such 
 a thing as love in real life, it must be between 
 mature people who have known the world ; and if 
 they can be united, then paradise is theirs, but if 
 they are not, then it is both paradise and hell ; 
 for love, let it be understood, is absolutely un- 
 conditional. 
 
 We have no explicit passage in Plato on this 
 subject, but his pupil, Xenophon, has a beautiful 
 passage in his Oikoz/o/xiko's where he describes the 
 love of a mature man for his wife. And it is this 
 that makes the Odyssey appeal to us when it shows 
 us the love of Ulysses for his wife, Penelope ; he 
 goes through all temptations, all disasters; even 
 the loves of goddesses have no effect on him, and 
 he finally comes back home to his wife. Here we 
 have a most majestic proof of the incomparable 
 beauty of Homer. The author, when young, used 
 to read books to an old man in Vienna, and the 
 books he read to him were law books, of poetry he 
 would not hear. He at last persuaded him to let 
 him read to him the Odyssey, and when it came to 
 the twenty-fourth song, which told of the real love 
 of Ulysses for his wife, the old man, a regular dry- 
 as-dust, an old parchment, wept like a child. He 
 said it was all nonsense, but he was overpowered 
 all the same. It struck the author then that 
 Homer was the greatest poet in the world. 
 
 159
 
 PLATO 
 
 Imagine that scene when Ulysses comes home to 
 Penelope, and leaning against one of the pillars of 
 his house in an agony of love and longing, he tries 
 to convince his wife of his identity. " I am your 
 hushand," he says. " Yes," she says, but does not 
 seem to believe it. He fixes his eyes on her, as if 
 with his whole soul he would convince her, when 
 she says, " Yes, you are Ulysses, my husband ; 
 the night is very warm, will you help me to 
 remove our bedstead into the garden." " Now I 
 recognize my dear old wife," said he; "you know 
 I hewed it out of a tree myself, so that it is fixed 
 in one part and cannot be moved. It is only you 
 and I that knew that." When she heard that she 
 had no more doubts, and she screamed aloud, and 
 fell round his neck. When we hear this read we 
 know that love enduring is here on earth. Novels 
 cannot be like that, they give us a totally wrong 
 and biassed means of judging of life, and they 
 ought to be abolished. There are three or four 
 novels published every day, and if we total up the 
 number of copies of each novel that are sent into 
 the country throughout the year the figures will 
 run into hundreds of thousands. They are 
 shovelled out at this rate in Germany too, and 
 also in America where if they have not their own 
 they take those of the English, if not copyrighted. 
 And they are read and read by thousands and 
 thousands of people. It is this that falsifies their 
 joys, and throws everything out of gear, and what 
 
 160
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 is it worth to themselves and to others ? It is a 
 convincing proof that if the Greeks had nothing 
 to say on this subject, then there really can be 
 nothing to say. 
 
 In peasant life it is different, with them they 
 marry young, not from love but that they may 
 have two more hands to work. We do not refer 
 to tradespeople either ; for they too marry for the 
 simple purpose of co-operation. But we are now 
 speaking of gentlemen and ladies in the monde, a 
 class whose duty it is to drop things that do not 
 exist, to give up the novel, which begets false ideas • 
 It is for them to give time to the young to build up 
 the body and the heart on true lines, and they will 
 thus build up the nation. A man in this class is no 
 man before he is thirty. It is the body he has to 
 build up, and nature is constantly working at that 
 one thing. If he thinks he loves at twenty, it is 
 not real love but only the reflex of literature and 
 a false reflection. Let him wait till he is thirty ; 
 and when he falls in love then, he will say, " I am 
 loving, and it is the most serious affair of my life." 
 Lies and fiction must exist in all countries like 
 this. We have only to look at the Prime Minister, 
 the man who rules England, and he had no pre- 
 cedence over the Lord Chancellor ; his position 
 was assigned him only the other day. Most things 
 are fictions in great nations. All this is not a 
 matter of reproach, but it is not necessary to keep 
 up the fiction of love. From the servants to the 
 
 161 m
 
 PLATO 
 
 lady in the drawing-room, all allow certain 
 novelists to fill their heads with wrong notions, 
 whereas they should try and strengthen them- 
 selves ; they should make themselves as sound 
 and as strong as possible, they should prepare for 
 the conflicts that are coming, and they must come 
 in a few years. 
 
 Love proper will come, much as there is 
 mystery in it. It is a most incomprehensible 
 passion, for lovers who think they love one 
 another, yet in another moment will think that 
 they hate one another. Goethe well expresses 
 this in his works. Yet with all that mysticism 
 the thing is very simple. Love means unity ; 
 it means being united, it means family, perpetuity 
 and immortality. It is the genius of our own 
 race that beckons us ; it is the force that rules 
 the world, and we cannot get out of it. It is like 
 those terrible Irish fairy tales where the fairy 
 comes in to the hearth and does not wish to go 
 alone and she calls one of the girls to go with 
 her. The girl does not want to go but she must, 
 she goes and dies. It is so with the child and 
 the Erlking. The child must go. He is terrified ; 
 but he must — the call is imperative. The father 
 says it is only the wind. When he arrives home 
 he finds the child dead. The meaning of all this 
 is immortality, which is far bigger than the indi- 
 vidual. It has been distinctly stated that philo- 
 sophy attempts to give the individual a real home, 
 
 162
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 but the individual is only the part of an enormous 
 whole, and we must go with it. It is the force 
 that holds us, and it is not to be denied. It will 
 draw us, and, like the Irish fairy, we are called 
 back to the heart of things, and we must go if we 
 die. It was not only the wind, but the Erlking ; 
 and the child died. 
 
 Plato says that man has a strong and infinite 
 craving for something immortal, and that this 
 craving is stronger than any other. He says 
 that if we prove to him that there is no im- 
 mortality, he will point out to us that it is here, 
 the mere fact of loving a woman is a craving for 
 immortality. And not only has Plato said this, 
 but all the sages of the world, and our own un- 
 answerable instinct also tells us that it is so. All 
 the rest that we hear is mere bunkum. That is 
 why people never thought there was anything 
 criminal in a great love. We do not go to novels 
 for this aspect of great love. We will see it in 
 the Odyssey, we have it in the Iliad ; for instance, 
 where Helen said, " You seem to be sad, I will 
 brew you a drink so intoxicating that you can 
 see your mother murdered and not feel sad." She 
 meant by that drink the waters of Love, the true 
 Lethe that makes us forget all else. Love in 
 that sense, when it comes to a person in due 
 time, is life ; when it does not come to him, he 
 is really dead. This, it may be said, is real life, 
 when a man loves, when a woman loves, it is 
 
 163
 
 PLATO 
 
 endless life and they are only conscious of it when 
 they love. But this love only conies when they 
 are mature. Some get it before others, a woman 
 not before she is twenty-five to twenty-eight ; 
 and a man, not before he is thirty-five. And that 
 is why the Greeks never talked about that love, 
 whereas we, we fill the world with novels on 
 what is not love. 
 
 Of that other, the real love, we find Plato, 
 and also Xenophon, though he is dry reading, 
 both speak of it as immortality ; in this sign, 
 you will be conqueror, they say, you will be im- 
 mortal. In that phase of it, it is not even 
 love of a mere child, it is more than all that. 
 And in that speech in the Symposium Socrates 
 says that love is all-pervading, it is the whole 
 of nature. Conflict is indeed the father of things 
 and of development, but love is the mother. 
 There has been nothing great done in this 
 world except through great conflicts, and things 
 have been crowned and brought to final shape 
 by love ; and so the two work together. For our 
 own immortality we are doing the business of the 
 world, not only by conflicts, but by love too, and 
 it is the combined force that moves the world. It 
 is the men who are engaged in the conflict, and the 
 women in the love. And whether we concentrate 
 that love on children, or wife, or intellectual pur- 
 suit, or on country, it is always the same, it is the 
 lever that moves the world. It is the idea we have, 
 
 164
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 whether it is the exalted love of St. Francis, or 
 merely the bourgeois love, that it is not only for our- 
 selves that we are working, but that we are doing 
 something for the woof of the Universe as Goethe 
 says, we are in the workhouse of Nature, and we 
 are working out the great design. At this we 
 cannot expect that the young can work, they are 
 too egoistic, too selfish. It must be the mature 
 who must try to understand the Universe, who 
 must try to approach the Sphinx, but for this we 
 must wait, we cannot get it in a penny novel at 
 the age of eighteen or twenty. We cannot get 
 it without experience. For more than this we 
 would want a Pericles, a Napoleon, and a Caesar 
 rolled into one, and such a man does not exist. 
 The Greeks said the gods were like that. For 
 us, let us try to love one thing, be it child, friend, 
 study, or country. In this country the English 
 are so averse to emotion ; they think it makes a 
 man effeminate. It is wrong to think so, for 
 unless love pervades the country, that country 
 cannot hope to get great men. It is certain that 
 if Napoleon had not a heart like the Alps, he 
 could not have been Napoleon. It is love that 
 makes the man, it is love that really governs 
 everything in the end, from millions of sources. 
 If we speak of love with a supercilious smile, 
 and think of it as if it really does not exist, or 
 talk of it as a hypnotic dream like that of St. 
 Francis or Werther, this would be very foolish. 
 
 165
 
 PLATO 
 
 That country is the greatest which has the 
 greatest amount of love, by this is not meant only 
 that polite, that unique thing which is called love 
 amongst us. Speech, after all, is not necessary, 
 there can even be silent love, for speech is only 
 a pis aller, a make-believe, for we know we can 
 never express love. It is only when we bring 
 into our life that great principle of love, that we 
 shall be really great. What made the Athenians 
 great ? They were strong in their love of what 
 was good and true. There was an old mule at 
 Athens that had done good work in the wars, 
 better than the other mules, so that mule was 
 by public law granted shelter amidst those grand 
 architectural wonders, and they fed that mule 
 and loved it. We love to-day, but if true we will 
 love to-morrow, and still more in fifteen years. 
 And so did the Greeks, they loved colour, light, 
 stones, birds, beasts, and that is why they were 
 Athenians. Their hearts were big, and when they 
 smiled they loved one another, and they hated 
 one another too, and this had to be, for it goes 
 with love. Why, even the Romans invariably 
 kissed one another when they met in the streets. 
 If such a thing were suggested in England, the 
 people would say it was unmanly. Surely the 
 Romans were manly enough ; and yet even their 
 slaves kissed their masters. And so it was with 
 the Hellenes. 
 
 In ending this discourse on love it is only 
 166
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 necessary to state that the Symposium should be 
 read through. It is no exaggeration, no mere day 
 dreams, to say that love is not at the bottom but 
 at the end of things. Whatever in the present 
 or in the past has taken harmonious shape, we 
 may be sure that there has been love in it. Let 
 us, therefore, teach our young to love, and to love 
 as we find it in the Symposium of Plato. Love 
 there is a most serious, a most tragic thing, but 
 it is also most beatifying. And we must re- 
 member, also, that whatever is said in the Sym- 
 posium still holds good to the present day. 
 
 167
 
 SECOND COURSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The subject we are going to deal with in the 
 following chapters, Plato and his Writings, requires 
 a little explanation, and we will just premise a 
 few points in order that we should meet with no 
 difficulties. Let us, in the first place, have no mis- 
 understandings about Plato. When we hear Plato 
 mentioned we jump to the conclusion that there is 
 something erudite here ; that it is so complicated 
 a subject that only university dons and professors 
 can unravel it ; that it requires brains of unusual 
 capacity and deep learning to take in all the wisdom 
 that is comprehended in the name Plato. If such 
 an idea exists, let us at once disabuse our mind of 
 it, and let it be understood at the start that Plato 
 means nothing of the sort. He is as simple as he 
 can be, as naive and life-like as any work of art in 
 Greece. As Socrates talked openly in the market- 
 place to any one who cared to listen to him, so 
 Plato meant to write for everybody, for the man in 
 the street ; and it will be necessary, too, to mark 
 
 169
 
 PLATO 
 
 the distinction between him and modern philo- 
 sophers. In reading him we at once see that we 
 are dealing with no technical jargon. It is not 
 so with Herbert Spencer, with Hegel, or those 
 other modern philosophers, who have invented 
 so complicated and technical a vocabulary that 
 ordinary people can neither follow nor understand 
 them. Plato talks in simple Greek, the ordinary 
 dialect of Athens, with its finely measured rhythm 
 and cadence. Professors tell us they alone under- 
 stand him, and it is through their commentaries 
 we can hope to gain any knowledge of the mean- 
 ing of Plato. 
 
 But it may be accepted without question that 
 their commentaries are infinitely less intelligible 
 than Plato, and the reason for it is very simple. 
 Plato was eminently a man of the world, and not 
 an armchair philosopher. He had gone through 
 all the experiences of life and had suffered, there 
 had been crises and conflicts in his life of no 
 ordinary kind, he was sold as a slave, was the 
 friend of kings, a member of the greatest common- 
 wealth in existence, the pupil of Socrates, the 
 teacher of Aristotle. He had travelled much 
 besides ; he went from Athens to Corinth, to 
 Megara, to Tarentum, to Syracuse ; he saw 
 around him the strong life of Athens, where men 
 and women were at their best, in amusement, in 
 sorrow, or in love, and it was, as it were, by a 
 species of internal wireless telephony that he got 
 
 170
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 his ideas. That is Plato, and what he says is 
 the reflex of the life that he had lived. He who 
 does not know life, our armchair professors, for 
 instance, and they who are too young, cannot 
 understand Plato. But it is different with those 
 who have gone through the crises and the con- 
 flicts of life. We do not mean the poor, who 
 certainly have their conflicts of life, but theirs 
 is a grinding and a sordid conflict. It is really 
 the rich and the upper classes in whom rests the 
 making of their country, it is these who have 
 travelled much, who have seen life, who have 
 gone through many a conflict, many a crisis in 
 life that is unspoken, and unseen ; and it is for 
 them to see and to know what Plato means, and 
 thus to apply, if possible, the experiences of the 
 greatest sage of the greatest nation of antiquity 
 to our modern-day life. Those who were present 
 at Plato's dialogues were the high-bred people 
 of Athens, who were all men of the world. He 
 rarely, if ever, addresses himself to the recluse 
 scholar who thinks he can re-create the world, 
 which he certainly cannot do. It is when people 
 have gone through crises that they begin to get 
 some sort of perspective of life. Commentaries 
 are not worth the paper they are written on. Pro- 
 fessors may go on sitting in their studies and 
 wasting reams of good paper ; philologians may 
 continue to put their knife into words, and evolve 
 subtle meanings for them which they were never 
 
 171
 
 PLATO 
 
 intended to bear, but they do not touch the sub- 
 stance, they do not grasp the ideals of life. These 
 can only be touched by men and women of the 
 world. 
 
 An audience similar to this sat before Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent in Florence four hundred and 
 thirty years ago, and heard him talk of Plato ; 
 and it will happen again two thousand years from 
 now, for the simple reason that it is life, and he 
 alone who has gone through life, as we have 
 described life to be, can understand Plato. He 
 is quite different from Aristotle, who, though 
 profound, is dogmatic and very much of a 
 " coach." In Plato we have life we can deal with 
 in an infinity of phases with no hard and fast 
 rules, it is an ever-changing condition which will 
 remain fresh for all ages of mankind. With 
 modern philosophers, with Herbert Spencer, for 
 instance, we have a definite answer to a question ; 
 we have placed before us a neat formula; and 
 these modern philosophers take a pride in not 
 changing their ideas. With Plato this is not 
 the case. He contradicts himself lustily, and in 
 doing so he is perfectly honest, for he says that 
 it is impossible to formulate truth into a neat 
 formula, and he never makes the slightest difficulty 
 in saying that he was mistaken in what he had 
 said before. What is the use of Plato, it will be 
 said, if he does that ? Surely he cannot be trusted 
 as a guide. Now, in England, we are all formalists, 
 
 172
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 we like things to be distinct and positive ; but let 
 it be stated definitely that philosophy cannot 
 reach that level ; and for that reason, unless we 
 take a strong and a sound view of modern life, we 
 cannot understand Plato. The author was once 
 lecturing at Cambridge, when, in dealing with his 
 subject, he touched upon Goethe, and pointed out 
 the numerous subjects in which he excelled and 
 all that he knew, when a man got up and said, 
 " Why did he not stick to one thing ? " Now 
 that remark was intensely British, and the story is 
 given as a warning that we have no intention of 
 talking exclusively of Plato. 
 
 We shall get his ideas by taking a survey of 
 modern life, and in doing this we shall, in essence, 
 find that our discussions will bear on Plato, on his 
 theory of ideas. The real commentary to Plato, 
 then, at the present day is modern life, and the 
 reason why professors in our Universities fail in 
 their commentaries on Plato is that they do not 
 know modern life. 
 
 As an example of what we mean, let us 
 consider Plato when he talks of Spartan women, 
 and we shall see at once, with our experience, 
 the women in America. Woman there commands 
 man ; to her, home and husband are nothing. And 
 so it was in Sparta, where women lived for the 
 State. And by the light of our modern experience 
 we get, too, a much clearer idea of what the 
 Spartan women were. Woman in Greece, as 
 
 173
 
 PLATO 
 
 Aristotle thought, was a very important subject, 
 and in connection with this very State, he said 
 that Sparta was ruined by its women. 
 
 What we mean to do is to know something 
 of all the various problems that interest us in 
 modern life. It will be like people going to the 
 Tyrol for the benefit of its bracing atmosphere ; 
 with us the Tyrol will be Plato, to whom we 
 shall go in order that his intellectual atmosphere 
 might strengthen us; not indeed to Yodel with 
 our tongues or our feet, but only to be 
 strengthened. This is the meaning of our 
 travel to Plato. Let us not have the precon- 
 ceived idea that because Plato has said a thing 
 therefore we must believe that dictum of his. No, 
 but rather let us say, with the Florentines, Plato 
 may be true, but there is still something greater 
 than Plato, and that is truth. If taken in the 
 right spirit Plato is good, but if we expect to 
 have any " isms " introduced into his philosophy 
 then let us at once say, no, not in the least, 
 we shall not find them there. He is like the 
 Tyrol, to brace our nerves, to make us see things 
 in their right proportion, and that, we must 
 admit, will be an immense boon. We hear daily 
 of new " isms," of new theories and new problems, 
 from all parts of the world, and if we have studied 
 Plato we find we can bring our minds to bear 
 on them, and we come to the conclusion that 
 he helps us very much indeed in their solution. 
 
 174
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 When the author was young the rage was 
 for materialism, and to such an extent was the 
 idea carried that one of the professors, Carl Vogt, 
 summed up the matter by saying that " we are 
 what we eat." Another professor, Moleschott, 
 went even further, and people really began to think 
 that materialism was the key to the universe. 
 Again, when he was at the University at Vienna, 
 Wagner was everything; people went mad over 
 him, thinkers and every one in Germany, and he 
 was said to have reached the culminating point in 
 music. The reaction, however, came ; and, though 
 Wagner has doubtless written great music, it was 
 proved that the bulk of it was only, what Plato 
 calls enharmonic music, music that appeals to 
 the nerves. The victims of Wagner were in- 
 numerable, and people who had not got through 
 the Tyrolese baths of Plato fell victims. It 
 was time to fight shy of Wagner altogether. 
 
 It is the transparent sincerity of Plato, 
 running through his works, which appeals to us, 
 and it is with this ever before us that we shall 
 be able to go to the study of him. Whatever 
 it may be that interests us, it will pay ns to 
 consider what that grave and learned sage has 
 to say about it, a man who said what he meant, 
 and was always actuated by the great breath of 
 truth, that is, of true philosophy. Universities, 
 by their professors, treat of Plato, but only of 
 Plato, and that is the very reason why we never 
 
 !7S
 
 PLATO 
 
 can reach the heart of Plato. It is only, as 
 we have said, through the conflicts of life, 
 through the experiences of life, that we can 
 hope to reach him and to understand him. 
 
 We will learn here to doubt, to be sceptical, 
 but our doubts will only help us to invigorate 
 our minds. We must not expect final results, 
 there is no such thing as a final word on any 
 subject. It is all, and always, going on. We 
 constantly hear it said that history repeats itself ; 
 but let us be quite sure that history never repeats 
 itself — historians, however, do. We shall never 
 see another Athens with its full and rich life, with 
 its Parthenon of exquisite grandeur; we shall 
 never have another Academy with Plato, walking 
 up and down it, and imparting his wisdom to all 
 who cared to listen to him. We do not expect 
 to find in Plato a panacea for all the problems 
 of modern life, any more than we expect to find 
 in him a " universal provider" for all our re- 
 quirements, but by discussing his views and his 
 ideas we shall be able to say that something 
 has been done towards the strengthening of our 
 minds. 
 
 And now we come to the question, what is 
 philosophy? Let us see first what Plato says. 
 According to him philosophy is the love of truth, 
 the desire to know things because we love them. 
 And to love a thing we must look at it from all 
 sides ; we want, in fact, to know something 
 
 176
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of the contradictions of life, for all life, everything 
 we have to do with, is full of contradictions. 
 This will be best exemplified by two simple 
 instances. What is a point? We are told that 
 mathematically it has neither length, nor breadth 
 nor thickness ; and if we take a line, which again 
 has only length but no breadth, we are told it is 
 made up of an infinity of points. Suppose wo 
 double this line, how many points would it 
 contain ? Double the number, it will be said, but 
 how can that be, as we cannot double infinity ? 
 Surely, here we have a contradiction in a veiy 
 simple problem of life. Again, we all think we 
 know that 1 multiplied by 1 gives the result 1 only, 
 but we cannot prove that, for we are at once con- 
 fronted with the problem that 1 added to 1 make 
 2. If 1 added to 1 make 2, how can 1, when it is 
 multiplied by 1, remain only as 1, where do we 
 get any multiplication at all ? Thus we have a 
 distinct contradiction. Again, let us consider love. 
 What is it ? We are told that it is both altruistic 
 and egoistic ; in the first sense we expend our 
 love on others, which would be an unselfish love, 
 but in doing that we are unconsciously loving 
 ourselves and our own ideas, which makes it 
 egoistic. How can it be both ? It is the 
 attempt to reconcile these contradictions that 
 Plato calls philosophy. 
 
 Again, in his dialogue called " Theaetetus," he 
 tells us that the goddess Iris was the daughter 
 
 177 N
 
 PLATO 
 
 of Thaumas, the god of astonishment ; and he 
 means by this that unless we are able to be 
 astonished we shall never be philosophers. The 
 philosophic mind, of a truth, is always beiug 
 astounded. Since Plato lived we have gone a 
 little bit further with our accumulated experience 
 of another two thousand years, and we have found 
 out that the real root of philosophy lies in our 
 having gone through a crisis. Only such persons 
 are able to know what philosophy is, for it is the 
 crisis that shakes them up and makes them ask 
 what is life, what is sentiment ? It is painful 
 astonishment, indeed, and such painful astonish- 
 ment is infinitely more emotional than the mere 
 astonishment of Plato. That philosophy comes 
 from personal crises, there is not a shadow of a 
 doubt. Plato himself was made a philosopher 
 because he was sold as a slave, because he 
 saw the crisis through which Socrates passed. 
 Coming to modern times, we get Spinoza whose 
 life was full of intolerable crises. What, again, 
 must the Athenians have suffered to have pro- 
 duced such a monument of grandeur as the 
 Parthenon ? People say it was their genius ; but 
 no, it was not genius, but their heart at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 And so it is that philosophy begins with crises, 
 and none will ever be philosophers who have not 
 gone through them ; and the chief duty of philo- 
 sophy is to reconcile the contradictions of our 
 
 i 7 8
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 experience. Moreover, as it was said at the 
 beginning of this chapter, the class that is now 
 listening to these words is the one best adapted 
 to the study of it, for it is this class of a nation 
 that goes through real crises. Diderot would be 
 no Diderot, nor would there have been a Galiani 
 had there not been a Mdnie. d'Epinay ; Socrates, 
 to have developed into what he did, needed that 
 terrible shrew Xanthippe. 
 
 Do not let us imagine that philosophy is a 
 matter of brain, for no matter what any one might 
 say, and certainly the contrary has not been 
 proved, the brain is not the seat of intellect. It 
 is the heart that is responsible for all our actions. 
 Plato teaches us that our intellectual powers come 
 from our emotions, and that if we neglect the 
 emotions we will have no philosophy whatever ; 
 this is only an ordinary law of nature, that organs 
 that do not perform their functions become 
 atrophied. The terrible fate of Spinoza and the 
 personal crises of those others we have mentioned 
 can thus be traced to s the working of their 
 emotions. 
 
 To come back to our point. Socrates and 
 Plato both said that philosophy meant truth ; and 
 that truth and virtue cannot be two different 
 things. Plato asked Socrates if they could be 
 taught, and Socrates lived and died with the 
 idea that they could. But if that idea of Socrates 
 were true, then the world would be a millennium. 
 
 179
 
 PLATO 
 
 Plato, in his early days, thought as Socrates did, 
 but later on he says that philosophy is a most 
 needful thing, and so is virtue, and he asks if 
 they can be taught, can they be made over to 
 any one. Later on he changes his mind, and 
 says he does not think that they can be taught, 
 but that there must bo a predisposition on the 
 part of the person who wants to study philosophy, 
 or to acquire virtue. He points out that Aristides, 
 that Themistocles, were men of virtue, and surely 
 tbey were never taught to acquire it. 
 
 In Greece women were of no account, men 
 alone did everything, and so Plato involuntarily 
 got the idea that philosophy was a question of 
 reason, because he was in a state in which the 
 reasonable and reasoning being, man, was pre- 
 dominant ; but that is not the case to-day, when 
 virile preponderance no longer holds good. In 
 America, as we have already seen, a woman 
 means something ; in France to-day she counts 
 a lot. If Plato then lived in an atmosphere 
 where man was predominant, and where the 
 constitution was a reasoned thing, Plato would 
 naturally come to the conclusion that virtue 
 could be taught ; and so it is that we find in his 
 dialogue, Anitus saying, we do not want you, 
 meaning a teacher of virtue, all that is being done 
 by the State. He distinctly wavers in his opinion. 
 First, then, we find Socrates saying that it can 
 be taught, and then we have Plato saying that 
 
 1 80
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 it cannot quite be taught. The question, then, 
 arises for us, Who shall have the education of our 
 children, men or women? If it is to be left 
 to men, then it will be by reason and logic ; but 
 if it is left to women, then it will be guided by 
 emotion. Should young men and women be 
 educated by means of sports, and the arts, or 
 should it be by intellectual subjects ? The effect 
 of intellectual subjects in education may be 
 instanced, in passing, in the case of Hungary, 
 where everybody is so over-intellectualized that 
 they have become so many dullards ; they wiil talk 
 on any subject under the sun, from Byzantine 
 music or Wagner to Shakespeare, whom they 
 know better than he is known in this country ; 
 but that is all, it leads to nothing beyond. It 
 will be said, of course, that it is far more likely 
 that a nation brought up on intellectual subjects 
 alone will do great things ; let us, however, not 
 decide on that point, but let philosophy help us. 
 We have just said that education if left to women 
 will be guided by emotion. There is no doubt 
 that the female element is instinct with great 
 emotions ; there is something in women that can- 
 not be analyzed, something that is subconscious. 
 Should we utilize this marvellous power of women 
 in our educational system ? Is it enough to 
 effect the mtellectualization of our youth by giving 
 them a cachet of reason, and nothing but reason, 
 or should we do better by haviug women to teach 
 
 181
 
 PLATO 
 
 them till they are twelve or fourteen? This is 
 what Plato means when we see him wavering 
 over the question, " Can virtue be taught ? " 
 
 It is now in our power to discuss a question 
 so deep, affecting in truth, the life of the nation. 
 What line of education is to prevail? Should 
 the emotional side of youth be cultivated, should 
 the education be artistic, should games be 
 encouraged, or should we leave it all to the 
 schoolmaster to form the character of the nation ? 
 If we look to Germany, we find that the method 
 pursued there is distinctly Platonic, and it is 
 possible to learn some lessons from that country. 
 
 The sayings of Plato in connection with this 
 subject in his dialogues may seem as if they 
 were abstract statements, but there is a world 
 of thought behind them, when for instance he 
 says there is one virtue, and again there are 
 several virtues. Behind such abstract sentences 
 there lurk great problems. Such questions as the 
 position of woman in the education of youth, 
 and whether the subconscious mind ought to be 
 submerged, is only one of many questions of 
 immense moment, and in dealing with such 
 questions we seem to be in the midst of unseen 
 worlds, with something behind us driving us on. 
 What we want to do is to try to reach an ideal, 
 with the help of this driving force ; we may never 
 reach it, but we can at least try and work out a 
 system for whatever problems of life that confront 
 
 182
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 us ; and these preliminary remarks are made with 
 a view to enable us to discuss all such problems 
 in a right spirit, and with the help of Plato, 
 whose views are as fresh now as they were over 
 two thousand years ago. It is, then, modern 
 life, in all its phases, that we mean to take up 
 as the subject of discussion in the succeeding 
 chapters. 
 
 183
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 We have now to approach a problem which looks 
 difficult indeed, but which must be thoroughly 
 understood before it can be taught. For it is the 
 greatest absurdity, as we said, that men should 
 attempt to teach Plato before they have learnt 
 to understand him. At the Universities, we see 
 young dons of twenty-two attempting this feat ; 
 estimable young men, no doubt, whose experience 
 of life may have extended to having been drunk 
 once or twice, or perhaps having been smiled 
 upon by a barmaid. How can such a person 
 understand Plato, much less teach him ? It is 
 only men and women of the world, who have been 
 tried and proved by its hard experience, who have 
 undergone crises, that can really understand 
 Plato. 
 
 Before we proceed further we must be able to 
 discriminate with great distinctness between the 
 general and the particular ; for unless we under- 
 stand the difference clearly, our progress will be 
 small, as everything in philosophy comes back to 
 that. This is a subject which has gone through 
 interminable controversies in the Middle Ages, 
 
 184
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 numberless works having been written on it by 
 the greatest thinkers ; Abelard, for instance, who 
 went through frightful crises — and such men are 
 more apt to see something in what we are going 
 to discuss than our armchair philosophers, who 
 are not capable of getting at the pulse, the heart- 
 throb of the matter. The efforts of these latter 
 are spent on mere scholastic fence, but when it 
 comes to problems of everyday life, to the pant- 
 ings for happiness, they are out of court. It is, 
 then, by quite a different method to theirs that we 
 shall proceed. 
 
 It is to Plato that we owe the great law of the 
 Universal. He introduced the idea that behind 
 all the particular events in human life, no matter 
 of what phase, there is always to be found one 
 great universal cause. Whether we call it the 
 universal, the general, or the d priori idea, it is 
 the innate idea within us, something that is quite 
 before any experience. 
 
 It was Plato's superlative merit that he in- 
 vented idealism; it was he who introduced the 
 notion of our striving for something that may be 
 intangible, may be beyond our reach ; a notion 
 that we are to get at something beyond the rain- 
 bow, which was not quite distinct. We may come 
 across some of his ideas which are vague ; but 
 when we have purified some of these vague ideas, 
 we invariably come back to the great principle of 
 the universal. And that we have directly from 
 
 185
 
 PLATO 
 
 Plato. Neither the Babylonians nor the Egyp- 
 tians had the faintest notion of this law of the 
 universal ; they dealt merely with particulars, 
 and they never rose to any greatness as thinkers 
 in consequence. Let us take, for example, the 
 architecture of the Egyptians, their pyramids. 
 They needed the idea of the triangle, and then 
 of the rectangular triangle, and they took a par- 
 ticular beam or boulder to see if it was the exact 
 length they needed; if not, then they tried 
 another. The idea never occurred to them to 
 say, " Suppose I had two boulders, three feet and 
 four feet long, how long must the third be to 
 form a rectangular triangle ? " Each step re- 
 quired its own particular experiment, and the end 
 of it was a mass of intolerable statistics which 
 retarded progress. Whereas one Greek made the 
 one universal formula, the formula of Pythagoras, 
 which showed in one theoretic formula the 
 method of always finding the requirements of any 
 rectangular triangle. This is, then, what the 
 universal does ; it shortens the way of doing 
 things ; it is, in fact, mental stenography. 
 
 With the great advance made in the different 
 sciences in the last half century, one is apt to 
 think that as time goes on, in the next thousand 
 years, the details accumulated by science will 
 become so unwieldy, that no single person will be 
 able to handle even one branch of it satisfactorily. 
 There is not the least danger of this; on the 
 
 1 86
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 contrary, science will be simplified as time goes 
 on, because of Plato's great law of the universal, 
 which is brought into play. This law has served 
 us in mathematics, in physics, and it will do in 
 everything else ; its immense value being the 
 power of referring back all particular cases to one 
 universal law. And this was the great discovery 
 that Plato gave to the world, a discovery second 
 only to that of the alphabet. 
 
 In this connection let us see what he says to 
 his pupils. We have, in his dialogue of " Thesete- 
 tus," pages 184-87 of the pagination of Stephanus, 
 a most beautiful, incisive and profound discussion, 
 which will give us an idea of his meaning. " You 
 take up an orange, and you eat it and say that it 
 is sweet. How can you tell that it is an orange ? 
 You say that you see it with your eyes, or that 
 it is owing to your sense of sight. How do you 
 know that it is sweet ? That you can tell with 
 another sense, that of taste. And all this makes 
 you think that knowledge is nothing but a matter 
 of the senses. That is quite true in this case, 
 but there is just a little hitch. Can you tell me 
 which sense it is that taught you the final is, 
 which implies existence ? Which sense gives you 
 the idea that it exists ? Which is that peculiar 
 organ which is common to both sight and taste ? " 
 And to this Theaetetus did not know what to say. 
 Physiological psychology, then, which teaches us 
 that knowledge comes from our senses is hopeless. 
 
 187
 
 PLATO 
 
 We say that we only admit what we see and 
 feel, but our perceptions are altogether misleading. 
 Aristotle, in the 35th chapter, last section, of his 
 " Problemata," effectually disposes of this know- 
 ledge by the senses. " Look, what philosophy 
 of this kind is worth ! " says Aristotle. And 
 he exemplifies his argument by a simple pea, 
 which we are asked to roll between the tips of 
 the middle finger crossed over the index finger 
 of the same hand, so that both fingers are in 
 contact with the pea at the same time. In this 
 experiment we distinctly feel that there are two 
 peas and not one ; and the feeling is so subtle 
 that we are ready to swear that there must be 
 two peas. This is Aristotle's famous argument 
 to show the erroneousness of our senses, and there 
 is no experiment so conclusive as this. It is clear 
 that one of our senses is lying in this instance, 
 and it is impossible to reduce them to harmony. 
 We understand, then, why Plato says that our 
 senses cannot be trusted. And we are led to the 
 question, where does truth come from ? Hence 
 it is that Plato invented and introduced the know- 
 ledge of the universal. As a matter of fact we 
 seem to think we hear of abstract terms, and we 
 do not see what it all means. Knowledge, with 
 Plato, means knowledge of the universal. We 
 cannot know the particulars of life unless we refer 
 them to the great universal at the back of all, 
 and this great idea has produced the greatest of 
 
 188
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 results. We should never Lave been Europeans 
 without the idea. It is the lack of it, too, that 
 has killed nations. The Chinese, for instance, 
 have not the faintest idea of universals ; they are 
 incapable of the process of generalization. How 
 can a nation possibly have tho idea when the}' 
 have encumbered their script with sixty thousand 
 signs ? We have heard complaints of tho length 
 of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," tho next edition 
 of which will perhaps run to forty-five volumes ; 
 but what would be the state of mind of Mr. 
 Moberly Bell if he had to issue a Chinese Encyclo- 
 paedia of six thousand volumes ; and all because 
 the Chinese have no idea of universals. Another 
 very homely example is that of the London cabby. 
 Though he may take his fare regularly, week 
 after week, at particular hours to a particular 
 place, yet he will invariably ask where he is to go 
 to. Here we have the particular predominant in 
 a marked degree. 
 
 We may thus go from illustration to illustra- 
 tion until we come to the gist of it. If we take 
 language, we find that people who are energetic 
 in thought have few words to express their 
 thoughts with. The ordinary French, a most 
 energetic people, have only eight thousand or nine 
 thousand words of common use. Nations, on 
 the other hand, which have very many words 
 do not think very much, for the simple reason 
 that being unable to generalize, they need new 
 
 189
 
 PLATO 
 
 words for each thing or occurrence. Some 
 Germanic languages have very many words, and 
 the result is that stated here. The Greeks were 
 the most complete of nations, with a perfectly 
 concise vocabulary, and they could constantly 
 generalize. Their language is so simple in this 
 respect that any one can read Herodotus or Plato 
 after only six months of study. It is therefore 
 that we are constrained, by physical impossibility 
 in the management of our vocabulary, to use 
 general ideas to cover a large number of objects, 
 otherwise we could not talk at all. And this 
 idea of generalization is carried to a peculiar 
 extent in high German, a dialect used by scholars, 
 where the same word is in some instances made 
 to take two meanings exactly opposed to each 
 other (as in aufheben), and this is not a mere 
 accident, but is intentional. It is the Platonic 
 idea of reducing unwieldy cluster of things into 
 some order. 
 
 A mere knowledge of particulars does not help 
 us in the least. We think when we have a fact 
 we have everything, but that is not so. When 
 a man has read Whitaker's Almanac he thinks 
 he knows England. He knows nothing of it. 
 Which of us can honestly say that he has a clear 
 idea of the terrible thing he calls himself? We 
 know all the facts of our lives very well, all the 
 details are quite handy ; perhaps we keep a diary, 
 and we know all the events, all our sufferings, 
 
 190
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 all our joys better than any period in history, 
 but what of our life itself? How is it we do 
 not know ourselves, and consider ourselves the 
 greatest enigmas ? How many men say to them- 
 selves at fifty, " My life has been a mistake, I 
 have not understood life " ? We are really 
 amazed at ourselves, and why ? for the reason 
 that we have not found the universal, which is 
 the pervading idea of our life. 
 
 In this country we lay inordinate value on 
 
 particularities, on specialities ; it is less so in 
 
 Scotland, and still less in Ireland. But let us 
 
 bear in mind that in order to be right we must 
 
 have a theory, and if we do not agree to this 
 
 then our mind will never be what it ought to be. 
 
 Let us take a specialist in medicine ; he must be 
 
 a generalist as well, otherwise we can have no 
 
 confidence in him. How can he have a special 
 
 knowledge of the eye or the ear unless he has 
 
 studied and mastered the physiological unity of 
 
 the whole body, for one organ must necessarily 
 
 act on another. But the belief in specialism is 
 
 so great here that we have one man for the teeth, 
 
 another for the ear, a third for the eye. This is 
 
 indeed farcical, and can only lead to the absurdity 
 
 of having one specialist for the right ear, and 
 
 another for the left ear. We believe, in fact, in 
 
 the specialist and we hate the generalist, which, 
 
 as we have seen, is scarcely Platonic. 
 
 Let us take another subject, that of history. 
 191
 
 PLATO 
 
 Unless we know general history, we cannot know 
 anything about the particular parts of history. 
 There is no such thing as a specialist historian of 
 England, or of France, or of Charles the First. A 
 man who says he is a specialist in chemistry, and 
 knows no other science but chemistry, is not even 
 a chemist. It is hopeless to try to comprehend 
 the history of England without having a clear 
 conception of European history ; and he who 
 knows only English history does not even know 
 the history of England. At some period it is, 
 perhaps, France or Italy that has a marked influ- 
 ence on the trend of events going to make English 
 history ; at another period it may be Germany or 
 Spain ; so that we can never attain to a real under- 
 standing of English history without a general 
 knowledge of European history. With European 
 nations, there is, in fact, a vast political endosmose 
 and exosmose, a coming and going among them. 
 If we are not clear in seeing all this, then we have 
 missed the first point in philosophy. There are 
 twenty-one tissues which go to form every single 
 organ in our body, and if we are to study the 
 functions of any one organ, we must be expert in 
 our knowledge of the physiological action of all the 
 tissues. And so it is with history ; it is easier to 
 study European history than it is to study English 
 history ; and English history is easier than, say, 
 the history of Bristol. At any rate, it is Plato's 
 view that knowledge consists in finding the one 
 
 192
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 tiring that is common to everything, that is, the 
 universal. 
 
 But there are people who will turn round and 
 say, we do not believe in Plato's views ; our 
 experience tells us that specialists have done great 
 things, and in this practical world facts are worth 
 more than theories. To these we can only say, 
 you must believe in them, or you must have 
 nothing to do with philosophy. When we talk of 
 a line we mean the ideal line, not any particular 
 line ; and if we go through geometry we will find 
 it dealing with nothing but universals. Such men 
 as Herbert Spencer, who knew nothing about the 
 psychology of life, lay down hard and fast rules 
 and try to fix us in grooves so that we cannot 
 move outside them. What is man, woman, or 
 child we may know ; but what the plant is feeling 
 we can never know. And so we go back to that 
 old saying of Plato, that thinking means the way 
 of finding the universal. Unless we do that we 
 shall never know anything. 
 
 In music there are also universals almost as 
 decisive as in all arts. We feel the scales, it may 
 be in A Minor, or in G Minor. We find Schumann 
 saying his most passionate things in G Minor ; 
 and he has the same predilection for the fourth. 
 If we do not see all this, we do not know what 
 music is ; but if we are convinced, then we come 
 to know with Plato that it is the universal that 
 rules, and not the particular. 
 
 193 o
 
 PLATO 
 
 What, in the realm of thought, is the general 
 to the particular, that is Society to the individual. 
 We do not know the manifold forces operating 
 around us, or we would invariably find the 
 universal for every individual and every society. 
 In the case of Ireland, for instance, what is the 
 general type ? If we lived there we might find the 
 universal underlying the Irishman. In England 
 every one is very averse to generalization, which 
 is a gift, an aptitude, that can never be taught ; 
 just as in music, we can never teach it to one who 
 has not the sympathy for it. As it is the general 
 always which dominates the particular, so it is the 
 nation which dominates the individual, and this is 
 Plato all over. We may, with Herbert Spencer, 
 wrap ourselves up in the toga of particularism 
 and say I am I, no one shall approach me. But 
 then we must have nothing to do with philosophy. 
 We are only the particulars that depend on the 
 nation. The French, one of the finest of 
 nations, who produced many splendid individuals, 
 arc now utterly demoralized. If they were not 
 demoralized, they would produce not one Char- 
 lotte Corday, but a hundred Cordays ; not one 
 Mirabeau, but a hundred Mirabeaus ; and if the 
 nation is not in that particular state, then the 
 individual is nowhere. And so with Poland, whose 
 men and women were wonderfully clover and 
 charming, but the nation was demoralized to the 
 core. The tsigau, too, is demoralized, and that is 
 
 194
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the reason he can play music as he does ; in his 
 despair he can find tones no one else can think of. 
 It was the Renaissance that made the great 
 painters. What we are saying is not only the 
 foundation of Plato and of all philosophy, but the 
 foundation of nations ; for no nation can do any- 
 thing without having a universal. Themistocles, 
 it is true, made Athens, but Athens was sure of 
 producing a Themistocles. Let us take another 
 nation, the Austrian. They surpass the English 
 in bodily strength, they are as clever, and an 
 interesting people, but they are utterly demoral- 
 ized. The universal underlying each Austrian is 
 nil, and they may play the piano divinely, or be 
 the greatest of chefs, but they will never do great 
 things as long as their State remains what it is. 
 
 Let us hold on to the general principle that 
 there are universals, and we have at once the 
 possibility of summing up thousands of features in 
 the one. This is the true philosophy, and unless 
 the idea be seized we are groping in the dark. 
 We should be like the Chinese, who, from ignor- 
 ance of universals, having piled up the maddening 
 total of sixty thousand signs to their script, find it 
 impossible to telegraph in their own language, but 
 must use English or French. This is almost as 
 maddening as "Tit-Bits," which is not a grati- 
 fying thing to read. A thousand bits of this and 
 that, all tacked on one after the other, but there is 
 no knowledge in it, until we feel like crying out, 
 
 195
 
 PLATO 
 
 " Give us somethiug that will hang together, what 
 we want is to understand things ; give us coher- 
 ence." All this means the hatred of the general, 
 the idea underlying the particular, which, if we 
 neglect the power of finding, brings forth its in- 
 evitable consequences, and we come to grief. This 
 was what happened to this country not long ago, 
 when it had to spend two hundred and fifty 
 millions of money, and lay down a hundred 
 thousand lives to conquer the Boers, because of 
 the inability to sum up in advance the powers 
 of a great border nation. It is the general 
 principle then that we must seek after, and we 
 shall be able to collect millions of little facts 
 and hang them together, all as reflected out of 
 that universal. 
 
 It has long been remarked that " professions 
 make faces " ; there is the doctor's face, there is 
 the lawyer's face ; in the latter, people have often 
 unkindly traced the resemblance to a wolf or a 
 fox. The general in the particular is also shown in 
 that professions make faces ; we have the unmis- 
 takable military face, for we see considerable 
 similarity of the military type which is common 
 to all nations, and which leaves its physiognomic 
 mark. Then again, religions and churches leave 
 their impressions. Who is it that cannot tell at 
 a glance a Catholic from a Protestant priest, even 
 if they were dressed alike ? In this case it is the 
 universal which underlies the Catholic Church, 
 
 196
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 and it has left its influence on every individual 
 belonging to it. Who is it, again, that cannot tell 
 the difference between the Oxford and the Cam- 
 bridge types ? The atmosphere of Oxford is its 
 universal, and its marked influence is apparent on 
 all its individuals. As for universals underlying 
 races, we can tell the Irish smile at once, for the 
 Irish people have a peculiarly graceful smile, 
 unlike any other smile among European nations ; 
 and we can recognize an Irish person by that 
 peculiar smile, a movement of the mouth, which 
 is quite unique and charming. Whence shall we 
 say this comes ? Then again, the eyes of the 
 Americans are much closer together than those of 
 this country, though the Americans will not admit 
 that it is so. How shall we account for this 
 peculiarity ? 
 
 It is said that Society has a certain influence 
 on individuals. Whether this be so or not, we 
 cannot go wrong if we adhere to the principle that 
 no great thing can come without the universal 
 dominating the particular. And so it is that great 
 crises produced great men ; they were all made 
 by universals. The Armada made Shakespeare, 
 and not the bump of the phrenologist, just as 
 Salamis made iEschylus and Sophocles; it was 
 the Civil War that made Edgar Allan Poe ; 
 behind Chopin was the agony of Poland ; and 
 behind Napoleon, the French Revolution. And 
 so, with thinkers and artists, we should be able to 
 
 197
 
 PLATO 
 
 say, give us the universal in thought, and we will 
 give you the particular. We can, in fact, never 
 understand a particular thing until we have seen 
 the nature and drift of the universal underlying 
 it. This is the hottom and foundation of all 
 philosophy. 
 
 198
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 We are now going to discuss those ideas of Plato, 
 which, as read by us in these modern times, seem 
 very arid and very incomprehensible ; we are re- 
 ferring now to the views of Plato on the relations 
 of body and mind. These views we shall try and 
 make intelligible, and mould them into a workable 
 hypothesis ; though it must not be understood that 
 Plato meant them to be unintelligible, for his 
 language, as we have said, is always simple, and 
 he wrote for the average man, and not for scholars 
 and philosophers or recluse thinkers. We find in 
 his dialogues the ordinary gentlemen of his time. 
 Glaucon, Ariston, and the others, were just the 
 average gentlemen of Athens, who lived a very 
 intense and agitated life, and had a deep interest 
 in what constituted life ; in its problems and its 
 causes. He appealed to men and women of the 
 world ; those, in fact, who hold larger views of life 
 than can be gained by voluntary exile from the 
 vital fight. Arid, and in a manner incompre- 
 hensible, though the subject may be, we must 
 treat it vigorously, and in doing so shall find that 
 many a modern problem which has perplexed and 
 
 199
 
 PLATO 
 
 occupied our thoughts will be brought under the 
 influence of views which were held by this philoso- 
 pher over two thousand years ago ; and we shall 
 find, too, that by the light he throws on these 
 very subjects, he has made our task in arriving at 
 the solution of these modern problems a compara- 
 tively easy one. 
 
 We shall find Plato not treating of generalities 
 only, but he discusses those generalities by going 
 to concrete cases. He deals with such questions 
 as the relation of the body to the mind, of matter 
 to spirit, very tersely. And if we ask whether 
 Plato thought there were any relations between 
 them, we would find him saying there were none. 
 In this connection, as in all other writings of 
 Plato, we shall find many contradictions. He 
 never speaks of these subjects in his earlier 
 dialogues as he does in his later ones, but he has 
 the one idea running through the whole of his 
 writings. 
 
 What Plato thought and discussed were many 
 matters that have agitated people in modern times 
 in America and here in England. It may be a 
 matter of education, or of religion, or politics, or 
 music, and if we wish to look at these matters 
 from a philosophic point of view we must go 
 deeper into them than only by a surface glance. 
 If we were inventing a melody, for instance, we 
 should have to consider what sort of a bass we 
 were going to give it. It takes many tones to 
 
 200
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 make the harmonious whole, the treble may be 
 very fine, but a great deal depends on the bass. 
 Any number of ladies and gentlemen have written 
 very fine melodies, but this does not make them 
 musicians, as they cannot put in the bass. They 
 cannot orchestrate or score, a most important 
 element in the completed work. Take for, in- 
 stance, the Etudes Symphoniques of Schumann, 
 the melody of which was composed by an amateur, 
 who could do nothing with the bass. This is what 
 Plato does for us, he furnishes us with the funda- 
 mental, with the bass, to the lighter veins of our 
 thought, to enable us to reach the depths or root 
 of a question. 
 
 First of all, let us take his bass with regard to 
 matter, and let us see what he thought of that, 
 and perhaps we shall be able to make it of 
 human interest by applying his views to modern 
 problems. We might be amazed at hearing that 
 anything that Plato said could possibly touch on 
 the so-called crazes and fads of to-day. We are not 
 going to condemn the men and women who take 
 up these fads. Call them problems, if we will, but 
 they turn up in various guises in America and here 
 in England ; they may be theological, or hygienic, 
 or educational, or physiological. All we desire to 
 do is to see how Plato's ideas bear on these 
 so-called fads, and we will find that he will give us 
 help in the elucidation of these various problems, 
 and will guide us as to the line we should decide 
 
 201
 
 PLATO 
 
 to take, and the attitude we should strike with 
 regard to this or that new-fangled craze. 
 
 And what did Plato say about matter ? Is it 
 to be despised and disdained, or is it to be raised 
 up and ennobled ? Is soul wedded to matter ? 
 He considers it quite of a secondary, of a low 
 character; something that does not conduce to 
 the sublime nature of the soul ; and he even goes 
 so far as to say that matter has no existence. 
 This, to us, sounds absurd, for surely all our lives 
 we have felt and handled matter which has so 
 great a reality to us as to make us feel we were in 
 a prison made of it ; and it has thrust itself on our 
 notice by its very beauty, by its sins and its 
 diseases. The reality of all this Plato denies. 
 Let us exemplify this denial of Plato by the 
 following simile. We look into a mirror and 
 see ourselves reflected in it; there is the form, 
 the colour, every trait, every movement has its 
 counterpart in the reflection. Can we say that 
 that figure in the mirror has an independent 
 existence ? We cannot say that it has an exist- 
 ence at all. And this is what Plato means 
 when he says that matter has no existence 
 proper. The Greek word arcp-qa^, or negation, 
 expresses what he attributes to matter. Exist- 
 ence, he says, is only in spirit, in ideas ; every- 
 thing else, according to him, is non-existent. 
 Now all this is very hard to accept, when we feel 
 there is such a thing as matter, such a thing as a 
 
 202
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 body ; all our feelings are, in fact, bound up in this 
 body of ours through which we feel illness, joy, 
 beauty — especially the beauty of women, and the 
 strength of men. Surely, then, we cannot say that 
 it is negative ! We find Plato himself, in his 
 " Kepublic," not neglecting the body, far from it; 
 for he tells us there how man and woman should 
 be educated physically, how washed, how dressed, 
 in order that they might make a perfect common- 
 wealth ; and in all this he lays the greatest stress 
 on the welfare of the body. If, then, he says all 
 this, how can he at the same time say there is no 
 body? It is like telling us to learn philosophy 
 and then we shall be perfectly happy. It has been 
 said by him that that state will be most perfect 
 where kings will be philosophers, and philosophers 
 will be kings. By this he only adumbrated the 
 Catholic Church, and his anticipations have been 
 marvellously realized in that Church, where the 
 monarch is the spiritual head and therefore the 
 greatest philosopher, the strongest rapprochement 
 to the ideal state that the world has known. If 
 that commonwealth be perfect where the philo- 
 sophers are kings, then what would be the state of 
 that commonwealth where not only kings and 
 philosophers, but all people lived for the spirit and 
 not for the material ? It would be even more 
 perfect than the ideal state. 
 
 Matter was dealt with even before Plato, by 
 Democritus, who said that it consisted of tiny 
 
 203
 
 PLATO 
 
 atoms which went to make up bodies. Plato 
 sneers at this theory, and says it is nothing of the 
 kind ; that there are no atoms, but that matter is 
 that in which the spirit manifests itself, in which 
 the spirit is reflected. In his " Timaeus " he does 
 not shrink from the theory that our soul goes 
 through the animal kingdom first. He says that 
 every vegetable, every animal, is a reflection of 
 something spiritual, and that the human soul goes 
 through various stages of reincarnations from the 
 lower forms, going upwards until it reaches the 
 highest work of nature, man. In the writings of 
 all the philosophers there is a certain disdain of 
 matter, what to them was merely bodily constitu- 
 tion. It was not only with the Greeks, but also 
 with outside nations, whom they looked upon as 
 barbarians ; all sought for the spirit. It is strange 
 to see even the Chinese Encyclopaedia, by Ma-Tun- 
 Lin, where he talks of various nations, and he 
 says that the most beautiful nation are the Greeks. 
 No other nation has ever dreamt of the perfection 
 of beauty, and they could not have portrayed 
 beautjr if they had not among them beautiful 
 models. Such sculptures as that of Venus of 
 Milo, of Dionysus, and of Apollo Sauroctonos 
 could not have been produced without living 
 models. Plato exaggerated all this into a pride 
 of humanity proper, which is the grandest thing in 
 nature ; for we are infinitely more complicated 
 than anything else, and in that nature the soul is 
 
 204
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 superior to anything of a material kind. It is the 
 spirit, indeed, a man's soul, not his body, which 
 immortalizes him. The Greeks felt this above all 
 nations, and gave vent to this feeling when, after 
 the battle of Platsea, they saw the Persian guard 
 lying, mostly naked, on the battlefield. These 
 were fine limbs and muscles, mere physique, but 
 there was no $vxjj, or soul, in it all. There 
 was, too, Milo, their great athlete, who could carry 
 an ox over his shoulders, but he was a man of 
 great accomplishments and not merely a muscular 
 animal. It was to training of the body and mind 
 that the Greeks paid special attention, as we 
 should do in the present day. In this respect the 
 public school and university training in England, 
 where games hold a foremost place in education, 
 is far superior to the German system of gymnasia. 
 A young man who has been captain of his cricket 
 or football team is better equipped for the battle 
 of life, and less selfish, than he would be if he 
 came from mere book knowledge gained at a 
 crammer's ; better, too, than the German who 
 comes from his gymnasium, where he has worked 
 up his own muscles, without thought for others, a 
 training which is apt to engender selfishness; 
 games being more for the number, the gymnasium 
 for the individual. 
 
 The theory of the ascendency of spirit over body 
 we shall find consistently maintained in Plato. In 
 the " Timaeus " he works out this theory. It is the 
 
 205
 
 PLATO 
 
 one idea ever present in Plato, the conception of 
 a God-Creator and the immortality of the soul. 
 With him, matter has a shadowy existence, it is 
 something low, which does not correspond with 
 the real vocation of man. This is the key note of 
 which he is the inventor. Before him neither 
 Egyptian, Assyrian, nor Babylonian, nor any other 
 philosopher ever dreamt of such a conception of 
 the spirit. 
 
 In the last century there was a terrible wave of 
 materialism, especially in this country. The pro- 
 gress of science had been so enormous that people 
 really imagined that they had probed the riddle of 
 the world. Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall in England ; 
 Haeckel, Molleschott, and Vogt in Germany, were 
 the greatest champions of the new faith, and 
 they were held to have found the key to the 
 universe. One German author went so far as to 
 propound " Der Mensch ist was er isst ; " " a man is 
 what he eats ; tell me what a man eats, and I will 
 tell you what he is." He possibly referred to what 
 they call food in Germany ; though there is no 
 denying that ho seriously believed what he said. 
 
 Again, it is taken for granted in these days 
 that the brain is the seat of the intellect, but of 
 this there is absolutely no scientific proof. They 
 will tell us that as tears are the excretions of the 
 eye, and bile the excretion of the liver, so are 
 thoughts the excretion of the brain. It has, 
 indeed, become a household word that the brain 
 
 206
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 is the seat of our intellect ; bat let us at once 
 dispel such ideas, for there is not the very faintest 
 scientific colour to the theory that the convo- 
 lutions of that semi-liquid mass in our heads has 
 anything to do with what we call intellect. 
 
 They think they can really explain everything. 
 Well, we shall understand man, but we shall 
 never understand plants. We may understand 
 Napoleon, certainly the most complicated, the 
 most antithetically compounded human we have 
 had in history; but we are helpless before the 
 humble violet, we will never understand it. No, 
 we cannot understand matter, either by perception 
 or by ideas, for the simple reason that matter has 
 no universal behind it. Aristotle does not go the 
 length of saying that it does not exist, but he says 
 that it exists incidentally, that it has not the 
 full brunt of existence ; and this view is also 
 Platonic. 
 
 There is a hopeless conflict of opinion among 
 scientific people about matter, which proves to 
 us that we cannot grasp what it is. One 
 physicist will tell us that the ultimate thing in 
 matter is an atom, another will dispute this, and 
 say, no, matter is made up of molecules — or, 
 again, of corpuscles ; and so there is no agree- 
 ment whatever. In chemistry there are hundreds 
 of theories, and no two chemists have the same 
 view of what matter really is. All this simply 
 bears out Plato's dictum that we can never 
 
 207
 
 PLATO 
 
 understand matter, because it does not exist, 
 but we can understand the soul. Aristotle, too, 
 in all his works gives us the most interesting 
 details of matter, but in spite of these details he 
 comes to the conclusion that he cannot under- 
 stand it. Coming to modern times, we have 
 Professor Zeller, who has written an elaborate 
 book, " Philosophic der Griechen," and in the 
 chapter on Plato's theory on matter, he too 
 comes to the same conclusion ; though it would 
 be well to say that it would be practically im- 
 possible for any one, even for an Oxford or a 
 Cambridge man, to follow the eminent professor 
 in his arguments, or to understand him ; it is 
 even doubtful if he ever understood what he had 
 written himself. The unreality of his thought is 
 too transcendental for mere words. We ought 
 really to follow Plato, and to find out the way in 
 which he arrived at his ideas, arid though the 
 subject may be. He will help us, and he will be 
 to us a sort of a torch, to light us in our fight 
 for life ; a sort of handle which a man carries 
 to put into a knife, so as to put that knife into 
 a concrete matter, into the heart of things, to 
 dissect them. 
 
 The whole of Christianity is based on that one 
 thing, that matter was of no account. St. Jerome, 
 Tertullian, and the early Christian fathers all 
 built on this idea, which was fundamentally 
 Platonic, and eminently consonant with the 
 
 208
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Christian doctrines. It was the idea that they 
 must subdue matter, deny the body as the cause 
 of all human ills, and torture it. Such were the 
 ideas which prevailed in the fourth century, that 
 the body as matter, was to be ignored, it was too 
 low, and our prison ; that we were to fly from it 
 away into the desort ; and thus arose the monks 
 of the Church. These men considered the body 
 not only as superfluous, but as the very fount and 
 organ of evil; and especially the female body, 
 which they looked upon as the temple of all evils, 
 and it was from this theory of matter that the 
 Church obtained its vast power. Thus thought 
 they all from the patristic times to the times of 
 Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII., who issued his 
 decree that no priest of the Church was to marry, 
 because the body was the origin of all sin, and on 
 that account the female body, the most beautiful 
 of all bodies, was to be altogether shunned. And 
 this idea has come down to us through the long 
 struggle of the Middle Ages, and the conflict 
 with the growing power of science, as the great 
 Platonic idea which the Church had made its 
 own. Many a person became a martyr for the 
 idea. St. Gellert of Hungary, when the fierce and 
 wild barbarians, the Magyars, were about to kill 
 him, thanked them that at last he was going to 
 get rid of his body, that vile body that his spirit 
 had dragged through life. That is Plato with a 
 vengeance. 
 
 209 p
 
 PLATO 
 
 This saying, that matter is non-being, or sham- 
 being, and that the soul is the only real thing, is 
 not only philosophy which was taught in the 
 schools, but through the agency of Christianity, 
 this Platonic idea of the non-existence, the 
 unimportance of matter, has become one of the 
 greatest forces of the world, and it is something 
 which is intimately connected with some of our 
 dearest beliefs, the belief in the resurrection, 
 the belief in our immortality. When we say that 
 matter is not being, not real, we begin to realize 
 something enormous, a vast Hope ; and we can 
 understand at once what Eaphael meant when 
 he represented Plato as looking upward, and 
 Aristotle as looking downward. That the body 
 must go is certain, and it is certain therefore 
 that it is not the source of our real happi- 
 ness ; and that real happiness is centred in 
 something that is not the body. A student of 
 history has to reckon on a thousand years as a 
 minute, and it may be that in another two 
 thousand years Christianity will go, but that 
 perennial thought will never go, that matter is 
 not man, but that life, the soul, is enduring. 
 
 In these modern days there are so many 
 reforms being inaugurated in America, and here 
 in England. It is a phenomenon of the times 
 that people are going about trying to do away 
 with poverty, and to exterminate disease ; and 
 numberless new "isms" are being formulated. 
 
 210
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 This is but an attempt on the part of men to do 
 in a half practical way what, in the main, philo- 
 sophers have done in a theoretic way. Plato and 
 his disciples sat and discussed and argued among 
 themselves, but as to going about and converting 
 people, it never entered into their minds. We, 
 on the other hand, act differently, we travel far 
 and wide, send our missionaries to the remotest 
 corners of the earth, in order to try and make 
 everybody subscribe to our own particular belief. 
 Now all these " isms," all these problems of the 
 modern day, all come back to one thing, whether 
 matter is really negligible, or parallel with, or 
 superior to spirit. 
 
 And this brings us to the consideration of a 
 vast and remarkable movement which, ever since 
 the seventies in the last century, has arisen in the 
 United States, and spread through America into 
 Europe. We are referring to the movement called 
 Christian Science, and the name of the lady who 
 originated it is well known here. If we read the 
 book in which the tenets of this science are laid 
 down, we are astonished to find that they are 
 altogether Platonic. The all-ness of spirit and 
 the nothingness of matter are there impressed 
 on us. We are told that matter does not exist, 
 that if our body is diseased it is only a form of 
 error, and that if our spirit is only strong enough 
 we can subdue such errors ; in fact, by Christian 
 Science we can heal diseases. Now, history and 
 
 211
 
 PLATO 
 
 philosophy have become very tolerant, and philo- 
 sophers are certainly not so cock-sure as to the 
 infallibility of their theories. We are not so 
 cock-sure that we are propounding truth. We 
 are not in the least sure that we have truth itself ; 
 but we are only deeply interested in truth, and 
 we try to help people to believe in truth. This 
 is the attitude of Plato and of Aristotle. We do 
 not despise Christian Science, but let us hold on 
 to the Platonic attitude, and leave to others, who 
 think they are cock-sure, to apply for patents for 
 their processes. Their fundamental principle, 
 which is largely Platonic, that the great force is 
 spirit, is undoubtedly true ; but there are so many 
 possibilities based on the idea that matter is 
 secondary, that great care is necessary to enable 
 us to arrive at a right judgment as to the corre- 
 lation of spirit and matter. Plato was un- 
 doubtedly right when he said that spirit stands 
 in the foremost place, and after that matter. 
 Does Christian Science carry out Plato's line of 
 thought, when it is said that if we clarify our 
 judgment, the idea of disease will disappear, that 
 disease is altogether an error ? It is, indeed, the 
 Gesundbeten, as the Germans called it hundreds of 
 years before Mrs. Eddy. Has Plato anything 
 to say on this subject ? If we look into his 
 " Timseus " we will find the self-same thing 
 discussed there. Do we think that diseases can 
 be removed by prayers ? There we find Plato 
 
 212
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 dividing diseases into different groups, and he 
 distinctly says that the predisposition of some 
 diseases to be cured by the action of the mind 
 is undoubted, but he is far from ascribing the 
 cure of all diseases to the efficacy of prayer. Wo 
 thus find that from the Platonic standpoint there 
 is a distinct germ of truth in the idea adopted by 
 Christian Science that matter is nothing, and 
 that spirit is all ; but whether that idea has not 
 been highly exaggerated is a point that requires 
 our serious consideration. 
 
 We now come to another extraordinary pheno- 
 menon of modern times, which will be premised 
 by an interesting anecdote of the lecturer's own 
 experience. A gentleman asked him at one of 
 his lectures how he could account for Shakespeare, 
 how the son of a butcher at Stratford-on-Avon 
 could have developed into the marvellous per- 
 sonality of a Shakespeare? " Yes," said he, " he 
 could ; but what was the questioner's own theory 
 of the subject ? " " Oh ! " he said, " because he 
 had a certain bump on his head, and it was that 
 that enabled him to write Hamlet." " Well," was 
 the answer, " that theory has one advantage. It 
 is so exceedingly simple. " 
 
 Phrenology starts from the idea that our 
 bodies are the exact replicas of our minds. Dr. 
 Gall taught people how to treat the brain, how to 
 analyze that semi-liquid mass ; how' certain con- 
 v olutions of it dispose to certain trains of thought. 
 
 213
 
 PLATO 
 
 He declared that every part of that brain is the 
 cause and symptom of certain of our faculties ; 
 that one particular convolution tends to ascen- 
 dency in mathematics, another to poetry, a third 
 to art, and so on. In fact we have simply to take 
 the head, and we can at once account for a Shake- 
 speare, or a Goethe, or a Pascal, by the particular 
 bumps each is supposed to have had. Thus it 
 was that the vast " science " of phrenology was 
 started, which laid down that the body and the 
 mind were correlated, and that by certain con- 
 volutions and bumps we could find out all the 
 capacities and qualities of men. This relation of 
 body and mind seemed an absolute axiom to most 
 people ; but in spite of its claims no man has yet 
 succeeded in showing the connection between cer- 
 tain portions of the brain and the various play of 
 the mind ; there is, in fact, nothing of the kind. It 
 has never been proved, never and nowhere, that any 
 part of our brain, whether this or that convolution 
 is the cause of any of our actions. No man, who 
 thinks seriously, believes that these convolutions 
 are the cause of any one single faculty we have. 
 
 In philosophy we do not believe in authorities ; 
 we rcfuso to believe that such and such a person 
 is an authority on a certain subject, and has said 
 the final word on it. But we may take Professor 
 Wundt, and say that he has tried to acquire a 
 thorough knowledge of this subject. The ordinary 
 philosopher does not always care for physiology, 
 
 214
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 but Wundfc has gone to the trouble of making 
 thousands of experiments, and he is more likely 
 to guide us in finding our way to the truth than 
 any other man. Wundt, then, says that by the 
 greatest number of experiments he has found that 
 there is a certain parallelism between body and 
 mind ; that there is a certain intimate relation, a 
 parallelism, nothing more. But we cannot trace 
 it, nor can we say that any special features of the 
 face or the skull correspond to certain faculties of 
 our mind; or what is the direct cause of any 
 particular phenomenon of mind. That is the 
 result at which this writer of physiology and 
 philosophy arrives, that there is a certain intimate 
 relation, a parallelism, between body and mind ; 
 but we can go no further. And how does this 
 compare with the cock-sureness of thousands of 
 people who assert the predominant power of 
 bumps and convolutions ! 
 
 Let us smile the quiet Socratic smile when we 
 hear men | declare, that because woman has a 
 smaller brain mass therefore she has an inferior 
 or smaller intellect. It is the same with men all 
 over the world ; we do not meet a man in America 
 or in Europe who does not say so. It is because 
 of what the French call keeping the "professional 
 place " for the men that it is to their interest 
 to say that woman's intellect is inferior ; but 
 we shall never find a man with some solid 
 knowledge who will say so ; it is a position which 
 
 215
 
 PLATO 
 
 he can never seriously maintain, and neither 
 Wundt nor Flourens has ever attempted to do it. 
 Broca has established one thing, and that is, if we 
 extirpate the third frontal convolution in the left 
 hemisphere of the brain, we destroy the power of 
 speech. And this is a result which is negative 
 only. With regard to memory, we read in books 
 that the loss of another part of the brain will lead 
 to a loss of memory, but this is not true. Flourens 
 has proved that there might be such temporary 
 loss, but the other parts of the brain make up for 
 the portion thus extirpated, and the memory is 
 gradually restored. Thus we will find Wundt, 
 Goltz, Munk, Hitzig, all having theories of 
 their own ; but what shall ice do who are not 
 physiologists? Professor A. says that he has 
 located memory ; Professor B. says that Professor 
 A. is absolutely wrong. Under these circum- 
 stances all we can do is to suspend our judgments. 
 Thus it is that we find that going beyond Plato 
 has landed us in negative results. We still do not 
 know how we speak ; we only know that if a 
 certain portion of brain substance be excised, we 
 cannot speak at all; a purely negative result. 
 And at all this controversy of this scholar and 
 that professor, Plato sits serenely in his academy 
 and smiles, and says, "It is as I told you. Here 
 you have, two thousand years after me, a man 
 named Wundt. After experimenting all he can 
 to prove that spirit is in matter, he has come 
 
 216
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 to the same result as I did, that there is no 
 causal relation between matter and spirit." 
 
 Again, everything in this country is ascribed 
 to the climate, one's character, one's temper, 
 even intellectual phenomena are all put down 
 to climate. One meets a friend, and says, " Ah, 
 you do not seem so cheerful this morning." 
 " Oh ! it is the confounded climate ! " is the 
 answer. Now, can climate have such an influence 
 on our temper? From Plato's view, this cannot 
 be held to be true for one moment. In Iceland, 
 with an abominable climate, we have one of the 
 most cheerful people in the world. So too in 
 Greenland, where the climate is awful, and the 
 people live mostly underground, in dark caverns, 
 a more cheerful people than the Greenlanders 
 cannot be imagined. All this only serves to 
 stimulate the discussion whether matter has or 
 has not an influence on the mind. People will 
 tell us that climate has that influence, and that 
 it is the most powerful cause of national charac- 
 teristics ; but let us leave this question and come 
 to another equally important, that of race. It is 
 a matter of ordinary knowledge that people are 
 profoundly convinced with the idea of race, which 
 they think depends on the peculiar constitution 
 of the blood, and they will talk as if there were 
 really such distinctions as blue blood, and red 
 blood. The idea of race lacks any serious founda- 
 tion in fact, and is altogether un-Platonic. 
 
 217
 
 PLATO 
 
 Again, what about sports, and the idea of 
 strengthening the muscles, and of getting the 
 body into a fit condition ? Has the Platonic idea 
 any raison d'etre in that ? Will the exercise and 
 training of the body add anything so as to better 
 the constitution of the intellect ? Are gymnastics, 
 the German method of training the body and the 
 muscles, better than the English method of sports, 
 or are sports better than the gymnasia ? Or were 
 the Greeks wiser than either the English or the 
 Germans in having a third description, which 
 was a mixture of bodily and intellectual training ? 
 We shall find Plato extremely helpful in any 
 decision we may come to on these questions, and 
 surely with that help some mean can be found 
 between these three methods, which will conduce 
 to the benefit of the nation, and produce a proper 
 development of both mind and body. That such 
 a mean is extremely desirable there can be no 
 doubt, if we contemplate the condition of some 
 of the greatest thinkers of more recent times. 
 One may say that Pascal had a wretched con- 
 stitution and was constantly ill ; he was even 
 known to have solved his greatest problems while 
 suffering from a raging tooth-ache ; Spinoza was 
 also afflicted with much suffering and ultimately 
 died of phthisis ; and Leibniz was no better in 
 this respect. How does all this bear on the 
 relation of body to mind ? What has been built 
 on the bass, and have we probed to the taproot 
 
 218
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of our national existence ? All these questions 
 are most important for the mothers of a nation 
 to consider. The question is, is matter existent 
 or non-existent? May we neglect the body, as 
 some of us do, by eating nothing, or subsisting 
 perhaps on tabloids ; or is it important to cultivate 
 the body as well as the mind ? The mean would 
 be to accept the parallelism of body and mind ; 
 for, though it is necessary to work up the mind, 
 it is equally essential that the body should also 
 be worked up. And by this double function of 
 cultivating both, and conjointly, we may rise to 
 a higher state than even Plato contemplated. 
 What are we meant to do in this life, is a most 
 pertinent question for us all. This Europe of 
 ours is really a Greater Hellas, and we are trying 
 to have, in an enormous continent and in America, 
 what the Greeks had in a small area. Shall we 
 not, like them, try to reach the ideal state ? There 
 are various aspirations in different states, and in 
 different cities. In one it may be a race for fame, 
 and in another a race for wealth ; but we must 
 remember that money can never make up for the 
 neglect cf the true and real i/wx 1 ?* If we depended 
 on that alone, then our souls would indeed be 
 depayses, and therefore never quite happy ; for 
 thoughts will operate in a troubled medium if we 
 neglect the truth of being. Under these condi- 
 tions, then, the problem of the relation of body 
 to mind becomes really a cosmic problem. 
 
 219
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 We have now to discuss one of the most difficult, 
 one of the most subtle, of the problems arising 
 from a study of Plato. It is a subject which 
 it might be said, constitutes the entire object 
 of life, for every human being seeks after it. 
 What is happiness ? How can we make or acquire 
 happiness ? And when we have got it, what can 
 we do to keep it ? This, indeed, is one of the 
 deepest, if not the very deepest, of problems ; we 
 might say the main object of our life. And can 
 Plato help us in coming to some conclusion with 
 regard to it ? The greatest thinkers of life have 
 threshed out the subject, and have given us some 
 means for acquiring this, the highest good ; but 
 each has a different conception as to what happi- 
 ness comprises ; some have particular, some, very 
 singular ideas about it. Most people undoubtedly 
 have their own ideas of what happiness is, so it 
 would be difficult to give a general definition. 
 
 Plato may lead us to some sort of a decision, 
 although Plato's idea of happiness cannot apply 
 to our modern needs. The world he lived in, and 
 our modem world, must necessarily bo entirely 
 
 220
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 different. We have lost the simplicity of the 
 Greek life, where there was no rash, no fidgeti- 
 ness, but only that placidity which is conducive 
 to happiness, a juste milieu so to speak, which was 
 Plato's view of solving the problem. Oar lives, 
 on the other hand, are so complex that it depeuds 
 entirely on what sort of media we aro living in 
 to judge what constitutes our happiness. Let us, 
 for instance, take the Continental peasant class, 
 and we shall see that the peasantry of Germany, of 
 France, place the possession of money far above all 
 other sources of happiness. Even the peasants of 
 Hungary believe that the shekel is the one great 
 thing to strive for as the goal of happiness ; and 
 a man who has got five hundred francs feels him- 
 self perfectly happy. Woman, child, art, music, 
 power, ambition are absolutely nothing to these 
 peasants of France or Germany compared with 
 the possession of money, of which they are the 
 greatest worshippers. Unless we have personal 
 knowledge of the lives of these people, we cannot 
 do better than learn of them from Balzac, the 
 Shakespeare of France, the inimitable describer of 
 the emotions of peasant life, and one of the 
 keenest analysts of the human heart. In his 
 " Eugenie Grandet " he has drawn this terrible 
 passion, this idea of money-worship, in the 
 character of the old Grandet, who lived and died 
 for that one thing — money. 
 
 To us who have got through some process of 
 221
 
 PLATO 
 
 culture, something more than money is needed 
 to give happiness. Why does Art absorb those 
 who love it ? Is it not because it is the means 
 of forming ideals to lead us up higher in our 
 conceptions of life? This is a subject we shall 
 deal with later, though it is a "far cry" from 
 happiness, real and lasting, which we are dis- 
 cussing at the present moment. What has Plato 
 to say on it, and can we learn anything from him ? 
 He is, as we have seen, very contradictory in 
 what he says, but he wrote as a naive and an 
 honest gentleman. He may be likened to Charles 
 Darwin who says such and such a thing, conclu- 
 sions which he has arrived at after deep thought 
 and investigation, but he invariably also says that 
 there may be objections, or he may have over- 
 looked some points in arriving at those conclu- 
 sions. There isi another English genius, James 
 Watt, even more naive, who gives us not only his 
 best ideas but also his worst ; he held, that what 
 we needed most was a " book of blots," as he 
 called it. Here we have perfect honesty, and so 
 it is with Plato, who may help us, though he says 
 he cannot reply to the question, What is happi- 
 ness? In his dialogue of " Thesetetus " he gives 
 us one source of getting happiness, and this he 
 repeats in his " Phaedon" and in the " Kepublic." 
 Again, in his " Philebus " he gives us a totally 
 different idea of what happiness is, and he promptly 
 contradicts that view in his " Republic " again. 
 
 222
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Logical consistency is the line which can only 
 be followed by prigs ; for, there is no denying 
 the fact that life is full of contradictions ; it is 
 the light and shade of existence which make 
 up life ; it is the shadow which shows up the 
 light. We have misfortunes, and the absence of 
 it, or the relief from it, at once gives us happi- 
 ness ; in fact, without trials there would be no 
 triumphs. It is the truest saying that by con- 
 trasts we live, and so it is that life is full of 
 contradictions. If we get two reports of a pro- 
 ceeding, the one contradictory and the other 
 logical, it would always be safest for us to accept 
 the contradictory one as more true to life, for 
 logical things are only to be found in the brain of 
 the scholar, who racks his brain to make things fit 
 together regardless of psychological conditions. 
 St. Augustine will support us in this, for it was 
 he who said credo quia absurdum, " I believe it 
 because it is absurd." 
 
 Now, Plato was very much given to a disdain 
 of everything of a bodily character ; and he 
 always thought that the soul was superior to the 
 body. His views are very clear on the subject, 
 that if we mean to strive for the highest good, 
 the more we do away with thoughts of the body, 
 the quicker and the more likely are we to reach 
 that highest good. We shall find this view very 
 clearly put forth in the 176th page (Stephanus' 
 edition) of his "Thea?tetus," and millions of people 
 
 22^
 
 PLATO 
 
 have followed that Platonic view to the letter. 
 What he says is that we must take a flight from 
 matter, and as quickly as possible ; we must try 
 and get away from the body ; and in getting into 
 those regions where there is no matter we shall 
 be coming nearer to God. That is, if we flee 
 from material things, we shall get to the original 
 source of happiness. This is the great principle 
 of that vast class of men who are always striving 
 to reach the highest degree of bliss, to shun 
 contact with everything material. 
 
 The ancient Greeks did not believe in this, so 
 we see that Plato's view is un-Hellenic. They 
 despised people who liked to live alone, and away 
 from the world. Such a person they would call 
 a Cyclops, arguing that he could not be happy. 
 
 The Cynics of old also said that they despised 
 matter, and we have the statement of Greeks 
 that Diogenes, the Cynic philosopher of Corinth, 
 was the happiest of men. We might well ask 
 ourselves, can it be possible that Diogenes, who 
 despised everything — men, women, the world — 
 was a perfectly happy man ? The recipe for 
 happiness was summed up by St. Philip Neri in 
 three principles of life : first, to despise the world ; 
 secondly, to despise one's self, and, if that were 
 not enough, lastly, to despise being despised. 
 Now, this is the very doctrine of the Cynics, and 
 by the light of this we may ask ourselves again, 
 Was Diogenes a poseur , or was he happy ? 
 
 224
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 The world is now two thousand years more 
 advanced than when Plato lived, and we have 
 known numberless people who have carried out 
 to the letter what Plato has given us in his 
 " Theaetetus." From those who thus ran away 
 from the world let us first take St. Francis 
 d'Assissi. Was he the happiest of men ? Matter 
 did not exist for him ; he gave up eating and 
 drinking, and cut himself adrift from everything 
 earthly or material. We cannot help feeling he 
 was exceedingly happy, if we can imagine him as 
 he walked abroad, looking on the very trees as his 
 brothers and sisters ; and, with that smile of his, 
 receiving the most disastrous news, it might be 
 of his dearest friends. He was altogether beyond 
 all these earthly considerations ; but was he really 
 happy ? We cannot tell, and we must leave that 
 for each one of us to think out. In the old times 
 there were no personal records, and so we have 
 not the means of knowing the personal lives led 
 by such men as these. In the same way we have 
 St. Catherine of Siena, and Santa Teresa, and 
 many other saints of the Catholic Church, who 
 led unworldly lives ; but we have no authentic 
 documents by which we can judge whether their 
 lives were really happy. It was not until the 
 sixteenth century that they took to writing 
 memoirs. Later still, in the seventeenth century, 
 we come to something identical, of which we can 
 speak with more certainty, of a man who carried 
 
 225 Q
 
 PLATO 
 
 out the very things we have just heard Plato 
 lay down in his " Theaetetus," and that man was 
 Spinoza. He had made up his mind to be per 
 fectly happy, and after experience had taught him 
 that most things in life were absolutely vague. He 
 says that he saw that the things he had generally 
 dreaded had nothing in them, either good or bad. 
 And so it was that he made up his mind to find 
 that something which was to bring him perfect 
 bliss ; that something, by the rejection ol every- 
 thing, which was to make his soul good. And this 
 he said he would enjoy to all eternity. When the 
 author was young he admired the man for what 
 seemed his unselfish renunciation, but after the 
 experience he has had of life he cannot help think- 
 ing differently. Imagine the idea of one individual 
 man saying that he was going to be perfectly 
 happy alone ! Happiness, to be found, must be 
 in and with others, or we do not get it at all. 
 So felt Field-Marshal Blucher at Waterloo, when 
 he addressed his men, wavering at a charge 
 against the enemy, " Canaille, do you want to 
 live for ever? " Are we worthy of, can we claim 
 such happiness ? Suppose it were possible to 
 attain to such happiness by giving up everything 
 bodily and material, is it necessary for us to get 
 such bliss ? It must be as Spinoza, as Francis 
 d'Assissi, all alone ; there must be neither brother, 
 nor father, nor child, nor wife ; there must be no 
 citizenship, nor anything of earthly account. All 
 
 226
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 this does indeed simplify matters, but it simplifies 
 it far too much. When we are asked the question 
 of attaining bliss or happiness, are we prepared 
 to live in an attic, to give up family, to renounce 
 the State ? Spinoza lived in an attic, he had no 
 family, no State ; he had no mother, for she had 
 died when he was young ; he had no brother, for 
 he had broken with him when he renounced the 
 Jewish faith. He was, in fact, cut off from every 
 worldly tie ; and when everything is thus re- 
 nounced, one is reduced to childish simplicity. 
 Can we, under such circumstances, think that 
 Spinoza was perfectly happy ? 
 
 Let us imagine a tree that we have drawn on 
 a plane surface of two dimensions suddenly en- 
 dowed with life, and stepping out into space of 
 three dimensions, what an enormous change this 
 would represent ! And it would be an equally 
 enormous change if we, who are accustomed to a 
 life of three dimensions, were suddenly reduced in 
 our actions to a life of two dimensions. And this 
 is what the life of such men as Spinoza represents. 
 He despises brother, child, wife, his country, and 
 everything material, and he says, "I am I; here I 
 will live in an attic in Amsterdam, and here I will 
 enjoy eternal bliss." Yes, it is simple to reduce 
 himself from three to two dimensions, but he 
 cannot take others with him, and therefore he 
 cannot be happy. Alas, in these days we do not 
 live in two dimensions, but we have increased 
 
 227
 
 PLATO 
 
 them to ten or fifteen. We have Society, the 
 Church, the State, and many others. We are 
 humanity with great universals behind us ; we are 
 no Spinozas, no saints — we are simply men and 
 women — and we want to live in ten dimensions. 
 
 If Plato were here, we might say to him, " You 
 talk of the Cyclops as unhappy people, we are not 
 that, we are only men and women, and we want to 
 be happy, but everything is so complicated in our 
 modern conditions ; how shall we reach happiness 
 in such a case as ours ? Did you not say that 
 universals determined the particulars? You Greeks 
 were the happiest people the world has had be- 
 cause you lived in one circle, the State being your 
 great universal, whereas we to-day have three 
 great concentric circles as universals standing 
 behind us, the State, Church, and Society. In 
 what manner are we in this complex state to get 
 our universals to determine the particular ? Let 
 us take the case of nations. If I am an Irishman 
 or a Pole, I cannot be happy, because of the in- 
 exorable fate that has overtaken my country. For 
 the individual to be happy the universal, which is 
 the country, must be happy. It is the case also 
 with Hungary, for no Hungarian is happy, and he 
 cannot be. Is the Church always in sound condi- 
 tion ? Was it not at a period when the Church of 
 England was unsound and unhappy that Wesley 
 started Methodism? No one then was happy 
 in his religion because the great universal, the 
 
 228
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Church, was disturbed. It is even so with 
 society; if that be not sound, no individual can 
 be sound. All this is your own doctrine, Plato. 
 You, it is true, had not three universals behind 
 you, but one circle, the 73-6X19. We, on the other 
 hand, have three concentric circles ; and there is 
 thus an enormous difference between us. What 
 you have said in your " Thesetetus," in your 
 " Phasdon " is extremely interesting ; but pardon 
 us if we say that all that cannot apply to us in 
 these modern days ; for we are not in one sphere, 
 we have not only one universal behind us, we 
 cannot be Francis or Spinoza ; we are men and 
 women of the world, and we have to live in three 
 distinct spheres. Tell us, then, how happiness, 
 under these conditions, is to be attained ? " 
 
 Plato, in his " Thesetetus," aims at the highest 
 ideal, and he tells us that knowledge is virtue, and 
 that virtue is happiness, and that anything else 
 cannot be knowledge or happiness ; he also im- 
 presses on us the necessity of giving everything 
 its due importance, not magnifying one at the 
 expense of another; the necessity, in fact, of 
 retaining a due sense of proportion. There are, 
 indeed, other sources of happiness, Art and Music, 
 for instance. Art is a very great source of happi- 
 ness, for it is the sublime, the pure idea that 
 becomes manifested in it. There are also innocent 
 pleasures, passionless pleasures which a man should 
 enjoy. Bliss is thus not only one thing, but there 
 
 229
 
 PLATO 
 
 are several sources by means of which we may get 
 at it. Let us, then, in these modern days— and 
 we have the advantage of two thousand more 
 years of experience— try and find out whether 
 happiness cannot be attained by people who are 
 not philosophers, for it is not the philosopher 
 who is alone happy. 
 
 There is a subtle point in favour of the Greeks. 
 They imagined that happiness was a state ; and 
 that is what it really comes to. With them a man 
 could be perfectly happy, because he had the 
 universal behind him, the Greek State. With .us 
 it is not a state, but an episode. Le bonheur nest 
 pas un etat, cest un episode. It was this feeling 
 that brought out in them that perfect reposeful- 
 ness which we see in their statues. A visit to the 
 Elgin marbles at the British Museum will show at 
 a glance that repose, which is not to be found in 
 any other sculpture in the world. Michael Angela, 
 Thorwaldsen, and Kodin could not attain that mar- 
 vellous reposefulness of the Greek cheek, produced 
 by a few simple lines ; the art is lost, and we can- 
 not imitate it. There are plenty of kinds of cheek, 
 modern, but not that Greek cheek, and why ? The 
 Greeks had really the possibility of being happy. 
 Many a man lived to a good old age, having gone 
 through the whole gamut of pleasant feelings, 
 and utterly exhausted with the bliss of life, when 
 he could say, " I have been perfectly happy, and 
 I am now ready to die." The Greeks, let us 
 
 230
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 remember, did not trouble themselves much about 
 a future life, because their own life was so pleasant 
 and happy. It is because we are so discontented 
 and agitated and troubled with our life here that 
 we think and long for another life. We are told 
 by Plutarch that the highest ideals of the Greeks 
 lay in their Eleusinian mysteries, but these were 
 held so sacred by them that no Greek ever revealed 
 what he heard there, nor have recent excavations 
 at the spot given us the smallest inkling of what 
 constituted those mysteries. It was their harmo- 
 nious method of life which rendered these Greeks 
 so supremely happy, and which gave them those 
 reposeful features that have come down to us in 
 their statuary. They did not think happiness an 
 episode of life, but the perennial state of our 
 souls; and hundreds of thousands of them, in 
 Athens, in Sparta, in Corinth, and elsewhere, 
 lived with this idea ingrained in them, rendering 
 them absolutely blissful. If we look at the statue 
 of Sophocles we see happiness stamped on the 
 features, and it was for this that the Greeks built 
 him a chapel and worshipped him there as the 
 heros Dexion. Would modern tragedians lend 
 themselves to such treatment ? 
 
 Alas ! we live in three spheres, and what shall 
 we do to obtain that bliss ? To use a musical 
 simile, the ancient Greek life was a legato; ours 
 is staccato. The Greek life was like an andante 
 of Mozart ; ours is like a furious, agitating scherzo. 
 
 2^1
 
 PLATO 
 
 There are countries, too, where life is not only 
 staccato, but ten times worse. Modern life is, in 
 fact, made up of jerkiness and fidgetiness, which 
 any Greek would have despised. And this phase 
 of the Greek mind was actually exemplified in an 
 ordinary street fruit-seller, whom the author met 
 in Chicago, that city of hustle. He was a poor 
 Athenian, and when about to be commiserated 
 with, he replied, looking round at the vast city, 
 " This is not the city of Demosthenes ; but though 
 I only sell fruit, I am a Greek." Here was the deep 
 disdain of the Hellene — there was, no doubt, 
 Albanian and Slav blood in his veins, but he 
 was still a Greek — for the fidgetiness, the jerki- 
 ness, the staccato of modern life. It was as much 
 as to say, " I have lived a Greek, and I will; die a 
 Greek ; the legato of my life is preferable to your 
 jar and hustle." Thus also declared the Greek to 
 the Christian in Bulwer Lytton's " Last Days of 
 Pompeii." If the Greeks then believed that life 
 could be arranged, and happiness secured on such 
 a basis, we moderns can only turn round to Plato 
 and say, " How beautiful, and how inapplicable 
 is all this ; you, therefore, cannot be our guide 
 through the complexities of our modern life." 
 
 We have thus seen that what is, with us, a 
 complication of three circles, was, with the 
 Greeks, one power, a unity, the beautiful round- 
 ing-ofT of the tones of which made one harmony ; 
 and in that state the influence of woman was very 
 
 2^2
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 different from what it is with us. We do find Plato, 
 and also his pupil Xenophon, in his Qucopo/ujcos, 
 referring to this power of woman, and talking of 
 happiness coming to the man through his wife, 
 and through his household. But, in the main, 
 the Greek state was a man's state, and woman 
 either did not count, or, as in Sparta, she was too 
 great a force, and she never got her proper place 
 at all. It was the Middle Ages that invented the 
 modern woman, and now it is no longer men who 
 decide how to be happy, there is also the woman to 
 decide for ; and they also claim a right to be happy 
 themselves, and not only to make man happy, 
 and all this complicates the question immensely. 
 The desire of all of us, men and women, is to find 
 something that will make us perfectly happy in 
 this life ; we cannot wait to obtain it in the next 
 life, the information we possess of it being so 
 meagre. 
 
 When Plato talks of the legend of the being, 
 both man and woman, with four arms and four 
 legs, who excited the envy of the gods by whom 
 he was clove in twain, and who thus in two parts 
 went ever seeking after each other, he meant to 
 account for love ; and the question, " How shall 
 we be happy ? " referred only to men ; but now 
 there are women to be accounted for in addition 
 to men, though they are not the same in all 
 countries. In some she is too far ahead, like the 
 Spartan women, and ends in bringing about the 
 
 233
 
 PLATO 
 
 ruin of her country ; in others she is too much 
 in the background ; there are also the means. 
 But whether it be in France, or England, or 
 Poland, or Hungary, what is the relationship of 
 woman to happiness ? What has the Church to 
 do with it ? What the State proper ? Anyhow, 
 to find the answer do not let us retire, like 
 Spinoza, into an attic, or into a monastery, and 
 say, " I am a modern Cyclops, and I want eternal 
 bliss, and here I mean to get it." St. Francis is 
 finer than Spinoza, but we cannot compare him 
 as the embodiment of happiness with the spirit 
 which moved in Hadyn, or helped to produce the 
 quartets of Schumann. We can have no definite 
 recipe for acquiring happiness ; there are hints, 
 however, which might profit us ; not more than 
 hints. But in any attempts we make, let it be 
 clear that no " isms " will help us, nor can we 
 take happiness in in the shape of tabloids. All 
 this is a pure matter for our discussion. 
 
 Considering the complicated nature of modern 
 life, and how we are forced to live in three con- 
 centric spheres, while the Greeks lived in one 
 sphere only, it stands to reason that we might be 
 three times happier, or three times unhappier than 
 they were. What we must maintain, and it is with 
 reluctance that we have to do it, is that happiness 
 is not an etat. It comes between two series of 
 events, or unhappinesses, in this life. In modern 
 life happiness is but an episode, and the more we 
 
 234
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 get of that episode the better. We have not the 
 capacity for experiencing real happiness unless we 
 have gone through great crises and misfortunes. 
 Money and rank by themselves will never do it. 
 People think that by meeting and mixing with 
 high people they have reached happiness, and 
 nothing more can be desired. No, such is not the 
 case. To have happiness we must first have mis- 
 fortunes, and thus we see that unhappiness and 
 happiness both make for one and the same thing. 
 For our modern times, then, we shall find that 
 Plato cannot help us, as his views apply to the 
 Greek times, which were times of repose. It was 
 Heracleitus who discovered the philosophy of the 
 phenomenon that everything is constantly chang- 
 ing, and that we cannot be in the same state for 
 any given time. And so it is that we find happi- 
 ness to be the interval between two unhappinesses. 
 When we are convalescent after a long illness we 
 feel light and happy ; when a great trouble is past, 
 happiness comes over us at the thought that the 
 misfortune is ended. It is through crises, indeed, 
 that nations have gained their happiness. The 
 English and the French have gone through 
 greater crises than any other nation, and of an 
 abominable nature ; they have gone through life 
 and death struggles, when all, perhaps, depended 
 on a word ; it may be victory, or war, or disaster. 
 And so it is we find the French people always on 
 the qui vive, and they are at once the saddest and 
 
 235
 
 PLATO 
 
 the gayest of people. While in England there is 
 more cheerfulness than there is in Germany or in 
 Austria, and all because of the crises the English 
 people have gone through. It is risk that brings 
 out happiness. In South and Central America, 
 where there are no national risks and no national 
 crises, there it is vegetation but no life ; it is 
 merely a contentedness, but not a sense of 
 happiness which people aim at. 
 
 There is no music without both the major and 
 the minor key. When the minor key is added, 
 there comes the solution of the theme, the full 
 melody. If the minor key is wanting, as in 
 Chinese music, then it becomes no music at all. 
 And so it is with life, we increase its joys by 
 multiplying its sorrows. There is the joke of 
 that famous French wit, who was asked if he had 
 much patience, " Moil de la patience? Enorme- 
 ment, mais pas pour longtemps" lots of it, but 
 not for long, was his reply. And so it is with us, 
 we have happiness, but it is not for long. And 
 being the most agitated of nations, we have 
 increased the number of keys by which we may 
 open the door to that happiness, and curious 
 ideas, too, exist as to the manner of attaining to 
 it. Over in Bayswater the author noticed the 
 other day a sign, which read, " Pleasant Sunday 
 afternoons for young men; " here was one way of 
 reaching that realm of bliss, but, alas ! the 
 appearance of the house rather suggested cholera 
 
 236
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 than happiness. But that is not all with reference 
 to this notice for ready-made Sunday afternoon 
 happiness. It is, unfortunately, the case that in 
 this country the fact is quite lost sight of that 
 it is the weekdays which make the Sunday. If 
 the universal at the back of the Sunday is sad we 
 shall take our Sundays in sad doses. 
 
 It is undoubtedly the case that it is in those 
 nations which are most agitated, whether it be 
 from a commercial, political, or military point of 
 view, that we find very deep happiness ; but it is 
 for a time only. We cannot expect to be happy 
 for ever ; it is quite sufficient that we should be 
 so for a little time. For our modern times this 
 is our only standpoint. If Plato were to honour 
 us now with his presence here, he would say that 
 we can only be happy if we looked upon happiness 
 as an episode ; but if we wanted that happiness 
 to be perennial, then we should live as the Greeks 
 did, and as he has directed us in his "Kepublic." 
 We should then be happy in an Utopian state. 
 And that Republic or State of Plato will yet come 
 to pass ; many countries are even approaching it 
 now. As we know, the ideal can never be really 
 attained. Raphael's superb masterpieces were as 
 nothing to the pictures he never painted. Our 
 modern state, in the same way, is fast approaching 
 to that ideal of Plato. That will be the time 
 when the mind will be developed as well as the 
 body; when the intellect and the emotions will
 
 PLATO 
 
 work in unison ; when there will be harmony and 
 symphony of power ; then we will, of a surety, 
 change V episode into Vetat, but we must remember 
 to have the universal perfect; to have a perfect 
 and a sound state, where every organ is in its 
 right place, and this is not impossible ; indeed, it 
 would seem quite feasible in this Europe, which 
 is really Greater Hellas. That will be when 
 woman takes her proper place in the economy 
 of the State, and when man becomes properly 
 educated ; we shall then get what we may call 
 happiness, that perfect bliss and reposefulness 
 which we are convinced that millions of ancient 
 Greeks lived to enjoy; that life of absolute, 
 perfect happiness, which we see reflected in their 
 exquisite art, in their statues, and in their 
 buildings, and which we, in these days, cannot 
 
 imitate. 
 
 Happiness does not depend on ourselves, 
 whether it be happiness in our own individual 
 selves, in the family, in the State, or in God. 
 One thing is more or less certain, that it must 
 come from a universal behind us. In this we do 
 not stand alone; we arc not like the fir-tree of 
 Heine, which dreamed only of the palm-tree in 
 the South ; wo must all act together. And if 
 that whole, which is the nation, is sound, then 
 we shall be all sound too ; for no man can be 
 happy unless his country is happy. It may be 
 cruel to say so, but a Spaniard cannot be happy, 
 
 238
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 neither can a Pole, nor an Austrian ; because that 
 bigger ensemble of which he is a part is in a 
 morbid and a decadent condition. We are only 
 the complements or organs of a vaster, of a 
 higher, whole. If, then, only this be realized; 
 if there be harmony in the universal, then we 
 shall reach that perennial happiness. This great 
 community of things is the essence of all philo- 
 sophical ideas. It is through Plato that we get 
 at the first idea of the harmony of things in the 
 universal, leading to perfect bliss ; and it is in 
 Plato too that we have an earnest and a profound 
 attempt to get at the real root of happiness. 
 
 There was David Strauss who denied the 
 existence of Jesus, and said he was a myth. In 
 the last century most historical personages of 
 antiquity have had their personalities taken away 
 from them, and have been declared to be myths. 
 Well, Strauss had not an idea of history, nor did 
 he understand the nature of personalities. He, 
 however, said that bliss must come from some- 
 where ; that art was the source of bliss, and if 
 we increased art it would give us more chance 
 of happiness. 
 
 We may say that Plato, in his " Eepublic," 
 touches too much on the ideal, but his views 
 are nevertheless true, and if we keep on approach- 
 ing to that state of his we shall assuredly be 
 approaching the time when we shall be as happy 
 as the Greeks were ; but we must go on doing all 
 
 239
 
 PLATO 
 
 in our power to attain that state. Our efforts 
 may seem illogical, but illogical efforts are not 
 quite wrong ; tliey are the outcome of the 
 emotions, and hence they come necessarily from 
 our hearts. Let us, then, make our efforts, 
 illogical though they be, and we can trust to 
 history to make them clear. 
 
 240
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 We are now approaching a subject the discussion 
 of which makes one tremble, for each one of us is 
 quite convinced that he or she has no passions ; 
 and if such things exist we imagine that they are 
 of so low a character that they should be despised 
 and crushed out of our existence. And yet there 
 is no denying the fact that there is not one of us 
 who is not moved by one or other passion ; in fact, 
 all the great things of history, every great thing 
 in life, and, lastly, we ourselves are all the 
 outcome of passion. 
 
 There are in this country forty-three millions 
 of islands, and in each one of these islands there 
 is a volcano. We are the islands, and in each 
 one of us there is that volcanic passion which is 
 ever being kindled in some form or other, suppress 
 it as we will. There is no living being anywhere 
 who is not so moved by the passions. It may be 
 a passion which is expressed, or, if unexpressed, 
 then perhaps it is the more potent and withal a 
 latent volcano. In these circumstances it becomes 
 an imperative necessity for us to know what are 
 these passions. It will be good for us to be 
 
 241 e
 
 PLATO 
 
 generally interested in them ; to try and define 
 their roots and their effects, and not to condemn 
 them as too low to be mentioned; as if it were 
 something to be ashamed of and to be discouraged, 
 but certainly not to be discussed. Those philo- 
 sophers who have written on the subject have 
 slurred over it, and have left us altogether in the 
 lurch as to the true meaning of, and the advis- 
 ability of having, passions. They have all had 
 them, whether they recognized the fact or not ; 
 and some have gone through great tragedies of 
 life, at the very root of which lies passion. But 
 when it comes to the writing of books, the subject 
 of passions is treated in the same way as the 
 writing of a book of travel — where there is descrip- 
 tion of commonplace details with no human in- 
 terest attaching. On the other hand, if we take 
 those who have gone through life and, though 
 swayed by passions, have not written anything 
 about them, what do we find in their lives to give 
 us a clue to arriving at a solution of this master 
 force of our existence? It is an exceedingly 
 difficult subject to deal with, but we need not 
 despair at arriving at some solution of it. Our 
 discussion of it will at least help us in finding 
 what is the right perspective to take of it. 
 
 Let us, in the first place, come to Plato himself 
 and ask him what he thinks of passions. In his 
 " Theaetetus," " Phsedrus," and " Thnseus," we 
 find him as usual wavering. He will give us no 
 
 242
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 direct answer, but at once takes refuge in a 
 royth, in fact in two myths, which we shall pre- 
 sently consider. We must not be hard on Plato 
 because he thus takes refuge in myths. It is in 
 these that he buries great truths ; it is a poetical 
 way of expressing thought, and poetry is far more 
 effective than either history or philosophy. Such 
 modes of expression are not intended to be side 
 issues, but they are the most perfect form he gave 
 to his serious and mature thoughts. 
 
 As a student of history one is forced to make a 
 study of passions ; for passions are of the utmost 
 importance in the making of history, and no 
 history is ever made without them. Whether it 
 be the history of an individual or of a nation, 
 passion in one form or another enters into it. 
 Whether we are tending towards a monarchy, or 
 an oligarchy, or a democracy, it is our passions 
 that sway us towards the course, and we shall find 
 in democracy the essence of jealousy and envy, 
 where each individual is striving for his own good. 
 Many a man, in bitter irony, says it is jealousy in 
 woman that makes them desire " a crever le coeur 
 de Vautre" by which means they realize that 
 passion. Human nature is an unchangeable item 
 which is guided by the universal behind it, and 
 we have only to search for the fundamental to 
 see what passion does in history. Sappho, and 
 Heloise, and Abelard, and many more will show 
 us that though times have changed, men and 
 
 243
 
 PLATO 
 
 women Lave not changed. And as all great 
 movements and actions are caused by nothing 
 but passions, we must not be ashamed of them ; 
 we must not limit them or reduce them to tiny 
 dimensions. By doing so we should of necessity 
 reduce art, music, and all those things that are 
 born of passion. We should have no history, a 
 distinct advantage, perhaps, to the boy who has to 
 pass his examinations, but not to the world at 
 large. Let us at once, then, dismiss from our 
 minds that passions are a low thing, and that 
 therefore they should not be cultivated; remem- 
 bering always that great things in history are 
 due entirely to passions, and their suppression is 
 against the development of the soul. In this con- 
 nection Hegel truly said that nothing great has ever 
 been done without passions. For us now to say 
 that there is nothing good in passions, and to 
 condemn it wholesale is indiscriminate folly. 
 
 What did Plato say of passions in general? 
 He thought that we lived in a dual world here, 
 which was made up of a world of ideals and a 
 world of matter. And he always tried to arrive 
 at some sort of harmony between the two worlds. 
 He said that man's instinct is always seeking after 
 the ideal, but there are terrestrial desires too that 
 come in the way, and so he came to the conclusion 
 that there must be two parts in man — the one the 
 image of the ideal, and the other that of the 
 terrestrial. There is his power of will, his power 
 
 244
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of energy, both images of the power of the great 
 universal behind him, a something which drives 
 man on in his pursuit of the ideal, so as to do 
 something great. And then, again, we have his 
 cupidity, that something which drives him on to 
 desire things without reason. From such reason- 
 ing as this Plato was led to say that the soul 
 consisted of three parts or layers — (1) that consist- 
 ing of the very ideal portion, which is reason and 
 insight ; (2) that which was less ideal ; and, lastly, 
 (3) pure unreasoning desire. Should we say that 
 this last was something low which we must curb 
 and crush down and finally get rid of ? So great 
 a nation as this should be careful that they do not 
 carry such suppression to excess, for the results 
 cannot but be disastrous, as we shall see as we 
 proceed. 
 
 Plato's pupils asked him how he proposed to 
 harmonize and bring together these conditions. 
 He gives them different answers, and to get out 
 of the difficulty he tells them a myth, which we 
 shall find in his " Phsedrus," the whole substance 
 of which is nothing more or less than to illustrate 
 the necessity of our keeping our passions under 
 control, and not annihilating them. In this myth 
 he describes a wonderful chariot which was drawn 
 by two horses. One horse was beautiful in form 
 and temper, the other, equally beautiful and large, 
 was turbulent and restless. On the box of the 
 chariot stood a charioteer who had the handling: 
 
 245
 
 PLATO 
 
 of these steeds. It was his duty to curb and 
 guide them, and to keep the turbulent one in the 
 right path. Here was a difficult task, for one 
 steed wanted to soar high to Olympus to feed on 
 the idealities of the gods, while the other tried 
 to break away and keep down to terrestrial paths. 
 If the charioteer be reason and insight it is well 
 and good, but if he be too weak to check the 
 animals and keep them in order, then it spells 
 ruin to the chariot. Here we have a deep lesson 
 to ponder over. In this myth will be found a true 
 counterpart to our nature. Should we cultivate 
 our passions, and guide them by our will as good 
 charioteers or should we suppress them as 
 something vile ? 
 
 It will be best now to come to some con- 
 crete cases ; and in this chapter let us treat of 
 the three grand passions, drink, avarice, and 
 love. If we examine them from all points of 
 view we shall have some idea what attitude to 
 take up with regard to them. The first is the 
 passion for drink, and from what wo have seen of 
 its effects when carried to excess, we are all agreed 
 that it is a vile and abominable passion. It is 
 held to be the curse of England and of America, 
 and it has attracted the efforts of numberless 
 people and institutions to suppress it. Now, in 
 Hungary everybody drinks wine, and nobody is 
 ever known to touch water as a beverage through- 
 out his life. If a Hungarian were told, then, 
 
 246
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 that efforts were made in America and in England 
 to put down drinking, and to make people sign 
 pledges for that purpose, he would think he was 
 being made fun of. He could never believe that 
 people could talk seriously about the " curse of 
 drink." Can any one believe that the signing of 
 a bit of paper as a pledge will curb human 
 passions ! How can people who have drunk all 
 their lives deny the benefit of drink; and it is 
 certain too that by such methods as the signing of 
 pledges they can never stop it. The author was 
 himself at a temperance meeting at Chicago where 
 arguments, which did not seem strong to him, 
 were brought against drink, and he was asked by 
 a lady to sign the pledge. He declared his own 
 views, but the lady persisted with her efforts ; at 
 last he said to her that such an action as the 
 signing of a pledge would grievously offend his 
 mother, and would cast absolute shame on her. 
 The lady could certainly understand, said the 
 author, the deep impression his mother must have 
 made on him in all those years she gave to his 
 bringing up ; how then could he insult her now 
 by admitting that her training was wasted, when 
 all that is necessary is the signing of a bit of 
 paper to keep him straight ? He said ultimately 
 that he would sign the pledge if she on her part 
 also agreed to sign him a pledge, that she would 
 never go wrong with any man. There was no- 
 thing more heard of his signing a pledge after 
 
 247
 
 PLATO 
 
 that. Here is the point, the philosophical stand- 
 point ; how can any person think that he will 
 ever be able to curb his passions by the signing 
 of a piece of paper ? 
 
 In the first book of his " Laws," Plato discusses 
 the question of temperance. There we find 
 Athenians discussing with Lacedaemonians. Now 
 the Athenians drank wine, but the Spartans were 
 practically teetotallers, being allowed to drink only 
 on special occasions, during their festivals. If any 
 Spartan had been found drunk at any other time, 
 so rigorous were their laws that he would have 
 been an outcast, and would have been shut up in 
 a prison. The views of Plato, put into the 
 mouths of the Athenians is this, " My friends, by 
 not drinking you are trying to browbeat nature. 
 You have your dances ; why do you dance ? Why 
 do you, in fact, smile ? If drink needs suppression, 
 so do the others. If the spirit wants exhilaration, 
 so does the body. We Athenians do not agree 
 with you, for we can drink without making beasts 
 of ourselves. You, Spartans, have no modera- 
 tion ; why do you not strive for moderation in 
 everything ? " 
 
 Now, Plato was not a toetotaller, and he 
 despised teetotallers. The Greeks really thought 
 that eating much was beastly, but drinking was 
 natural, and they always mixed wine with water. 
 When we have seen what Plato suggests, we ask 
 ourselvos, what is this question of drink which 
 
 248
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 exercises the minds of two such great countries as 
 England and America ? When a teetotaller talks 
 drink he refers to it as a passion by itself. But 
 that is not so, for those who oppose drink are just 
 as fanatical as those who espouse its cause. If 
 people come to the state when they crave for too 
 much drink, it is not because there is a diabolical 
 attraction for it. Do we imagine there could be 
 such an attraction for the wretched stuff that is 
 consumed by ordinary drinkers ? No, it is not 
 that, it is simply and solely the lack of amusement 
 that drives them to it. Between the amount of 
 amusement given to a nation, and the quantity 
 of drink consumed by that nation, there is a clear 
 proportion, we might almost say a fixed relation. 
 France seldom drinks to drunkenness, but has 
 plenty of amusement, an abundance of it. It is 
 true they have their absinthe drinkers, but they are 
 confined to a very small proportion of city life. 
 
 If we think of the nature of our passions we 
 shall see that it is not superposed but inherent 
 to the soul. It does not work in ordinary life 
 to curb these passions, but it is our duty to 
 educate them. It is not by killing and whipping 
 them to death that we shall gain our ends. 
 When will those temperance and teetotal people of 
 these two great countries learn that their efforts to 
 suppress the excessive drink habit by the methods 
 they adopt are bound to be futile ? In England 
 the bicycle has moderated excessive drinking. It 
 
 249
 
 PLATO 
 
 has been the greatest foe of the drink traffic, and 
 it has accomplished infinitely more than all the 
 talk of the teetotallers, and in a far more sane 
 and beneficial manner. There are other similar 
 ways of giving amusement, and unless these are 
 resorted to vice and excesses will break out in 
 one form or other, perhaps even in a worse form 
 than drink. Why should not the theatres be 
 opened on Sundays, when the people could go 
 and see such plays as Eichard III. ? They would 
 go in their thousands to enjoy it. Any one who 
 has seen Eichard III. really well played knows 
 what enjoyment it is. It would shake up their 
 vitals and give them something to think over, 
 instead of their going straight away and making 
 beasts of themselves. If we try to beat down 
 their passions and exterminate them, they will 
 take another glass. Passions are indeed the 
 legitimate children of the soul, and they must 
 have an outlet ; if we suppress them in one way 
 they will spring up and meet us in another. Let 
 us encourage bicycling, love of the theatre, love 
 of amusement, and the occupation of the tem- 
 perance and teetotal orators is gone. If we take 
 away the glass of drink from a man and give him 
 nothing else in its place, he will assuredly before 
 long get another glass, and if he cannot get that, 
 he will resort to opium or, what is ten times 
 worse, tea. Let us bear in mind that the passion 
 is from within, it is an organic part of our soul, 
 
 250
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 and counteractives of the external order will never 
 exterminate it; they have always failed. The 
 Carthaginians, as we know from ancient history, 
 were nearly absolute teetotallers, and the Komans 
 destroyed them. Neither a Hannibal nor a Hamil- 
 car could save them. England is the least drinking 
 country in Europe, where there are very many 
 who do not drink at all, whereas in France every- 
 body drinks, and yet drunkenness is extremely 
 rife here. Why are there such unsettled opinions 
 on the subject in this country ? Is it not necessary 
 to consider this a little, to ponder over it ? If 
 there be a doubt in our minds, let us give this 
 passion a benefit of this doubt, but do not let us 
 condemn it wholesale. In this passion we shall 
 find correlation with other passions. If we sup- 
 press it it will come out in other ways, it may be 
 in avarice, or religious fanaticism or in a hundred 
 other " isms " ; but guide it and educate it, and 
 we shall have it in the beautiful shape of the 
 chariot and the pair of horses under the proper 
 control of a master hand. 
 
 This is why we study philosophy, in order that 
 it may give us broader views, and make us see 
 that there is always another side to a question. 
 What we despise need not be altogether con- 
 demned ; our theories are always liable to be 
 upset, and when this is so, it is tragedy to a man. 
 It may be that we have not properly considered 
 what the nature of passion is. Let us, then, doubt 
 
 251
 
 PLATO 
 
 for a few days all our preconceived notions and 
 begin anew to consider out what we have been 
 discussing. Do not let us admit for one moment 
 that the passion for drink is the source of all evil. 
 In one nation we are told it is this, in another 
 that it is something quite different. As a wise 
 French judge once said, " Cherchez lafemme ; " we 
 really cannot be sure in which direction to look 
 for that source of all evil. In the United States 
 it has been proved beyond cavil by a long article 
 in the journal of the London Statistical Society, 
 that there are a greater number of murderers among 
 teetotallers than even among confirmed drunkards. 
 How can we say after this that drink is the 
 source of all evil ? Such a theory simply cannot 
 be maintained. If some people will still continue 
 to ascribe all crime to drink, let us agree with 
 them, if they will make that drink water, and let 
 us on that account eschew water. Perhaps, it 
 may be said, our notions of passions are entirely 
 wrong ; and we think passions are born to be 
 condemned. We have the passion for amusement 
 here, and there is also the passion for talk (not 
 in England, though), on parle anglais en se 
 taisant. But if wo moasure it all by what 
 Plato says, our passions are part of our human 
 nature. Why, then, should we be ashamed of 
 them? Let us on the contrary, use them in 
 moderation and under guidance, even if we are 
 forced to revise many of our ideals. 
 
 252
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 We come to another passion almost the reverse 
 of what we have been discussing, and it is 
 deliberately selected. It is the passion of avarice. 
 It may appear too sordid and too low. It is not 
 common here in England, except perhaps among 
 the rich, but in France it is a very common 
 passion permeating the whole nation. It is illus- 
 trated by Balzac in his " Eugenie Grandet," where 
 Pere Grandet is a type of avarice revolting in the 
 extreme, something low and dark. But when we 
 study it by the light of its results we shall find 
 that avarice in France has done an enormous 
 amount of good. A lady, who lived among them 
 and had studied them, said that these French are 
 saved by that besetting passion of theirs. It is 
 the basis of their thrift, and therefore of their 
 cheerfulness; and many of the evils of French 
 Society are counterbalanced by that one great 
 passion. They cultivate, indeed, this Goddess 
 of Thrift to a purpose, and their cheerfulness 
 comes from it, for they rejoice over every sou 
 they do not spend, and this habit, on a limited 
 income, obviously makes for the greater sum total 
 of cheerfulness than does a tendency to spend. 
 They get much out of life on very little, and 
 they have, besides, something always to fall back 
 on, however humble the French man or woman 
 may be. The Frenchman with nothing to fall 
 back upon has rarely been seen. And here we 
 have the potent cause of all their cheerfulness, 
 
 2 53
 
 PLATO 
 
 this almost mystical process of the passion of 
 avarice, which professors, who have not seen 
 life, will tell ns that it ought to be condemned. 
 But it would be very foolish to do anythiug 
 of the sort. It is in France the great venti- 
 lator of all things, and Society in France could 
 not exist without it. The idea that it is unbear- 
 able to part with a single sou is of course very 
 pernicious and very low, but every quality and 
 every passion, if viewed by itself, loses its per- 
 spective. In Grandet this passion reaches its 
 apotheosis, where he behaved as if he had. not 
 a penny. 
 
 We shall find new considerations and points 
 from which to view this passion when we read 
 the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, with its vivid 
 portrayal of barbarism and genius, whose life was 
 made up of a series of crimes. And so too with 
 the memoirs of Goethe, who went through more 
 than one gust of passion, but when it came to 
 writing it, he watered it down, perfumed it too 
 much, and that is why his chapter on passion is 
 so difficult to understand. Then, again, there is 
 Descartes, who had no passions at all ; and we 
 can understand that, as he was brought up by the 
 Jesuits. If we read his " Traite des passions de 
 l'ame," we see the Queen of Sweden, the famous 
 daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, wanting to know 
 from Descartes what is passion. And what was 
 his answer ? A very tame one. 
 
 254
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Now we pass on to a consideration of the third 
 passion which has been noted for present discus- 
 sion, the passion of love. Many people are 
 affectionate, but there is no passion in that ; the 
 real passion of human love is extremely rare, 
 it represents the diamond of truth. Among 
 animals there is no such thing as passion, 
 and that is why they are animals and look like 
 animals. All animals, however, are specialists, and 
 they so specialize that they can only do one thing 
 at a time. Passion, on the other hand, is sus- 
 tained ; and it is the special privilege of man to 
 have passions. We may think that this is not so, 
 that we know of animals driven by a force which 
 can be no other than passion. Yes, we do see 
 animals angry at periods, it may be at the time of 
 propagation of their species, or it may be a desire 
 for destructiveness, but it is only on the one thing 
 that he specializes, and vents the whole force of 
 his nature. It is not so with man — with him 
 passions are the artistic expressions of his uni- 
 versal. When we touch a man's universal we 
 touch his ruling passion ; when we speak of a 
 thing that is of nearest interest to our hearers 
 they become angry. What is it that stirs up an 
 Irishman or a Jew ? What makes them at once 
 angry ? Why, it is their patriotism, which is 
 so deep ; we touch their universals when we 
 speak to them of that. In the English it is 
 their pride. This, then, is the very seed of our 
 
 255
 
 PLATO 
 
 distinctive character, compared with animals. To 
 understand passions, we must understand the 
 universals ; to understand the universal behind 
 each nation we must find the ruling passions of 
 the individuals of that nation. And so it is that 
 the want of amusements drives people in this 
 country and in America to excessive drinking ; in 
 France thrift is behind cheerfulness. 
 
 The increment of existence is happiness, and 
 if we lose sight of this we drive our passions into 
 channels we have no right to drive them into. 
 Human beings were meant to be happy, and we 
 have no right to think that we are on the lowest 
 rungs of the ladder ; we are not. We are rising, 
 slowlyjjit may be, but surely, to where we shall 
 have a fuller idea of the truth of being, where 
 the great statue of Truth shall be unveiled to 
 us. Socrates has said that these universals 
 are for the gods alone, that we cannot aspire 
 to the whole truth, but only to a part of it. 
 Who has not heard, in this connection, of the 
 legend of that statue of Isis in Egypt, always 
 veiled over, and it was said that whoever saw 
 that statue would see truth. A young man 
 ventured one night to lift the veil and was found 
 the next morning dead by the statue. He had 
 seen truth, and he could not live. We must 
 not think that we are not meant to see those 
 great things ; we are meant to have the light, 
 but it must be slowly and surely. It will not 
 
 256
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 be with sacrilegious hands that we shall tear the 
 veil aside. 
 
 Passions, then/ are not low; they are the very 
 direct expressions of these universals, of our souls. 
 What will compare to that great passion which 
 we call patriotism ? Next to God it is the greatest 
 universal behind us. For it man will die over and 
 over again if it be possible. For it he would face 
 the Tamerlanes of Asia. It is to him greater than 
 the love of woman, of art, of knowledge, and a 
 ruling passion which is not ignoble. He will have 
 for it flames of enthusiasm which cannot be curbed. 
 But the highest universal of all behind us is that 
 of God. We have only to touch a man's god and 
 he will bring about such things as inquisitions 
 and auto-da-fes. Do not let us shudder at these. 
 Those were times when they took the universals 
 more severely than we do, and all had to go down 
 before it. If that was touched one's whole exist- 
 ence went into a blaze ; love of kindred, country, 
 everything went down before it ; and all because 
 God was their universal. 
 
 Is love, then, affection or a passion ? Should 
 we condone it, or treat it with pity ? Should it be 
 cultivated or suppressed? Is it proper? Is it 
 something that can be governed ? Let us turn 
 to Plato, and ask him, " What have you said on 
 it ? " We find him discussing it in his " Sympo- 
 sium ; " there we find a series of opinions given, 
 all from different aspects, and finally Socrates 
 
 257 s
 
 PLATO 
 
 winds up the discussion and tells us what he has 
 to say on love. Well, there is Platonic love, but 
 this love of Plato is generally misunderstood. 
 Plato did not mean at all what we understand 
 by the term Platonic love. A young man may 
 love a woman on the pure Platonic plane with 
 absolute passionlessness, but a mature man cannot. 
 Man in his hypocrisy says that he can ; but it is 
 impossible. What we mean by Platonic love is 
 out of the question between men and women of 
 mature age, such a thing does not exist. The 
 author has been held up to execration for this 
 view of his from Stratford-on-Avon upwards, but 
 he can afford to smile at these criticisms. What 
 Plato talked about was an ideal love, and that so far 
 from trying to repress our passions we should 
 cultivate them with a crco^poavvr). Other love he 
 spoke about which cannot be treated of here. 
 The pure Platonic "Epos was of man for man, 
 which to modern ideas is incomprehensible. It 
 was, however, possible between Greek and Greek, 
 such as the love between Socrates and Alcibiades. 
 But when we come to discuss love, What is it ? 
 Shall we have it in the form of a myth, or shall 
 we explain it in the satiric vein of Kabelais ? In 
 the " Symposium " we have the great Athenian 
 comedian, Aristophanes, explaining by a myth 
 how love originated. Originally man was a four- 
 fold creature, with four arms, and four legs, and 
 four eyes ; and he was a round creature, la nature 
 
 258
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 ronde, as the French say. He could not only walk 
 and jump, but he could also roll. And this made 
 him so exceedingly arrogant that Jove said he 
 could stand it no longer ; so he flashed forth his 
 lightning and halved him. So instead of four the 
 man became two-legged, with two arms and two 
 eyes, and he could roll no longer. Zeus thus with 
 one stroke doubled his subjects, and one half of 
 man goes about now ever seeking after the other 
 half, and this is Love. We are, every one of us, 
 seeking after our other half. Let us not again be 
 arrogant and bring upon us the wrath of the gods. 
 Perhaps we should again be halved, and then we 
 should all go on one leg only, we should be mono- 
 colists. There are already some modern monocolists 
 who have not even one leg to stand on. 
 
 We like to meet certain people because of 
 their affectionate nature. Montaigne was a man 
 of very keen insight ; but when a man asked him 
 why he loved a certain woman he could only 
 reply, " Je Vaime parce que c'est elle." We like to 
 meet a certain person because we like the quality 
 of that person. But it is not the quality we love, 
 it is the personality. Personality is the mightiest 
 of all universals, whether it be in religion or 
 in love ; and it is always a mystery with its 
 antithetically mingled elements in man and 
 woman. So thought the Greeks, who looked upon 
 the gods as for ever endowed with personalities, 
 with the most contrary things united in them. 
 
 259
 
 PLATO 
 
 Love with them was an absolute freedom, but it 
 was also an absolute bondage. In loving we are 
 in the realm of liberty, but we are also in the 
 realm of necessity at the same time. We feel 
 we have obtained what we have desired for all 
 time. Women have loved wrongly and have 
 known it, they were perfectly well aware of it. 
 They knew too that they were helpless to avoid 
 it. The desire of their life has been gratified, 
 something has happened ; they feel that the 
 universal has come to them. 
 
 Spinoza, who never loved, says that love is 
 cheerfulness, bliss, with the idea of the subject 
 that causes it. It is love, in fact, for one's ideal ; 
 and surely that man or that woman must feel that 
 they have gained ecstasy when they have reached 
 what they desired. In love it is not quality that 
 we seek after, but it is the personality. What did 
 Frederic Chopin see in Georges Sand ? She was 
 plain and not tall ; there was nothing interesting 
 about her, and even her unattractiveness was 
 enhanced by the doubtful habit of constantly 
 smoking cigarettes. Yet she could inspire the 
 Prelude which Chopin composed on seeing her 
 approach in a garden in Minorca, the greatest 
 piece of music ever compressed into a single page. 
 And we hear too of Alfred de Musset, and hosts 
 of men going crazy over that one woman. What 
 was it that caused it all ? It was certainly not 
 her beauty. In this is seen too the wisdom of 
 
 260
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Goethe, who did not select a high-born lady nor a 
 princess, but a simple bourgeoises his Gretchen, 
 rather pretty perhaps, to inspire his mighty 
 genius. What is this mystery of man and 
 woman? It was the very contrasts which gave 
 these men their universals. We see, then, that in 
 that passion we are really seeking for our com- 
 plements, and it is thus that we supplement our 
 whole existence, though it may be that very few 
 find those complements. 
 
 Let us now take an illustration from the other 
 side, that is of beauty in nations. There is no one 
 who has travelled, and has not been struck witli 
 beautiful faces in some countries, while they are 
 altogether wanting in others. We shall find 
 beauty in those nations where selection has been 
 left ^to love and not to money. The Latins are 
 less beautiful than the Anglo-Saxons. If we have 
 been to North Germany, we must have been 
 struck with the angularity, and the lack of charm 
 of the women there. The North German woman 
 is an uncharming person, and why ? It has 
 nothing whatever to do with race. The growth 
 of the Hanseatic towns brought great wealth into 
 North Germany, and money-bags married money- 
 bags. The result of it we see in a people of 
 severely plain aspect. It is so that ugliness 
 results. 
 
 There are not many money-bags in America, 
 although there are many money-bags in the hands 
 
 261
 
 PLATO 
 
 of the few. The Americans are a beautiful race. 
 An American would be insulted if mention is 
 made of a dowry in his wedding arrangements. 
 Hence the American people have become exceed- 
 ingly beautiful. Then the facilities for divorce 
 presented in the United States is an important 
 factor in the beautification process, ? giving the 
 people free scope to follow their own personality 
 in the quest of their universal. Love is realty at 
 the bottom of it all ; not money-bags or race, but 
 love. In France it is the mariage de convenance, all 
 a matter of dot. The French will always talk of 
 V amour, V amour! but really there is no amour 
 among them at all ; people generally talk most of 
 what they have not got, and what they do not 
 know. Amitie, yes, plenty of it, but not amour. 
 Indeed, so rare is V amour in France, that it 
 accounts for the decline of facial beauty of the 
 French woman. In movement it is otherwise ; 
 there she excels the woman of other nations. 
 So it was with Rome and Greece, both being 
 ruined by treating marriage as a matter of 
 business, not of love ; a secret thing not to be 
 talked about. 
 
 Though love is the most serious of all things, 
 the "Laws" and the "Republic" of Plato, the 
 greatest books which treat of everything connected 
 with life, are altogether deficient on that one 
 topic. He says that a woman will marry a man, 
 but he treats the subject quite with a secondary 
 
 262
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 consideration. Here is the reason why the 
 Greeks had no music. The Greek music was not 
 polyphonous like ours, because Greek love was 
 defective, poor, and sometimes altogether absent. 
 Their emotions were thus driven into channels 
 referring to male pursuits. Woman knows she 
 is the cause of music, it is she that inspires it. 
 It was Georges Sand, as we have seen, who made 
 the Prelude of Chopin ; without her it would not 
 have been composed. 
 
 If we come to modern men we find some who 
 are partly men and partly women. They come 
 near to that ideal of Aristophanes that we have 
 found illustrated in the myth, the ideal of the 
 nature ronde. Let us ask them what is the 
 influence of women? Ought passions to be sup- 
 pressed ? If we ask Spinoza, he will tell us that 
 he treats passions like geometrical figures. 
 Descartes, with his mistaken notions, thought 
 there were six original passions ; but that is not 
 true, there are but three, and those are cheerful- 
 ness, sadness, and desire. Spinoza goes on with 
 his analyses and comes back to these three things, 
 and he says that if we want love, then it must be 
 the big universal. It cannot be woman, then it 
 must be God, and we cannot ask God to love us 
 back again. Is love then altruistic or egoistic, or 
 is it both ? Love forms the substance of philo- 
 sophy, they are one and the same thing. When 
 Plato takes his highest flights of philosophic 
 
 263
 
 PLATO 
 
 thought, lie says that love and philosophy are 
 the same thing; and that love is truth. A man 
 loves, and the love becomes incarnate ; he feels 
 that his greatest ideal has become flesh. And 
 so every Ao'yos becomes flesh when it reaches 
 its highest form. What is it, this true and 
 unselfish love? Hegel can never solve it; no 
 Spinoza can solve it. Does it really exist ? The 
 only feeling of it is that we have it. But we see 
 this particular kind of love very rarely. To be 
 true and unselfish it must be disinterested or it 
 is not love at all. It must be unconditional, for 
 all universals must be absolute. Such love is 
 extremely rare, and we may never see it, travel 
 as much as we like. People like to love, and 
 think they do so, but is it the kind of love we 
 are describing? Francois Liszt, when a young 
 man, used to meet great ladies, and, asked if he 
 wished to love a great lady, said, " Well, the great 
 lady will have none of it." Liszt did not believe 
 in it either, for all things ideal are exceedingly 
 rare. He also said, with his accustomed satire, 
 when asked if he had seen one beautiful woman, 
 " J' en ai vu deux, mais pas pour longtemps" " Yes, 
 twice only ; but then it lasted only a few months." 
 Ideals cannot be realized altogether. It is quite 
 sufficient if we try to reach them. They are not 
 meant to be completely realized. 
 
 The Eros of Plato means the love of truth; 
 and it is not made for us. We have that apologue 
 
 264
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of Lessing, where he said, " If God really had in 
 one hand Trnth, and in the other only a desire 
 for Truth, which would you take ? " The answer 
 was, " I would fall into his left hand and ask for 
 the desire for Truth, because Truth is, after all, 
 only for God." We do not wish to realize, and 
 we never shall, the Platonic state ; but we only 
 wish to desire it, to try to attain to it, and that 
 is sufficient for us. What would life be without 
 passion ? It would be a monastery. We have, 
 however, learnt our great lesson from all this 
 discussion of Plato, and that is, not to despise the 
 passions. Surely, if we think ever so lightly, we 
 shall find in us passions for those numerous fads 
 and " isms " which we could set about to reform ; 
 it may be an anti-cigarette crusade, or an anti- 
 drink movement. Perhaps we have not begun 
 yet to sift down to the root of things. Let us 
 begin then, but, at any rate, let us give Plato the 
 benefit of any doubt we may have in our minds. 
 We shall then begin to see that, perhaps, after all, 
 we are not quite right in going about the things 
 of this life as we do ; perhaps, after all, passions 
 are not such despicable things. We shall find 
 too that if we suppress them they will inevitably 
 break out in some other way. Pent-up passions 
 lead to "isms" and fads; it may be religion, 
 drink, or a hundred other outlets; it is the 
 volcano within us, and we cannot shut it down 
 or extinguish it. 
 
 265
 
 PLATO 
 
 Such is the nature of passion, and we shall do 
 very much more for humanity if we try to work 
 for the suppression of the excesses of passion. 
 There are some passions which cannot be ex- 
 pressed too strongly. The man, for instance, who 
 has never loved a woman is no man, and never 
 will be. There he is, with his drawing-room 
 angularity, and his indifference to emotions ; and 
 what does all this lead to ? To nothing but other 
 and ugly passions. Let us not even be uniform, 
 even that is bad, it will not make un homme, metis 
 une omelette, without character, without passions. 
 No animal, as we have said, has passions. And 
 it is these passions which make great men and 
 great nations. Great nations have great revolu- 
 tions. The French have had their great revolu- 
 tion, the English have had theirs, and they are 
 both great nations. The American Civil War 
 was a very great revolution for that country. But 
 have the Austrians and the Germans and the 
 Eussians had theirs? That is the reason why 
 they have never been great, for as the national 
 type is, so is the individual. If we suppress 
 emotions, smother them, deny them expression, 
 what happens ? We know the history of the 
 Redskins. They suppressed all their passions 
 and emotions. They stalked through the streets 
 of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, past magnifi- 
 cent buildings and grand statuary, emotionless 
 and unmoved by astonishment, love, or anything. 
 
 266
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 It was a bottle of whisky tbat transformed and 
 destroyed him. Such is the story of the passions ; 
 and travel, history, and thought all combine to 
 support the view that he who despises passions 
 despises life. 
 
 267
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 
 In order to get a clearer idea of the subject we 
 have been discussing, it is necessary in all our 
 interests, to premise on one or two points which 
 were dealt with in the previous chapter ; more 
 especially as the author has been taken to task for 
 certain facts which were given from statistics 
 which were beyond question. 
 
 Now, stammering is held to be a sign of 
 solidity in thinking, and when a statement of 
 fact is made it is by some held to be wrong if 
 the person who made the statement did not 
 stammer. If, in fact, such people do not agree 
 with the inference that is drawn from facts of 
 unquestionable accuracy, they at once come to 
 the conclusion that the facts had not been con- 
 sidered very carefully. It was stated in the last 
 chapter that the number of homicides committed 
 by teetotallers in the United States in a given 
 period was greater than the number committed 
 by drunkards. This statement has been disputed 
 by a " scholar of Portobello Road " in a letter to 
 a paper, and the inference drawn from the facts 
 is said to be absurd. That some care was taken 
 
 268
 
 THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 in arriving at the inference will be evident by a 
 perusal of the records of the Koyal Statistical 
 Society of 1892, wherein will be found the sta- 
 tistics showing that in 1890 in the United States 
 the murders committed by drunkards was slightly 
 over nineteen per cent., while those committed by 
 teetotallers was over twenty per cent. Forty per 
 cent, are accounted for thus, and there is nothing 
 to show to what class the remaining sixty per 
 cent, of the numbers belonged. The clear in- 
 ference from this is that drink is not the source, 
 much less the chief source, of all crime. A man, 
 as a rule, commits a crime from reasons which 
 are quite independent of the question of drink ; 
 there may be many motives, avarice being often 
 one of the great incentives. It may be stated, 
 then, that when a statement of fact has been made 
 in these chapters, be it ever so broadly, that fact 
 has been ascertained with the very greatest care. 
 
 Another point raised by the discussion the last 
 time was the question of generalization. One 
 thing is quite clear, and this is stated with no 
 sense of recrimination, that if we cannot generalize 
 on a subject, we cannot think of that subject at 
 all. This is the one principle to which we must 
 devote our special attention, for it has been said 
 that it is absurd to generalize on man or woman. 
 Nothing is truer than that thinking is thinking 
 in universals, and that if we have not obtained a 
 knowledge of the universal we cannot have a 
 
 269
 
 PLATO 
 
 knowledge of the particular. If we cannot gene- 
 ralize on man or woman, then it is a pity to waste 
 our time in paying any attention to what philo- 
 sophy or psychology may teach us. We may find 
 man more easy to generalize on than woman ; the 
 latter is so volatile, so wonderful that we cannot 
 generalize on her quite so easily. Perhaps it 
 would he well to prop up one's views on gene- 
 ralization with the views of a man who was a deep 
 thinker and was also a perfect gentleman, a man 
 who never forgot his bonhommie and who invariably 
 gave his own views in his books with the utmost 
 modesty, so much so that he actually pointed out 
 his own mistakes, and was honest enough to show 
 where his inferences might be at fault. It was 
 quite touching, the way in which Charles Darwin 
 left to students to work out his great idea of 
 generalization. In his famous book, " The Origin 
 of Species," which is easy to understand and as 
 light as down, he tries to generalize, but before 
 he begins to generalize on plants, on stones, on 
 animals, he first goes to the expert breeders and 
 gardeners and botanists, and collects all the 
 information he can as to what they had to say 
 and had experienced in their particular line. It 
 is the expert growers of the " ribstone pippin" 
 or the "jargonelle," the expert breeders of the 
 " shorthorns " that, Darwin says, are the most 
 refractory to any sort of generalization ; and yet 
 it is Darwin who has convinced us in the " Origin 
 
 270
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of Species " that the several breeds and species are 
 all descended from one and the same parent stock. 
 If Darwin has not made all his points clear he has 
 at least made one point clear, and that is that we 
 can generalize. As an example, let us take the case 
 of a diamond, that beautiful and brilliant stone, and 
 the hardest known substance. It is totally different 
 from the lead of a lead pencil which we reduce to 
 powder when we sharpen it. Both again differ from 
 a piece of coal which we bum in our grates. In 
 the year 1750 several chemists had an idea that 
 there was a universal behind all this, and it was 
 left to Scheele to prove that the diamond, the lead, 
 the coal were all one and the same thing ; all 
 modifications of the one parent substance, carbon. 
 In the earlier days of science such men as 
 Gesner wrote huge folios on the various subjects 
 which went to make science ; but science in the 
 future, instead of becoming more discursive, will 
 become more condensed. The tendency will be 
 for fewer and smaller books, as we gradually tend 
 towards reducing many things to one universal. 
 Science is really only a progress in mental steno- 
 graphy by means of generalizations. We are told 
 that the man who generalizes is frequently mis- 
 taken, and becomes paradoxical. Let us at once 
 admit that this is so. But the prouder a person 
 is, the more self-assertive he is, and the more 
 adverse to all ideas of generalization in matters 
 human, so much the more unlikely is he to reach 
 
 271
 
 PLATO 
 
 the universal. Such a man naturally thinks him- 
 self a cosmos, a universe to himself, and is 
 therefore averse to looking for any other universal 
 behind him. But there are others too, not so 
 self-intoxicated, who think that there is very 
 much in it, and they are not so much averse to 
 this feeling of generalizing; a feeling that over- 
 rules them. It may take a long time, but in the 
 end it must prevail, and this feeling is of some- 
 thing, the universal behind them. Darwin thus 
 generalized in the animate world, and Scheele in 
 the inanimate, in a way that Plato had despaired 
 of doing. Things that Descartes, in the seven- 
 teenth century, said could never be generalized 
 are now being taught daily in the elementary 
 schools. Without this generalization philosophy 
 becomes only a pleasant chat about things that 
 neither he that talks nor he that listens can 
 possibly understand. If therefore we mean to 
 proceed with philosophy in its true sense, we 
 must start with the idea that we can generalize. 
 We may perhaps find it difficult to generalize 
 on stones. We may find it still more difficult 
 to generalize on plants. But generalization is 
 above all very difficult when we come to the 
 human heart which has more monsters in it than 
 all the seas, more flowers in it than all the 
 gardens, and more stars in it than all the heavens. 
 That generalization is difficult does not mean that 
 it is per se absurd or impossible. Let us then 
 
 272
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 try to generalize, but let us also at the same time 
 try to avoid falling into errors. 
 
 Careful generalization could do much even on 
 the subject of love which is the most complicated 
 and the most mysterious of all subjects. It is 
 well illustrated by the famous myth of Plato on 
 the origin of love. Love, he says, is the unity 
 of the universal and the particular. That in itself 
 is bewildering, and we rack our brains to find out 
 how we can reconcile this combination of the two 
 extremes of egoism and altruism ; the love of man 
 for woman, of parent for child, of man for state, 
 the love of music, art, etc. Is it egoistic or 
 altruistic, or is it a mixture of both ? It is diffi- 
 cult to decide what is the truth about it, but 
 we have it given to us by Plato in his myth 
 in the " Symposium." It is greater than anything 
 Schopenhauer could write. The only modern 
 writer who might have written of it as well as 
 Plato did was Nietzsche. He had the charm 
 and style of Plato ; his German was absolutely 
 unique ; his writings are as blocks of chiselled 
 marble which he shies at us ; but he was unfor- 
 tunately mad. And his insanity took the peculiar 
 form of misogyny. This being so we must turn 
 our attention at once to Plato's myth of the 
 origin of love. There was Aphrodite, celebrating 
 her birthday with great festivities. The gods and 
 goddesses were all there, drinking nectar and 
 eating ambrosia, and among them was Poros. 
 
 273 T
 
 PLATO 
 
 All was excellent, they ate and they drank, they 
 sang and they danced. They then went into the 
 garden, where Poros (Abundance), who had be- 
 come a trifle too uneasy with his feasting and was 
 heavy with divine drink, lay himself down to sleep. 
 There then came along a ragged, wretchedly 
 dressed woman named Penia (Penury) ; and she 
 thought to herself that where all these festivities 
 had been going on she might get something to eat 
 and to drink. So she passed into the house un- 
 noticed, and having satisfied her wants in food and 
 drink, she walked out into the garden. Now this 
 woman, though poor and ragged, was very beautiful. 
 Poros awoke, saw her and met her, and the off- 
 spring of their love was Eros. And by this myth 
 Plato would teach us that love is the offspring 
 of the two extremes, godlike abundance and the 
 beggarly lack of everything — of Plenty and Pen- 
 ury. It illustrates the largeness demanded by love 
 in all things ; a generous, wholesome amplitude, 
 nothing mean, small, or narrow. It is through the 
 mouth of Diotima, the prophetess of Mantinea, 
 that Plato tries to teach these great truths of love. 
 It is from the mouth of this virgin priestess that 
 Socrates extracts the deepest secrets of this 
 mysterious passion, thus indicating the extremely 
 delicate nature of the subject. 
 
 In all our greatest literature, in the literature 
 of the Germans and others, we find poets instinc- 
 tively following the lines of Plato's myth, in this 
 
 274
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 idea of love as ail immense thing that questions 
 not nor specifies. It is always a rich man, high 
 up in the social scale, who loves the ordinary 
 hourgeoise. Goethe excelled in the portrayal of 
 this, where he contrasted the wealthy Faust with 
 the simple Gretchen. Here was the love of Faust 
 as that of Poros, and beside it the love of Helen 
 of Sparta becomes a very tedious thing. When 
 Goethe became old we do not find the same charm 
 in his writings ; he had lost this touchstone of 
 nature in his "Egmont." Shakespeare did not 
 give to love such fine expression as Goethe, because 
 his lovers, Romeo and Juliet, unlike Faust and 
 Gretchen, were on the same plane ; they were 
 too respectable. When Romeo loves Juliet there 
 is no Poros and no Penia. It is all thoroughly 
 respectable, they must first go to church. And 
 so, in order to bring out the passions, external 
 difficulties have to be created, such as the feud 
 between the two families ; that is, false difficulties 
 are put in the way of love to create a path for 
 passion. It is not so with Goethe, for when Faust 
 loves Gretchen he meets a tiny little hourgeoise, 
 and then it is that we see the full force of passion. 
 This is the true touchstone, which brings out 
 the full chord and inspires the music of Gounod. 
 Others will write music to the same theme, as it 
 is truth and not fictitious circumstances that will 
 ever inspire music. And no music will ever 
 exhaust that love of Faust and Gretchen, it is 
 
 275
 
 PLATO 
 
 so unspeakably simple. He loves her, and the 
 contrast is there. The contrast need not be a 
 social one, but there must be a contrast. 
 
 Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that a 
 man loves a woman on account of the child, and 
 he says this is his own original idea ; he thought 
 himself the intellectual centre of the world. But 
 we have this self-same idea given to us by Plato 
 in the most open fashion ; that man wants 
 immortality in the flesh, so he marries, because 
 his child is to him immortality. He likes con- 
 trasts, and children were given a medium of 
 qualities by the union of contrasts ; by the union 
 of Poros and Penia we have the true offspring 
 Eros, the essence of love. Do we not see such 
 contrasts attracting each other, in the passion of 
 the dark-haired for the blonde, in the northerner 
 for the southerner, in those with bad teeth for 
 those with good teeth ? It is not necessarily a 
 contrast in social standing, but an inner contrast. 
 We find it exemplified in the finest poem of 
 Heine, this longing of the northern men for 
 southern women. It is the spruce of the north 
 dreaming of the palm-tree of the south ; and it 
 strikes the keynote of the poem of nature. The 
 more we think of it the more we see that in the 
 myth of Plato there is the real essence of love. 
 
 It is seen too in the familiar phenomenon of 
 the love of a very young man for a woman much 
 older than himself. We have an example of this 
 
 276
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 in the famous love of Napoleon for Josephine, 
 when he was twenty-six and she thirty-four, 
 though, of course, she said she was only twenty- 
 nine. Where is Poros, where is Penia, here? 
 One Frenchman went so far as to say, " Cet 
 enfant se souvient de sa nourrice," but there are 
 other reasons without our accepting that one. 
 Let us constantly keep before our minds that 
 somewhere, if we look for it, there is a Poros, 
 somewhere a Penia. A young man recalls the 
 tenderness lavished on his childhood, which in 
 this country he loses too soon. In England, early 
 youth is passed in training for the responsibilities 
 of the State, and the young man leads, as it were, 
 a solitary life without coming in contact with 
 women of his age. Consequently his emotions 
 are suppressed. Thus, when he meets a young 
 girl who ought to be his supplement, he finds in 
 her too much of the abundance of youth ; her 
 brightness, her brisk life, and her vivacity over- 
 whelm and shock him. What he wants is some- 
 thing more calm, some one more tranquille, which 
 can only be got from older women. The young 
 girl is too Poros, her abundance of youth is a 
 shock to him ! Here there is disproportion, and 
 he immediately goes and falls in love desperately 
 with a woman of thirty or thirty-five. 
 
 One of the generalizations leading from this is 
 that man invariably loves one and the same type 
 of woman. She may change in colour, face, or 
 
 277
 
 PLATO 
 
 stature, but it will always be the same type that 
 he will love, even if he loves three or four times. 
 The same nature it will be, with the same attrac- 
 tions, which will be the complements to his own 
 nature. If we want to find an example of this 
 generalization leading to the understanding of 
 universals there is no better illustration than in 
 music, which is the philosophic exponent of all 
 arts. Thus, the scale is the universal, the bar 
 is the particular. If we catch the essence of 
 all the scales, we know that we are generalizing ; 
 and the lack of interest in generalizing is the 
 cause of our lack in the knowledge of musical 
 universals, or the passion for music. Thus we 
 find all great composers having predilections for 
 certain keys. Schumann, when he wanted to 
 denote the most mysterious emotions, always did 
 it in G minor. He was mad on it, and he com- 
 posed his most passionate things in this key. 
 Beethoven, on the other hand, preferred F major, 
 or D minor, its complement. 
 
 And so it is that in his sentiments man follows 
 one type. He may change as he grows older, his 
 tastes may become more refined ; but if we want to 
 generalize we will find that the woman a man 
 loved when he was young was of the same type as 
 the woman he loves when he is old. And why 
 should this be so ? Because in love there is the 
 attraction of one of the greatest and holiest of uni- 
 versals, which is personality. A personality could 
 
 278
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 ouly be one. To conceive of more than one has 
 never been known. We all want to have the bliss 
 of reaching this one thing, this personality which 
 is the basis of all love. Passions and sentiments 
 are good, but not when they are excessive and 
 all-absorbing as illustrated by Balzac in his 
 " Cousine Bette," where we see the terrible 
 cruelty of being driven by an all-absorbing passion. 
 He tells us all this with his sublime love of truth 
 that, although the legitimate wife of the hero was 
 infinitely more beautiful than the other women he 
 ran after, still he was driven on and on by his 
 passions, by the excessive force of that sentiment 
 called lust, to such an extent as never to be 
 satiated. It is precisely so with men who are ex- 
 cessively proud. It is not love but passion that 
 drives them. Just in this way were the Prussians 
 driven by pride. Never were they so cocky as 
 after that memorable day of Jena when Napo- 
 leon broke them into fragments. 
 
 We are not speaking of these passions when 
 held in moderation, when they are passions indeed, 
 and we may be proud of them. Such passions 
 indeed make the most of life, they make history. 
 They are better than the passion which cares 
 only for personalities ; better than the passion 
 which fanatics call the love of God when they 
 only love themselves, and call those who are 
 driven by such passions saints, which is all very 
 dubious. There is such a thing as the love of God, 
 
 279
 
 PLATO 
 
 for we find Diotima saying, " I will bring you to 
 the greatest of all secrets, to the knowledge of 
 the greatest of all personalities, which is God." 
 And this holy passion is so absorbing that it needs 
 no return. According to the sacred words of 
 Spinoza, if we love God we must not wish Him 
 to love us. Goethe too expresses the same senti- 
 ments, though from an opposite extreme, wenn Ich 
 dich Hebe, was gehts dich an ? I love you, why do 
 you trouble about it ? But in whatever way we 
 look at love we find that that great passion wants 
 the combination of great universals. We feel 
 convinced that love is that great desire for per- 
 sonality which will not be satisfied until we reach 
 the essence of all— the Highest. And the essence 
 of philosophy is the ideal, whilst we have only the 
 desire for the ideal. 
 
 It is a sad note to strike ; but there is no deny- 
 ing the fact that English people are all hopeless 
 and incorrigible optimists ; the Germans are great 
 pessimists, and the Italians are perhaps greater 
 pessimists than the Germans. The Italian poetry 
 of Leopardi is even a worse philosophy in pes- 
 simism than that of Schopenhauer is in prose. 
 What about the love of other men, of humanity 
 and of other nations ? We hear people talking of 
 this universal love among nations and love of 
 humanity in general, but such a thing is impos- 
 sible. The most sacred religions teach us that we 
 should love others as we love ourselves ; but no, 
 
 280
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 such a thing cannot be. There are more students 
 of history than there are philosophers, and there 
 is no historical support to such an ideal being ever 
 possible. No Greek has ever said that such a 
 thing was possible or to be desired. If he had 
 he would have been laughed to scorn in the 
 market-place of Athens, though every Greek did 
 for other men more than for themselves. If they 
 had our way of expressing these things they would 
 call them Oriental exaggerations and impossi- 
 bilities. Plato never assumed that wars would 
 cease, for warriors were indispensable in his ideal 
 State. If any one had talked to him of the Utopia 
 of eternal peace he would probably have left the 
 room. He would think that it was not only not 
 possible, but not even desirable ; that, in fact, it 
 could not be accomplished. If love is really the 
 desire of unity of one's self with personality, then 
 such an ideal is out of the question. There is 
 no honesty in politics, no, there is no truth or 
 honesty in international courtesies or relations, 
 and there never will be. At the bottom of the 
 heart of every nation there is much need of a 
 great hatred, as there is of great love ; and if 
 they have not this hatred they will make it. 
 Hatred is thought to be the opposite of love, 
 but it is not so ; it is really a sort of love. The 
 opposite of love is ambition, and when a man or 
 woman is seized by ambition love disappears. 
 The arrival of ambition means a cold douche on 
 
 281
 
 PLATO 
 
 all love. Many men after forty or forty-five, and 
 women after twenty-five or thirty, lose love and 
 acquire ambition, they become what the French 
 call des arrivistes. There is that story of Bismarck 
 and Pauline Lucca. It was Bismarck who said, 
 " I have had many passions in my life and they 
 were like lions in strength, but finally the lion of 
 ambition ate up the others. I do not love Pauline 
 as much as my ambition ; I would like to, but I 
 cannot." He left this world without having loved 
 more than his wife. So we see that ambition, when 
 it sets in, will freeze out the last sparks of love. 
 
 Now let us consider another sort of passion 
 which is exceedingly powerful, and that is, the 
 passion for amusement. The upper class is held to 
 be decidedly frivolous, and, truly, amusement can 
 go far to the abuse of all our higher qualities. But 
 where nations come to grief, with reference to 
 amusements, is in the lack of them. Instances 
 of this will be found in the Corsicans, who have 
 their vendetta ; in the Mainates, the alleged direct 
 descendants of the Spartans. These latter live in 
 towers in their villages, constantly armed. Here 
 they live for years, and, perhaps, never leave them, 
 and they will shoot down any one they think 
 was guilty of an insult to one of their ancestry, 
 it may be a hundred and fifty years ago. Prosper 
 Merimee had expert knowledge of the life of these 
 people, and his novels are the best dealing with 
 the subject. In his story of Colomba he tells us 
 
 282
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 of the girl who moved heaven and earth to carry 
 out her vendetta, and to kill the man who had 
 insulted her family. With these people this is 
 but the ricochet work of their passion, and why, 
 we ask, does it break out in vendetta ? Because 
 they are so utterly lazy ; it comes from their doing 
 absolutely nothing, and, in consequence, brooding 
 over their imagined wrongs, until they become 
 like the vulture that eats out the liver of the 
 famous mythical hero. If they were given some- 
 thing to do, something to distract them and make 
 their life active, all their vendetta would auto- 
 matically disappear, as it has already disappeared 
 from Central Italy, where it was at one time also 
 prevalent. We should, of course, then have no 
 such thrilling stories as " The Corsican Brothers." 
 Again, the Spaniards are the most sagacious 
 of nations. They have an amazing power of 
 language, and have been very great in their 
 day. Why have they their bull-fights ? These 
 are ghastly spectacles, watched by thousands of 
 men and women. There is nothing elevating about 
 them ; perhaps even the bulls have been drugged, 
 and are thus trained to the fight, and undersized 
 ones too are selected. But whether it be death 
 to the bull or to the toreador, this terrible sight 
 is witnessed by thousands of eager people, with 
 eyes jutting out of their faces. The cause of all 
 this is laziness, and nothing else. Let them have 
 an enterprising life, let mines and railways be 
 
 283
 
 PLATO 
 
 opened up, and these bull-fights will at once dis- 
 appear. The Hungarians have no bull-fights, but 
 they have their dances. Their laziness has an 
 outlet in their violent dance, the Csardas. This 
 is different to the dance in England, which a 
 Hungarian would look upon as a melancholy 
 polishing of the floor. The inane dancing at the 
 " Empire " and the " Alhambra " is a proof of 
 the insipidity of the amusements which satisfy 
 the English people, for a nation which is very 
 active does not require its amusements to be 
 very violent or excessive. While in Corsica, in 
 Sardinia, where they have nothing to do, it is 
 cayenne that they want, and they take it in 
 excessive amusements. Travellers will tell us 
 these people are uncivilized. When we go to 
 Spain and admire anything, we are told it is all 
 ours ; it may be a person's watch, or his country, 
 or his buildings. It is the lazy habit of theirs, 
 the ricochet effect of sentiment where they want 
 something to amuse them. 
 
 Each nation must have its opium, and we ask 
 ourselves what do these people really pay for 
 their indulgence in this species of an opiate ? In 
 England " isms " take the place of the dance and 
 the bull-fight. In America it is themselves ; the 
 idea of their own greatness is their opium; and 
 everything is always " all right." If we were to 
 say half as much as this in America we would 
 never say the other half. The Italians have 
 
 284
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 their Tarantella, which is simply a ghastly dance. 
 They have nothing whatever to do, so they put 
 into their imagination all sorts of horrors. It is 
 not for ns to condemn all these things, but to 
 strive to see what is their correlation. Let the 
 English go and open up mines and railways in 
 Spain, and they would automatically kill the 
 bull-fights, instead of subscribing money for their 
 suppression as they do now. Similar occupations 
 would make the Csardas, the Tarantella, and the 
 vendetta disappear. The passions are the essential 
 features of humanity, and it is our duty to try 
 and get at the root of them. The causes of the 
 passions being diverted into wrong channels in the 
 cases we have been discussing, are laziness, inertia, 
 disgust of work ; and having found the causes, and 
 the correlations they give rise to, we should not 
 find it difficult to apply the remedies. 
 
 We now approach another question, What is 
 the relation between age and passion ? Does 
 passion cease with age ? Historically speaking 
 it does not. Horace Walpole once asked this 
 question of a great French lady of mature years, 
 and her reply was, "Monsieur! il faut s'adresser 
 aux dames plus vieilles que moi." This lady was not 
 only oVun certain age, but d'un age certain. The 
 question then arises, has mature age no passion ? 
 Yes, it has ; but there are passions of kinds, some 
 are warm and some are cold. It is the colder 
 passions which belong to mature age ; and they 
 
 285
 
 PLATO 
 
 are envy, jealousy, avarice, vanity, the love of 
 domination. These go through all ages, and the 
 older we get the deeper get the channels of these 
 particular passions, because then our passions are 
 narrowed down to these few. In age men do not 
 dream of every nice woman nor of a poem, their 
 passions get restricted to a love of domination. 
 All the sages continue to tell us to govern our- 
 selves and to let others alone, for they see the evils 
 of domination. It will never do in philosophy to 
 make observations on ourselves; to get at the 
 true relation of things we must deal with masses. 
 So, with regard to domination, our best example 
 will be in the popes, the great majority of whom 
 were men of very mature years, perhaps between 
 fifty-five and sixty-five years of age. What do 
 we find in them but the strongest passion for 
 domination. It is ambition pure and simple, 
 whatever may be the sous-entendus or the side 
 issues connected with their history. There is the 
 history of Gregory VII., one of the most celebrated 
 of the popes, who died in 1085 ; though feeble 
 and broken-down in health he refused to give in 
 when deposed by the Emperor, but retaliated by 
 excommunicating him and compelling him to do 
 penance. We have Bliicher doing great deeds at 
 Waterloo at the great age of seventy- three. We 
 have, too, the record of the terrible enmity of 
 the old Venetian Doge who was blinded by the 
 Byzantine Emperor, and swore he would not die 
 
 286
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 till he had taken the tower of Constantinople. 
 His passion for revenge was gratified when, at the 
 age of ninety, he was the first to be hoisted up 
 the battlements of that great city in the hour 
 of victory. With regard to love, to say that old 
 age has no passions is untenable. We would not 
 like to say that a woman of fifty or sixty could 
 not love as madly as a woman of twenty. It is 
 true that she hates the idea of being ridiculous, 
 but the subject is an extremely delicate one, and 
 we do not know how to generalize upon it. As 
 to the passion of envy, it knows no age whatever ; 
 we have it in the very young, and it is very 
 marked as we grow older. 
 
 In America the majority of people are not 
 old. It is one of the first things which strikes a 
 traveller, who is received there with all urbanity, 
 suavity, and the joyousness of youth. He looks 
 upon it as an extraordinary fact that the bulk of 
 the American people should be so young, some- 
 where between twenty and forty-five. In Spain 
 on the other hand, though in their great politesse 
 they will hand over everything to a stranger, still 
 all is sombre and imbued with the spirit of age. 
 In fact the reason for the existence of the dark 
 passion in Spain is to be found in there being so 
 many old people there, and they are all so old- 
 fashioned too in their ideas. If we travel in 
 Germany we shall find the ordinary German 
 peasant so unyielding, and this is because all 
 
 287
 
 PLATO 
 
 passion is absolutely frozen up in him. Whether 
 we be young or old these are all matters worthy 
 of our study ; they are matters, too, worthy of the 
 careful study of the legislator. For it is only by 
 such careful study of the causes and effects of 
 passion, and of the correlations of the passions 
 with the ordinary action of life that we can hope 
 to remedy their excesses and defects, and so to 
 direct and control them to the ultimate good of 
 the nation and of humanity. 
 
 Plato, in the seventh book of his " Laws," makes 
 his famous remarks about games and amusements. 
 He says these are most important things to con- 
 sider in the well-being of a child ; and that if 
 amusements are not perfectly regulated the State 
 will go to pieces. What is the practice with us 
 in this subject? We are continually, day after 
 day, throwing new toys, made in Germany, at 
 the heads of our children. And this is positively 
 absurd, for it leaves no scope for the imagination 
 of the child to have any play. Plato is very 
 precise about this. What he says is that it is a 
 psychological error to give any toys to a child, as 
 every child will invent his own toy. A twig will 
 do for him, and with this he will make a king 
 or a giant. It is absolutely true that the chief 
 reason of the French Eevolution was the entirely 
 changed nature of the games of the French 
 children which was brought about thirty or forty 
 years before the Eevolution took place. And this 
 
 288
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 change was largely due to the publication of 
 Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," which was 
 devoured by the children of France, causing them 
 to change their thoughts and ideas. It was this 
 that made the Dantons, the Robespierres, the 
 Mirabeaus, of the Revolution. Our historians do 
 not go to the bedrock of psychological causes aud 
 effects. If they did they would find it all in the 
 letters and memoirs of the time, in those of 
 Galiani, of Mdme. D'Epinay. It is the latter 
 who says, in one of her letters, " Who is this 
 Crusoe that I saw all the children playing at, 
 this Crusoe?" 
 
 Let us then be very careful how we deal with 
 these excessive passions of ours. Let us study 
 them in the first place, and let us at the same 
 time try to generalize about them. If we allow 
 ourselves to be influenced by the general con- 
 demnation of everything connected with the 
 passions, and give a ready ear to what any 
 faddist will tell us, then there is not much to 
 talk about or much hope for us. We should be 
 finally convinced in our minds that the subject, 
 and how we deal with it, has a very great 
 social importance, for Sociology is the natural 
 complement of philosophy. 
 
 It is difficult to scrutinize fads that have been 
 in vogue at different times and to deduce the 
 effects they have produced on a nation. For 
 strange effects have strange causes. What gave 
 
 289 u
 
 PLATO 
 
 most English families of the upper classes the 
 gout iu the eighteenth century was the treaty of 
 1703 with Portugal, which allowed the heavy wines 
 of Portugal to come into the country and to be- 
 come cheaper than the French wines. The wines 
 were much too heavy and ill-suited to the climate. 
 Hinc Mae laclirymael So, too, with the treaty 
 with France of I860 there came in again the light 
 French ordinaires to counteract the mischief done. 
 To study these subjects in connection with human 
 passions will do more good than condoning with 
 the ill-effects of wrongly directed desires and 
 fads. It is always difficult to find the right 
 thing, but it is withiu the power of all of us to 
 strive after it. If in reading Plato we do not 
 quite understand him, we will yet learn one thing 
 from him ; if we have evils he will show us what 
 those evils are due to. If we try to make the 
 Corsican, for instance, more active, the vendetta 
 will cease. We shall not succeed in changing 
 the character of nations by preachiDg, but we 
 shall assuredly do so by giving tliem activity. 
 Apart from the purely philosophical standpoint, 
 there is also the social reason why we should 
 strive in all we do, and in the way we do it, for 
 the good of humanity. 
 
 290
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 We next come to the subject of Art, and we 
 ask what are the most essential features to be 
 found with regard to Art in the philosophy of 
 Plato ? Every one who has studied Plato knows 
 that he is shy of definitions. It is a sign of 
 dilettante-ism. to ask constantly for definitions ; 
 they are always such dangerous and incomplete 
 things. If we cannot with ease express things 
 or explain their meaning, how can we crystallize 
 them in a definition? Now, Plato is in earnest 
 in everything he does and says, and especially 
 with reference to this subject of Art; and he 
 says that it is possible to tell even what Art is 
 in a definition. He illustrates it, he expresses 
 it in all sorts of ways, and he forms ideas about 
 it which are some of the deepest secrets of Plato. 
 His ideas were not altogether new; they must 
 have been in the minds of many Greeks of his 
 time and before him. But in him they developed 
 as ideas which were greater than his own mind, 
 and ultimately that mind of his gave them shape ; 
 a mind that was artistic enough to grasp their 
 full significance and to give them expression. 
 
 291
 
 PLATO 
 
 He it is who is the originator of the doctrine 
 of ideas, and that doctrine has become famous 
 and worthy of study; and it has occupied the 
 minds of philosophers and the greatest thinkers 
 for centuries. What is this doctrine of ideas ? 
 We have such things as longitude, quantity, 
 quality, and they are all forms of ideas, but these 
 are not what Plato meant when he talked of 
 ideas. It may seem somewhat of an arid subject 
 to go fully into the meaning of Plato, but it is 
 necessary to try and get at that meaning, and 
 when we have made it clear to our minds, it will 
 help us in the end to know the true relation 
 which art bears to philosophy. We shall know 
 then what real art is, it will help us in the 
 enjoyment of art, and we shall be able to give 
 our judgment on the different phases of art. 
 
 Art is indeed one of the greatest phenomena 
 of the world. It is art in its highest sense that 
 we are dealing with. The notion entertained by 
 Puritans and some others that it was mere enjoy- 
 ment or pleasure, or something that tickled our 
 nerves and lent itself to all sorts of forbidden 
 representations, is too puerile to be discussed. It 
 is the most serious of things, and also totally 
 human. The charm of Nature is very great, but 
 it is not art ; but with us humans it is our proper 
 demesne, and we are never more at home than 
 we are in art. To us art is the greatest of all 
 consolations, and we are never weary of it; for 
 
 292
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 we feel that we are participating in the highest 
 of all forces, the creative force. In art we are 
 being impelled by the great creative force behind 
 us. Creation was not the work of a moment. 
 Nature is constantly being created and recreated 
 out of nothing; she is ever unfolding, recurring, 
 progressing. And. that great force which has 
 created and is incessantly creating all around us, 
 we instinctively feel is within us when we are 
 dealing with art. 
 
 Art is not confined only to music and painting 
 and sculpture ; although these are great expres- 
 sions enabling us to reach out to the ideal. Art 
 means anything which has a system. Philosophy 
 is an art, an art of concepts, where we put rhythm 
 and cadence into our thoughts, and thus form 
 them into a system. We do with philosophy 
 precisely as we would with blocks of marble ; we 
 give them a delicate chiselling of a line or a 
 curve, and they begin to live. And so it is 
 with tones; it is by the systematic handling ol 
 them that we make music. It may, again, be a 
 novel or a drama. Anything, then, which we 
 have formed in such a manner that we have 
 given to it rhythm and cadence and shape, is 
 art. This is the wide side of art, and it is in 
 this sense that we shall discuss it. 
 
 Between nature and ourselves there is some- 
 thing we can never bridge over; we can never 
 read all there is hidden in her great book. We 
 
 293
 
 PLATO 
 
 can spell out a few words from it ; a poet, a few 
 words; a painter, a few more; a philosopher or 
 thinker, perhaps some more ; but what is it after 
 all? What we long for is something human. 
 We can read, or as so often happens, misread 
 the human face ; but between humans something 
 goes from one to another which makes them 
 understand each other. And that is what we 
 meant when we said in a previous chapter that 
 we shall never understand plants. Botanists 
 have studied and classified their every detail; 
 their leaves, their stems, their growth ; but there 
 are hundreds of phenomena connected with them 
 which they can never analyze or understand. 
 But when it comes to humanity, and we are 
 dealing with the human soul, it is in art, which 
 is our special demesne, where we understand the 
 most. There is much in all this to learn from 
 the criticism of Diderot. There is Ruskin, too, 
 with his criticism of art, and he was not groping 
 on the surface, but went down to the bottom of 
 things. From these and other great thinkers 
 who have written on the subject, we really have 
 an understanding of what is meant by humanity 
 and by art. In this sense we shall understand 
 human beings, but never plants. 
 
 What we want particularly to cultivate is the 
 art of living : the art of making people happy with 
 themselves ; the art of meeting people and talking 
 to them ; the art of saying the right thing in the 
 
 294
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 right time and place. How often do we hear 
 people say, " How poorly you look," and yet there 
 is an art in meeting a person when he was look- 
 ing poorly and making him feel that he was 
 looking well. This art of conversation, this art 
 of living is very rarely practised. It was the art 
 of meeting people, this urbanity of theirs which 
 distinguished the Athenians. They really made 
 an art of living, of talking, of receiving people; 
 and this art we find in every line of Plato. It is 
 the art of putting people at their ease, the savoir 
 vivre, the savoir /aire. It is this art of living 
 that is much needed with us in modern times, 
 and we ought to introduce and cultivate it. We 
 shall then be able to understand art in its many 
 other aspects. 
 
 Art is thoroughly human, and altogether anti- 
 Nature. There is not a trace of art in Nature. 
 Nature is interesting, it is weird, but it has no 
 art and no music. The finest nightingale gives 
 only strange, weird notes, but it has not a song, 
 and no real music. It has been said that the 
 nearest approach to music in Nature was when 
 water dropped down from a height on to a rock, 
 and produced a sound which was equivalent to a 
 C major chord. We have excellent notes in the 
 voices of many birds, but no real chord of music. 
 And again, what we call real painting does not 
 exist in Nature. Leonardo da Vinci, in his great 
 treatise on painting, has treated fully of all the 
 
 295
 
 PLATO 
 
 laws of perspective, and has gone nearest to 
 showing that Art and Nature are synonymous 
 terms, but though he is very great, he does not 
 convince us. The charm of nature is of a totally 
 different type, but it is not art. Art is really 
 hyper-nature, it is something we give to nature ; 
 it is neither imitation nor rivalry, but it is the 
 work of our own soul, and the greatest consolation 
 of all consolations. When everything fails, art 
 will not fail us. The consolation of art is absolute, 
 and it leaves its indelible traces ; it is besides 
 immensely serious. The people who have no 
 sense of art are to be pitied, their life is not 
 worth living. They fail in the expression of 
 their soul; and to gain this they must have a 
 deep feeling for art. Leibniz said that we have 
 shown greater ingenuity in our games and in 
 our arts than we have done in the more serious 
 things of life. And this is perfectly true. There 
 is the game of chess ; it is a greater invention 
 than anything in technics; no mechanical 
 genius, no inventor has given such proof of 
 skill, has shown so much art as the inventor 
 of chess. 
 
 What then is Art, if it is not Nature, and if 
 it is not the imitation of Nature ? The answer, 
 which is almost complete, and which has satisfied 
 the deepest thinkers is given by Plato. His 
 charm is the charm of an artist. He is as great 
 in what he says as in what he does not say. In 
 
 296
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 modern times philosophers are great in what they 
 do not say, because it is the only thing in which 
 they are correct. Plato, on the other hand, gives 
 us real artistic effect by the innuendoes of his 
 thought. It is as music is eloquent not only by 
 its crescendi and its diminuendi, but also by its 
 pauses; everything, in fact, is a part of the 
 music ; not only the basses and the trebles, but 
 also the pauses. In the "Symposium" of Plato we 
 find a series of men talking one after another, it 
 may be a doctor, or it may be a man of another 
 profession, but we never find him talking of 
 esoteric mysticism. He is only mystic in the 
 books of modern professors, where nobody can 
 understand him. On the contrary, he is as clear 
 and as naive as he can be, and a child can under- 
 stand him, he is so simple. Plato had a deep 
 sense of what art was. We never find him in a 
 faux pas, or bad taste, or even a slight failing in 
 taste, which is really the soul of art. He is even 
 particular as to the outward form of his writings. 
 The outward dressing of his Dialogues is a perfect 
 piece of art. It is sometimes a street, or a wood, 
 or some public place ; but the artistic background 
 is always there, giving to his word-pictures and 
 thoughts a setting which carried with it a dramatic 
 effect of its own. With all this we at once say 
 that such a man must have felt what art was. 
 Though it is not as a professional artist that we 
 expect to deal with him, yet it is strange that he 
 
 297
 
 PLATO 
 
 does not even discuss the subject of art. We 
 think this strange, indeed, in a man who adum- 
 brated Gothic architecture. Before such an 
 architecture was known he told us of his ideal 
 State, which was to have only one architecture, 
 and his anticipation was that of the Gothic and 
 no other. In the same way as he anticipated 
 the Eoman Catholic Church, so he anticipated 
 the art of the Roman Catholic Church, which is 
 represented by Gothic architecture. Again, we 
 find Plato never talks of the Parthenon in his 
 writings. That consummate work of art on the 
 Acropolis, in all its lustre and grandeur, and with 
 all the subtle meaning which appealed to the 
 Greek mind ; that work adorned with exquisite 
 friezes and metopes, which he saw daily, and 
 which could be seen as far away as the island of 
 Delos, he never even mentions it. We see 
 portions of these grand marbles, which were 
 brought away by Lord Elgin, and are now in the 
 British Museum, and even now their charm is 
 extraordinary. What must have been the feelings 
 they engendered in the Athenians? And yet 
 Plato never says a word about them ! This 
 reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci, who never 
 speaks of the ancient beauties of the Greeks, 
 except by mere allusion. These men were, 
 indeed, so full of these unutterable beauties of 
 the ancients that it seemed superfluous to them 
 to talk about them. 
 
 298
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Let us then ask Plato what he can do for us in 
 the matter of art. To avoid being misunderstood 
 he gives us a definition of art. It is the mani- 
 festation in the material world of Platonic ideas ; 
 and by ideas we do not mean merely concepts or 
 thoughts. These ideas do not manifest themselves 
 ordinarily, nor are they on the surface. For 
 instance a table is only a representation of an 
 idea, and not the idea itself ; and it is the mani- 
 festation of the Platonic idea which is art. It is 
 the process of that idea becoming flesh, the in- 
 carnation of something very ideal. And when it 
 becomes flesh, then it is that it becomes art. Let 
 us say, for instance, that the divine idea did 
 manifest itself in a beautiful woman. It may be 
 for only one month or one hour, when she is the 
 expression of the idea of beauty ; it is beauty 
 manifesting itself in the flesh. And so we may 
 have goodness, mind, intellect, all Platonic ideas 
 which may take on flesh, and then they become 
 art. If Plato's ideas do not mean quantity, 
 number, grandeur, statues, what is it that he does 
 mean? The nature of this idea was shown in 
 Plato's beautiful allegory of the men working in 
 the mines at Syracuse. It was when he was at 
 the court of the tyrant Dionysius that he was 
 shown parts of the town and then he was taken 
 to the quarries from whence comes marble even to 
 the present day. There he found people who had 
 committed crimes immured and chained to the 
 
 299
 
 PLATO 
 
 walls in narrow galleries, and just free enough 
 to work, though not able to turn round. It was 
 this ghastly spectacle that recurred to him when 
 writing in his " Kepublic," and explaining what he 
 meant by the original archetype of things. " Ima- 
 gine," says he, " a cave, a very deep cave, and in it 
 a fire ; also a window very high up from which only 
 a little light comes, throwing certain shadows on 
 the opposite wall ; here are these slaves chained 
 to the wall for years and to them these shadows 
 are the only signs of life or picture of what is 
 going on outside, until at last those shadows 
 became like living things to them, they dangled 
 before them like a Punch and Judy show, and 
 they ultimately took them for living things. It 
 was the only amusement for these prisoners, but 
 where the shadows came from they knew not ; 
 and so they got to look upon them as living things. 
 That all this was a mere optical reflex, did not 
 occur to them ; and so they began to teach their 
 children about these shadows. One day a philo- 
 sopher comes to the cave and says to them, these 
 are not realities but merely shadows, and only 
 reflections of what is beyond through that window. 
 After much discussion, they cry that the philo- 
 sopher is a fool, an idiot. All philosophers are 
 idiots — so long as we do not quite understand 
 them. Finally he leads them out of the cave into 
 the broad daylight, and here the light is so strong 
 after the darkness they have lived in that they 
 
 300
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 cannot see. At last they get used to the light by 
 degrees, and the philosopher goes to the upper 
 window and shows them the figures that have 
 been played off, that what they saw in their cave 
 were only the shadows of shadows. Then he 
 shows them men and women as they pass by, and 
 these, he tells them, are the real things. The 
 men from the cave are then bewildered, the reality 
 to them is totally different from what they im- 
 agined, and they smile aloud as it were in their 
 joy." This, then, is the simple allegory of Plato 
 whereby he is trying to teach us how life as we 
 know it in the shadows is but a shadowing of the 
 real, the ideal life. 
 
 Let us imagine again the picture of a man 
 or a woman we have drawn on a plain piece 
 of paper of two dimensions, stepping out of the 
 paper into a world of three dimensions of in- 
 finitely greater intensity and volume where it 
 has not only length and breadth, but also depth 
 and space where it can move about. What 
 happens to that picture is precisely what happens 
 to us when we study philosophy. Something 
 tells us that what we find is not really the thing. 
 We are like the cave-dwellers. We ask where 
 the light comes from, and we are told this is the 
 source of light, it is the sun. And it is the play 
 of the light which gives us the shadows, and if we 
 had no light we should have no shadows. Every 
 man and woman, then, has behind them something 
 
 301
 
 PLATO 
 
 that is the reality, and that something Plato 
 calls his ideas. So a good man has the idea of 
 goodness behind him. What he possesses is not 
 perfect, complete goodness. Behind all his in- 
 complete goodness there is the goodness, which 
 is the idea of all special goodness. It is the same 
 thing with hoauty. A man or woman may be 
 beautiful, and we say, yes, she has fine lines 
 and curves, but she lacks colour. Now, where is 
 that archetype of beauty in which all the ideal 
 lines and colour occur ? Plato says we must not 
 despair of finding it, for there is such a thing — 
 to koKov — which is behind all the specially beau- 
 tiful things of life. Is it to be found on earth ? 
 No, is the answer ; for on earth are only shadows. 
 In his " Phaedon," Plato admits that imperfect 
 things exist on earth. There is incomplete good- 
 ness, also incomplete beauty. If, then, incom- 
 plete goodness and imperfection have existence, 
 we cannot assume that perfection and complete- 
 ness have not. If imperfection does exist, how 
 then can perfection be so imperfect as not to 
 exist ? Hence we have the ontological proof of 
 the existence of God. And it was this ontological 
 proof and argument which was formulated by 
 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, somewhere 
 about the beginning of the twelfth century, and 
 again by Descartes in the seventeenth century. 
 It is the Platonic idea, that if the imperfect 
 exists, the perfect must also exist ; it is a very 
 
 302
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 hard nut to crack, and we cannot get over the 
 truth of it. The ideas are all there, and before 
 giving them a locus we must admit that they 
 are somewhere, though we cannot always express 
 them or locate them. It is like comparing two 
 languages and finding that certain ideas are the 
 same, though not expressed quite aliko in both. 
 For instance, we say in English "I am sure," 
 or " Quite so." In France we would say " Pour 
 sure" or " Parfaitement." There is no common 
 locality between the two languages; we cannot 
 really make both correspond, for there seems to 
 be no connection between them ; but there it is, 
 the same idea only expressed differently. 
 
 To the question, Where is it, this archetype of 
 perfection? we can only say that it must be 
 somewhere, though we only see its shadow as 
 in the allegory. Why, we ask, was Plato driven 
 to his concept of ideas ? For the same reason 
 that Ferdinand Lassalle, the foremost among the 
 founders of Socialism in Germany, was driven to 
 his, and he tried to put down in two big volumes 
 all he could on just a hundred lines, which con- 
 stituted the two great principles of Heracleitus 
 the famous early Greek philosopher of Ephesus. 
 So great a thinker was Heracleitus, that he could 
 in one word exhaust immense processes of think- 
 ing ; he could in fact compress an ocean into a 
 tabloid. This was the man who taught Plato 
 or rather from whom Plato derived his principles 
 
 303
 
 PLATO 
 
 of thought, for he was dead when Plato was 
 born. It was he who taught that nothing is 
 being, and that we never step into the same 
 river twice, meaning that everything in the world 
 is in a state of flux or motion — iravra 'pei; that 
 while it is, it is not ; that the world is in a cease- 
 less state of change, nothing remaining the same 
 for even two moments of time. All this is a 
 bewildering idea. And Plato says of it that 
 Heracleitus was quite right, that everything is 
 in a state of flux ; but somehow it did not seem 
 quite satisfactory to him. He explains it by 
 saying that it refers to sensible things only, 
 things which affect our senses. These, indeed, 
 are never the same ; for the moment they go 
 into existence, they go out of it again. These 
 are like the shadows on the walls of the cave ; 
 but behind them there is something that remains, 
 the true and the perfect, the real Platonic ideas. 
 Where, then, are we to go to find these ? It 
 is not in space, for there we only have sensible 
 matters, material things, which are for ever 
 changiug. We must go beyond and behind these. 
 This argument of his is logically forceful, and no 
 one has ever discovered a flaw in it. One of the 
 greatest and most instructive English writers on 
 philosophy was Ferrier. In reading him one 
 feels one is dealing with an honest man, and in 
 his " Lectures on Greek Philosophy" we see his 
 life-long wrestle with these self-same problems. 
 
 3°4
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Plato was not sufficiently sympathetic to him, 
 but Heracleitus formed his profound study, and 
 his writings are certainly the best we have on 
 that philosopher. 
 
 If, then, these phenomena of the material 
 senses are in constant flax, it follows that there 
 must be un genre universal. We can know only 
 such universals, and they are in the state of 
 absolute completeness which we call Platonic 
 ideas. There are no fragments or parts of these, 
 but it is all pure unadulterated Perfection; and 
 this has been proved to be the case from Plato 
 to Schopenhauer, from Aristotle to Leibniz. We 
 must not think that these are mere "isms" or 
 a phantasmagoric series of non-existences. In 
 the Platonic sense there is reality in them ; con- 
 stantly tumbling, it may be, into an abyss; but 
 the ideas do exist. It is like that beautiful 
 statue, buried deep in the ground, which was 
 discovered at Melos, and a peasant who owned 
 the land wanted to sell it. It was a matter of 
 a few hundred francs only, but really no money 
 could buy that statue, whereon was outlined the 
 idea of beauty — beauty which was something 
 eternal, though made two thousand years ago. 
 There is the Venus of Milo, which was hidden 
 away by the French on the taking of Paris 
 by the Germans, when all the other treasures 
 of the Louvre were left. This idealization of 
 beauty was hidden away, and its hiding-place 
 
 305 x
 
 PLATO 
 
 was known only to three men — an old man, a 
 middle-aged man, and a young man. 
 
 There are many things which Plato talks of 
 
 in his " Symposium" which we cannot mention, 
 
 but piercing through the ages and the centuries 
 
 we can find the truth, and how it was that such 
 
 men as Scopas, and Praxiteles, and Phidias, or 
 
 whoever it may have been, came to the idea of 
 
 beauty. One of these ideas of beauty is in the 
 
 Louvre for any one to see who has eyes to 
 
 see. It was to this statue that Heinrich Heine 
 
 came, and when he saw it he collapsed, for he 
 
 had never realized the beauty that was here. It 
 
 was not for him to consider then whether it was 
 
 the Venus of Milo, or the Venus of Cnidus, or 
 
 any other Venus. All that was of no moment to 
 
 him ; what he had before him was the real type, 
 
 the real idea. Here is beauty in all her lines, 
 
 and they are so simple that we know not from 
 
 whence the effect comes, this unapproachable 
 
 Diana-like beauty, but there it is ! We may 
 
 regard one cheek and then the other, her lovely 
 
 eyes, and her beautiful mouth ; there we see the 
 
 expression of virgin beauty such as we have never 
 
 seen before. It is all a most beautiful unison 
 
 between thought and emotion, the most perfect 
 
 expression which poets have dreamed of. It is 
 
 not to be looked at only, it is to be seen. But 
 
 we remember what Heracleitus said, iravra 'pei! 
 
 It does not last, it is ever-changing, and yet here 
 
 306
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 we are in the presence of beauty which was beauty 
 more than two thousand years ago, in the presence 
 of lips which invite to kisses that no man dare 
 give and live, for do we not see the utter severity 
 of the two corners of the mouth ? To see such 
 beauty is to burst into tears, for who could behold 
 such beauty and remain calm ? Prosper Merimee 
 wrote a story about one of these Venuses, the 
 Venus d'llle. If we look at those limbs, the 
 relation to each other is so perfect, so chaste, that 
 no man dare touch them. All the dreams and 
 ideals of man are there, and this is art, this is the 
 manifestation of the idea. 
 
 Then, again, we have that famous statue of 
 Laocoon and his two sons. Here we see a father 
 struggling for his sons, who are all entwined in 
 the dread coils of the destroying serpents. If 
 we read Lessing and Goethe on the subject of 
 Laocoon we will find an impression that will never 
 leave us, for there is an idea behind that sculpture, 
 and we are in the presence of a Platonic idea. 
 We see the half-opened mouth of the father, who 
 looks round at the death of his sons. We may 
 not be fathers, we may have no sons, but still 
 we feel that we know that man. And where it 
 touches us is that we feel that we are with our 
 sons, and that we are seeing our ideals slain by 
 the serpents. There are our dreams and our 
 desires, our everything, and destiny coils round 
 them, and we feel that we are Laocoon. There 
 
 307
 
 PLATO 
 
 is the ever-recurring fight of personality against 
 materiality. It is not only a fine piece of marble, 
 but it is eternal truth and personality fighting 
 against other and material causes. We feel that 
 Plato is right, after all, that ideas have become 
 flesh in the marble, and have spoken their message 
 to us. We may give colour, we may give lines, 
 but our efforts will be wasted, and we shall never 
 do anything unless there is the Platonic idea 
 behind us. 
 
 Let us now see what we can get from that 
 wonderful intellect of Leonardo da Vinci on our 
 subject. He left an enormous number of manu- 
 scripts on all kinds of subjects, and his life has 
 been well told in the volume by Seailles. He 
 thought that Plato was wrong, and that Nature 
 was greater than the ideal, and so he set to work 
 to study Nature. With him, to draw a man in 
 anger, and a woman as enticing, was true to 
 Nature. He studied anatomy, too, to a large 
 extent, and dissected a great number of corpses. 
 To such an extent had he carried this study as 
 to make Hunter, the great anatomist, say, " I 
 thought I knew something about au atomy, but 
 Leonardo da Vinci knew more." And all this 
 was to prove that beauty was a copy of Nature, 
 and that the better we knew anatomy the more 
 we should excel in art. That, however, was really 
 the secret reason why Leonardo da Vinci painted 
 so little. It is not the anatomy of a thing, but 
 
 308
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 the Platonic idea behind it, which gives it flesh 
 and makes it live. The equestrian statue by 
 Leonardo da Vinci, at Sforza, did not prove that 
 his theory was correct. He wanted to give an 
 Arab horse at his best. That animal is so 
 beautiful that a man can fall in love with one 
 as with a beautiful woman ; it is an idea of 
 beauty, the hoofs of which go about like the 
 fingers of a pianist on a piano when he is moving. 
 But the knowledge of anatomy spoilt it ; it was 
 too real. The complaint was that it was forced. 
 Thus we see that if we do not follow the ideal 
 in art we produce what is unreal. We may be 
 perfect in anatomy, but unless we study the idea 
 behind it we are lost. 
 
 How shall we know what that idea is ? Some 
 people have it ; they are born with it. Great 
 doers are also great artists. Poets are doers, and 
 to them it is quite evident. A man of action is 
 both a poet and an artist. Columbus did more 
 good to this country than any EDglishman ever 
 born, for he placed England in the centre of the 
 universe, whereas before it was on the edge. He 
 placed America on the other side ; and so he did 
 for England more than the English have ever 
 realized. What he did was a work of art, and 
 he had the Platonic idea. Had America never 
 existed Columbus would have discovered it. 
 
 Another great doer was Jeanne d'Arc. Here 
 was a young French girl, who knew not of battles, 
 
 309
 
 PLATO 
 
 nor could tell one weapon from another ; what 
 could it mean that she was to be the saviour of 
 France ? A Du Guesclin had once saved France, 
 and a Pardiac might do it now ; but for a young 
 unlearned maiden such a thing was amazing ! She 
 knew the Platonic idea was there. When asked 
 how she could do it, she answered simply, " Je le 
 ferai moi" She knew it, and she spoke of " voices " 
 she had, heard. That was a sacred way of saying 
 that in her soul she felt and knew the sublime 
 character of her mission. It was the conscious- 
 ness of a Platonic idea. And so it was with 
 Napoleon, when he was on the battle-field, and 
 when nothing had been done, he said, " Italy is 
 mine." This was not arrogance, but the anticipa- 
 tion of things from an innate consciousness, a 
 Platonic idea. He knew beforehand ; it was the 
 "voices" he had heard, and nothing could stop 
 him. What made Raphael a great painter ? It 
 was the Platonic idea he pursued. When he had 
 done a Madonna he tried it again and again, then 
 he tried a Fornarina ; but it would not satisfy him. 
 The truth is that he had in his imagination a 
 painting infinitely greater than anything he had 
 ever painted. If he had been born without arms 
 he still would have painted, he still would have 
 risen to the height he did. 
 
 Why do violinists or pianists differ so much ? 
 Because the great musician has the Platonic idea 
 of beauty behind him, and he tries to copy things 
 
 310
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 internally; while the other one, the one who never 
 will be great, is eaten up with dilettante contented- 
 ness and optimism, which are the death of Art. 
 Optimism is too closely allied to humanity, to suffer- 
 ing. Art must indeed be optimistic, but artists are 
 gloomy and melancholy, because they are strug- 
 gling with Platonic ideas ; struggling against the 
 death of the great ideal that is in their hearts ; 
 it is the Laocoon again. They feel like Macaulay, 
 when he was presented by his publishers with a 
 cheque for £20,000 for the triumphant sale of his 
 History. Such a sum had never been paid for 
 any single book, and one would think that an 
 author who had so earned the appreciation of the 
 public would have been highly gratified. But it 
 was not so with Macaulay. He felt poor and 
 miserable at the moment, and taking his copy of 
 Thucydides down from the shelf, said, " What a 
 wretched book I have written in comparison with 
 this." There was his Platonic idea which was 
 Thucydides. And so, too, Beethoven who was in 
 a great " swear " when he heard Handel. He 
 felt he could never reach that Platonic idea, never 
 realize what Plato says, that every object has its 
 idea behind it. Even if it be an ordinary bed- 
 stead, it has an archetype of a perfect bedstead 
 behind it; or it may be a chair, or a key, or a 
 match. Behind the chair there would be the idea 
 of comfort ; and if we went to Florence we might 
 see such a chair which is as near the ideal as such 
 
 3 11
 
 PLATO 
 
 a thing can be brought, comfort being marked 
 on every line and curve of it. And so it is that 
 behind all imperfect things there must be perfec- 
 tion ; and this brings us back to the proof of the 
 existence of the Perfect. For if imperfect things 
 exist, why cannot the perfect, of which the imper- 
 fect is but the shadow on the wall ? It may seem 
 a contradiction in terms, but do not let us mix 
 up universals with Platonic ideas. The complete 
 universal is always behind everything. If we take 
 our own individuality it is but a reflection of the 
 idea, and we say, shall it never return? There 
 is an unending process of creation going on out 
 of nothing, and it will so go on for billions of 
 years. It is always something coming out of 
 nothing, and the personality of man or woman 
 never recurs. Behind all this is the question of 
 immortality, the question of religion, and there it 
 is that we find the application of Platonic ideas 
 to the ordinary things of life. Is there such a 
 thing as realistic Art, or are these terms contra- 
 dictory ? He only is a great Artist who creates 
 the truest type of the Eeal, — the Ideal. 
 
 312
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Befoee we continue our discourse on Art, it is, 
 perhaps, necessary to premise a few remarks on 
 some points which were alluded to in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, as there appears to have been a 
 misconception of what was actually said. It was 
 never, for instance, said that art was gloomy. On 
 the contrary, art itself is one of our great con- 
 solations, and therefore cannot be anything but 
 cheerful; and as far as religion participates in 
 art, it also gives us the same consolation. Artists, 
 however, are gloomy, and it is necessary that we 
 should carefully bear in mind this distinction. 
 In Aristotle, in the thirtieth chapter of his 
 " Problemata," we find him asking, "Why is it 
 that all great statesmen, artists, poets, musicians 
 are so melancholy? Why are all men of genius 
 sad?" Because they are in the throes of the 
 birth of an idea; because all artists are ever 
 struggling with great Platonic ideas, and they 
 cannot quite bring them forth, they cannot quite 
 express them. Art is not dawdling through an 
 art-gallery and languidly saying, "Ah, how weird! 
 How pretty ! How lovely ! " No ; art is energy, 
 
 3i3
 
 PLATO 
 
 initiative, agonizing intensity ; it is, indeed, war. 
 And so it is that the obstacles seem insurmount- 
 able to these artists, they feel they cannot do it, 
 and hence they become melancholy. What are 
 these statesmen, politicians, artists striving for? 
 Is it not unity; unity and harmony of idea in 
 marble, in words, or in politics ? Thus we find 
 Cavour wanted to make the unity of Italy. It 
 is the very thing a sculptor tries to do in marble ; 
 the transcendental unity and harmony which he 
 tries to symbolize and incarnate from what was 
 before but fragments in Nature. And when 
 these artists fail they become miserable. Was 
 not Cavour almost broken-hearted when he 
 resigned office after the peace of Villafranca when 
 he found Austria was left in possession of Venetia? 
 Even Leonardo da Vinci had these extraordinary 
 struggles, and could not stand against them. It 
 is the artist, as Plato hints, who is melancholy, 
 but art is not sad. The unity of Italy is not a 
 sad consummation ; but each of us who strives 
 to give birth to a great idea, be it in politics or 
 art, must make up his mind to have his Calvary. 
 That is inevitable. 
 
 And then, again, there is the question of 
 music, and the remarks made in the last chapter, 
 that there is no music in Nature, have been dis- 
 puted. This implies that the author can have no 
 knowledge of such things, when, as a matter of 
 fact, he comes from a country which is steeped 
 
 3*4
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 in music, and he was bitten by the rabid, musical 
 dog when he was but five years of age. He can, 
 indeed, say that he has suffered, and has been a 
 martyr to music, and can state with confidence 
 that there is no music in Nature. In music there 
 must be scales, but in Nature there are none. 
 Nature has deep tones, high cadences but no 
 scales ; and without scales, hundreds of scales, 
 music is impossible. In a baby's prattle, for 
 instance, there is rhythm, but no language; and 
 at the age of two or three we may say that a child 
 is articulating ideas. But, however much most 
 of us may be enchanted with the babblings of a 
 baby, le gazouillement <V enfant, we cannot in sober 
 language call it language. Who, again, can have 
 gone into a forest and not have been transported 
 with the notes of the nightingale, or the lark, or 
 many another bird ? They may inspire poets ; 
 even the mocking-bird might send a thrill of 
 transport through us, but we cannot say that all 
 this is music. Music means articulate sound ; 
 rhythms and cadences ; and not only solitary 
 notes and tones. And in that sense Nature has 
 no music, and no poems ; and art does not exist 
 in Nature. 
 
 We cannot dogmatize on these things. If we 
 go to the early fathers, what do we find them 
 doing ? They simply disdain Nature ; they look 
 upon it as something incomplete, low, and sinful ; 
 and in their idea of religion they felt that the 
 
 3 r 5
 
 PLATO 
 
 more distant they were from Nature the better 
 it was for them. This was totally different to 
 the idea of the Greeks, who were at one with 
 Nature. They identified themselves with Nature, 
 and looked upon things natural as really not ugly. 
 In all her expressions Nature was beautiful to 
 them, and especially in the human form. We find 
 Herodotus, when he speaks of the " barbarians," 
 saying, " They are ashamed of their nudity, we 
 Greeks are not." These are men who believed 
 in the glory of the body. In contrast with Art, 
 Nature was lower; and though they were at one 
 with Nature, they improved on it, and they called 
 this re'x^, which means Art proper. 
 
 The great saints of the Catholic Church tried 
 to fly from Nature as a snare and a temptation, 
 something to be shunned and to be despised. 
 To them Nature was the origin and the source 
 of all evil. Plato, however, says that all evils 
 are not in nature, but outside nature. It is only 
 St. Francis d'Assissi, in the Catholic Church, 
 who had the courage to preach that Nature is 
 within the realm of grace and not outside it. 
 To him the trees, the flowers, were all brothers 
 and sisters ; they were all the expressions of God, 
 as he said. Here was indeed a peculiar com- 
 bination of Christianity and the Hellenic spirit! 
 The Greeks also loved Nature, and did not feel 
 that there was any great chasm between them 
 and it. But they had, at the same time, a great 
 
 316
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 idea of art, because they said that it was superior 
 to nature. They said that they were ouly a part 
 of nature, but that within that nature they could 
 re-create another nature, and that was art. And 
 what example have we of this art with regard 
 to the great man whom we have been discussing ? 
 The first and most efficient picture of art comes 
 really from Plato, who was a master of it. Subjects 
 which would be arid become alive and full of 
 meaning in the artistic surroundings in which he 
 places them. We shall find this if we analyze 
 one of his great dialogues, where he shows himself 
 at his best. It is by analyzing the " Symposium " 
 of Plato that we shall get to the very heart and 
 essence of art. There we shall find all the art 
 of system, all the beauty of arrangement, all the 
 urbanity which goes to make him Plato. He is 
 the most suggestive thinker that ever lived. He 
 made mistakes, but even his mistakes are fertile ; 
 they contain the half of truth, and are not 
 blunders which one would scorn. The mistakes 
 of Aristotle are not so ; while those of later 
 writers are perfectly puerile. In the ' ' Symposium ' ' 
 itself there are no mistakes. It is all a great 
 work of art, like that Parthenon which stood on 
 the Acropolis as the crowning marvel of Greek 
 genius, and it has never been equalled. It is 
 written in simple Greek ; that marvellous and 
 beautiful language which combines in itself the 
 larger qualities of all the best languages of the 
 
 3i7
 
 PLATO 
 
 world; and there never will be a language like 
 it. It is the soul of music, with its soft "v" so 
 musical and sweet; then the wonderful " 0" 
 which we despise ; and the aspirate, or the rough 
 breathing which is so peculiar a characteristic 
 of the Spanish language. The whole forms an 
 orchestral language for the expression of thought 
 to which there is no equal. And so it is that 
 the thoughts of Plato, coming, as it were, in 
 the nick of time, build up in this language the 
 " Symposium," which is a very Parthenon in words. 
 An analysis will show us how the process of 
 building has been carried on, and what the style 
 of its architecture is. It is indeed a marvellous 
 work of art, and it will help us to see what art 
 is; and also to apply it to architecture and to 
 the other arts. It puts the whole subject before 
 us not only directly, but also by innuendo and by 
 suggestion. There is not only the entcndu, but 
 also the sous-entendu of what we should know 
 about art. 
 
 It is a banquet ; there are a number of 
 dramatis persona? ; and it is in a single room. 
 Here the guests meet, not so much to eat, for 
 of that they do very little, but to talk very much. 
 It is not as if we were present at this banquet. 
 It is a description given by one man to another 
 of his own particular views of some of the deep 
 and stirring phases of human life. Plato felt that 
 if he wrote out his views in prose narrative they 
 
 3i8
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 would be heavy reading ; so he has the skill to 
 give them to us as a dialogue, and makes an 
 ethical narrative of them. He puts it in the 
 mouth of Aristodemus, who tells the story to 
 Apollodorus; and he makes it ethical in spite of 
 all its dramatic qualities. And thus it goes on 
 until Plato repeats it to us, as it were, at fourth 
 hand. In all this we have the perfect equilibrium 
 in mind which is the characteristic of an Attic 
 story. 
 
 The story was that Agathon, a great writer 
 of tragedies, had won a very great triumph at 
 the public contest, and to celebrate the event he 
 invited his friends on the next day to a banquet. 
 The guests were just ordinary gentlemen of the 
 day, who could converse freely in simple language 
 on the current topics which interested humanity. 
 For it must be understood that to the Greek 
 mind wisdom ever so deep was not worth hearing 
 unless it was discussed by the cultured classes. 
 These guests are made to express their thoughts, 
 which are put clearly, and not as Berkeley, the 
 great Irish thinker, said of modern thinkers, that 
 they raised too much dust to enable themselves 
 to see into things. The Greeks did not raise 
 dust ; and it is not true that we must go through 
 thousands of years of study to understand a 
 philosopher. This may be true in law, with 
 regard to which it has been said that it takes at 
 least fifteen years before we can ever understand 
 
 319
 
 PLATO 
 
 Justinian. In the " Symposium " we see it all 
 clearly, and what the idea is that Plato wishes 
 to teach us. At this banquet we see Phsedrus 
 and Pausanias; there is Eriximachus who repre- 
 sents the medical profession, and Agathon the 
 great tragedian; then there is Aristophanes, the 
 greatest writer of comedies; and finally comes 
 Socrates, the greatest of philosophers. The story 
 goes that Socrates came in very late, the intention 
 being that he should sit next to, and on the left 
 of, Agathon the host, and so to be the very last 
 to speak. One seat was left vacant opposite, 
 which was afterwards occupied by the drunken 
 Alcibiades. The talk began by one of the guests 
 proposing to celebrate the victory of Agathon. 
 And so it went on until they said, " Let us talk 
 of love, or Eros." They all had solid, good, and 
 practical things to say, things that really make 
 for the harmony of the world. In increasing 
 stages the talk continues until it reaches Aristo- 
 phanes. What he thought of love we have already 
 had in his myth, which is the Kabelaisque myth 
 of the four-fold man. After the master of comedy 
 comes the turn of Agathon, and he, instead of 
 giviDg us definitions, talks rapturously of what is 
 a beautiful, transcendental charm of life. It finally 
 comes to the turn of Socrates to have his say on 
 love. When Socrates opens his mouth on this 
 question of love, we feel that it is not only a 
 fino speech at a banquet, but that we are treading 
 
 320
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 on tender soil, for he actually anticipates historical 
 events. He does not give what he thinks or feels 
 as coming from himself, hut he gives it as coming 
 from the mouth of Diotima, the virgin prophetess 
 of Mantinea. This great subject of love, so near 
 the Divine, must be from the lips of an immacu- 
 late virgin and no other. This anticipated the 
 greatest truth in our religion, when the highest 
 embodiment of love was born of a virgin; and 
 it also appears in the view in which the Athenians 
 held their goddess Athene as the greatest of im- 
 maculate virgins. Thus is it that these Greeks 
 anticipated more than one of the great truths of 
 our religion. They felt that something godlike 
 must come from a virgin; and so it has been 
 through all time, that to save mankind in whole 
 or in part, it must be through immaculate virginity. 
 A striking instance is that of Jeanne d'Arc. When 
 France was nearly ruined, it was an immaculate 
 virgin, and not her great men, that saved her. 
 
 So the summing up of what Plato had to say" 
 about love was neither through the judicious 
 Phsedrus, nor the cunning Eriximachus, nor the 
 witty Aristophanes, but it came from Socrates ; 
 and even then it is placed before us not as the 
 views of Socrates, but as those coming from the 
 mouth of a virgin. " I have got it from the mouth 
 of Diotima," he says, " the virgin priestess of 
 Mantinea, and she told me what this love is." 
 
 We may have the idea that nothing has 
 
 321 y
 
 PLATO 
 
 intention, but everything has its Symposium ; but 
 we shall soon find that where there is intention, 
 there is inevitably boredom. Nature has always 
 an intention. The bird's sweetest song is when 
 it wants to find its mate ; it is love that makes 
 the thing complete. But if we want absolute 
 naivete, it is not in Nature that we shall find it 
 existing, but in Art. And so we find Socrates 
 saying, " I do not get these ideas from my own 
 mind, but from a seer; " and that seer was an 
 immaculate prophetess. And in this way, it may 
 be, some new Jeanne d'Arc will yet come to 
 France ; but it must always be an immaculate 
 conception, for love will never be born in any 
 other way. It is a historical fact that immaculate 
 virginity has an enormous force over a nation, 
 and there is more behind it than the mere mytho- 
 logical allusion. It is that love and goodness are 
 one and the same thing. 
 
 Socrates had scarcely finished his speech when 
 an entirely new scene comes on, which would 
 touch and send a thrill through any one who has 
 a feeling of real beauty. Alcibiades enters the 
 banquet-room, and when we hear what he has to 
 say about Socrates, we recognize that here we 
 have the great idea of immortality in his speech 
 on love ; it is something which no modern science 
 can give us. And this comes from a man who is 
 a most desperate viveur; and famous, too, for being 
 perfectly beautiful. He was not a Nero, but no 
 
 322
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 one had enjoyed the good things of life more 
 than he had. This is the man who comes into 
 the banquet-room in a half-drunken state, with a 
 beautiful flute-girl in his arm, the very picture 
 of fast, careless life ; and he asks what they are 
 doing. On learning that they are discoursing 
 on love, he asks for permission to speak of and 
 to crown not Agathon, but Socrates whom he 
 loves." And this love for Socrates he proceeds 
 to describe with the simplicity of a child. It is 
 like a grand chord of the music of Mozart, which 
 strikes into each human heart. We cannot stand 
 it ; it is not for human nerves, but for nerves 
 divine. It touches our nerves and makes us happy. 
 Then we feel what love for such a man means, 
 and we see that Plato was, indeed, the herald of 
 the Christian religion, and its worship and love 
 for the one great Man. 
 
 And so the story of Alcibiades continues. He 
 points to Socrates and says, "Look at him; he 
 looks like a Silen, and is as ugly as any sculptured 
 Satyr ; there is nothing in those looks to make one 
 love him. But if we take off the head of the 
 Satyr, we shall find inside a divine countenance, 
 the statue of a god. He is the most dangerous of 
 men in Athens ; for he goes about talking to the 
 people, the common people in the market-place, 
 and he puts things exactly upside down to them. 
 But he makes them love him, for he alone has 
 truth and sense and divine wisdom. In war, too, 
 
 323
 
 PLATO 
 
 he is the bravest of the brave ; for was it not at 
 Potidaea, when I was nearly lost, that his strong 
 arm saved me ? He alone can stand privations 
 that no other can. When absorbed in his deep 
 thoughts he can stand in one place for twenty- 
 four hours at a time. He is the best of husbands, 
 the best of citizens, the best of judges. He can 
 resist all temptations. He likes beautiful men and 
 women, but he resists them all; he resisted the 
 lovely Phryne, though he felt her touch for three 
 days. And he has resisted me, even me the 
 beautiful Alcibiades. I try to fly from him, but 
 I cannot leave him, because his words are so 
 enchanting, and I could listen to him for ever." 
 
 Now, this great story, this picture of Plato, 
 we read when we are young with a want of 
 understanding. We read it then simply and 
 purely for the purpose of finding and solving 
 grammatical questions on the Greek language. 
 We are then simply bored by it. But when we 
 read it in after-life, with mature thoughts, we see 
 things with other eyes. The words seem full of 
 life's meanings. We see how Plato is foreshadow- 
 ing history ; even the history of our religion, and 
 the religion itself. We feel we are thrilled by it ; 
 that we cannot read any more because it is too 
 overwhelming. We feel that it is peculiarly 
 mysterious, and that we must leave it alone. 
 Plato anticipates all modern history. What is he 
 the viveur, approaching the great thinking man, 
 
 3 2 4
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 but like a Magdalen ; and does not Socrates 
 himself foreshadow the much greater Jesus ? He 
 foreshadows all those who have expressed love in 
 all its greater and more divine aspects. Now, 
 when Alcibiades left the banquet-room the other 
 guests also departed one by one, and there were 
 left but three — Agathon, Aristophanes, and So- 
 crates ; the three great forces of Athens, repre- 
 senting tragedy, comedy, and philosophy. These 
 then discussed reason ; and Socrates said that the 
 right sort of poet, the greatest poet, is both a 
 tragedian and a comedian. This, however, was 
 never realized until Shakespeare, who combined 
 the two in himself. This further discussion ended 
 in Agathon and Aristophanes falling off to sleep. 
 But what does Socrates do ? He gets up and 
 takes a bath, and then he goes to the gymnasium 
 to his everyday work. 
 
 These, then, are the ribs and the bones of 
 that work of art, the " Symposium." What does 
 it all mean, and what is art as exemplified by 
 this work? In his "Dialogues" Plato goes into 
 dialectics, and he tries to find concepts. In 
 the " Symposium " there is nothing of the kind ; 
 there is no scholastic fence, it is all art. 
 Where he knows that dialectics would fail, he 
 calls in art to emphasize the truth he wishes 
 to enforce. And where a subject would in 
 itself be arid, and he wants to tell us the greatest 
 truths in philosophy, he clothes it with artistic 
 
 325
 
 PLATO 
 
 surroundings that compel the attention ; and this 
 in itself is a great art. When we are young we 
 think we are awfully clever, and if we are con- 
 fronted with problems affecting immortality, in- 
 finity, God, politics, state, parliament or parties, 
 we imagine that if we only put our intellects into 
 motion and bore and bore sufficiently, we shall 
 finally solve those problems. But a mature man 
 knows that that is impossible. Plato knows where 
 dialectics fail and where art must step in. He 
 wants simply to give us truth, a perfectly naive 
 statement of truth, without feats of logics or 
 intellectual acrobatics. And for this reason it is 
 that in his " Symposium " he turns the whole thing 
 into a work of art. He knows that to grasp 
 philosophy we must graft it on personality. 
 Modern philosophers write books in paragraphs ; 
 their ideas of God or of man are so many cut and 
 dried statements which are given to us to accept 
 as truths, whether we like it or not. To make 
 their books works of art is quite beside the ques- 
 tion, and they despise the idea. They want to 
 give truth as physicists or chemists give the laws 
 of combination or formation of material substances ; 
 as water is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen. 
 This may be quite right in chemistry or in physics 
 but it is not so in philosophy. Whether we take 
 Aristotle or Schopenhauer or Herbert Spencer, 
 they none of them can do it ; it is impossible. 
 Immortality, for instance, cannot be described in 
 
 326
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 this fashion. It is Plato who has thrown the best 
 light on immortality in his " Phsedon." And again 
 in the " Symposium," when it is love that is being 
 discussed, we have it from Socrates as Diotima 
 condescends to give him the truth. And when 
 we hear Alcibiades speak of his love for Socrates, 
 then we see Socrates stand out in the background 
 of Athens. It is his love of truth and we know 
 that we see immortality, because we feel that 
 there was in that man something transcending 
 the ordinary limits of human thoughts and exist- 
 ence. This is infinitely more convincing than 
 any set of rules of modern philosophers. The 
 trick of the " Symposium " is an art, to transform 
 dialectics into an articulated situation ; and Plato 
 knew that as long as we cannot graft our teaching 
 on a personality we shall never move a human 
 heart. What we want are personalities ; and we 
 are living on personalities. For instance, in 
 politics, why is there such great difference between 
 England and Montenegro? Because in England 
 there are great political personalities, and Monte- 
 negro is without them. The ideas of the people 
 who become personalities may be wrong, but that 
 has nothing to do with the question. To the 
 Greeks, Socrates was a great religious and a philo- 
 sophical personality, and on that personality was 
 grafted a truth. 
 
 So Plato wanted to teach philosophy by art, 
 and that is why he brings in his different men 
 
 327
 
 PLATO 
 
 to speak in the " Symposium," beginning with 
 Phaedrus, and going on to Pausanias, and through 
 the rest of them to Socrates in regular order, so 
 as to show by graded changes that all they say 
 is not comparable to what philosophy has to say. 
 We see before us in beautiful order this great verbal 
 temple of the " Symposium " as we view in 
 marble that other type of Greek grandeur, the 
 artistic beauty of the Parthenon. When we come, 
 then, to a philosophical standpoint, we understand 
 our own beautiful story, told in the Bible, of Jesus, 
 how the word became flesh. In the Platonic 
 sense this was not dialectical ; and this Platonic 
 idea came true not many hundred years later. 
 And so it is that when we go into a beautiful 
 church we feel an emotion that something is 
 going on which touches the deep fibres of our 
 hearts. When we read the " Symposium "it is a 
 like feeling. We see each actor in his turn serving 
 only to show up the central figure. It may be 
 the passionate outburst of admiration of Alci- 
 biades, or the subtle irony of another, each in 
 turn is leading up to the highest, the figure that 
 expresses love. Here in the "Symposium" we 
 see the whole of life. And all this is really art, 
 and art is a Platonic idea which has become 
 materialized. 
 
 There were many arts that came after Plato, 
 or as a sequence to his thoughts ; but only three 
 arts, so-called, came after the Greeks. The great 
 
 328
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 art of sculpture, the language of marble, is lost 
 since then. No modern sculptor can approach 
 the Greeks in this respect ; we can no more talk 
 in marble than we can in Greek. The three arts 
 that we have acquired since the Greeks are 
 painting, architecture, and music ; and in these 
 modern arts we certainly excel the Greeks. How, 
 then, may we ask, do the Platonic ideas apply 
 to these three modern arts ? Music is the most 
 philosophic of the arts, and it is in music that 
 Plato's ideas show forth more than in the others. 
 It is the very replica of Plato's ideas. The 
 struggle that goes on in a symphony of Beethoven 
 is the struggle of one's own heart. We feel an 
 interest, a something which no thinker and no 
 poet can give us. It has a strange effect, for in 
 music the Platonic idea comes more direct to us, 
 searching our hearts as no words can. And this 
 is music, which appeals to us more than any other 
 art. In a moment we see our life, our childhood, 
 our sunny hours, the paradise of our first youth. 
 Here it is at once, our first idea ; it is the Platonic 
 idea, not clothed, not overburdened with words. 
 As Schopenhauer says, in music we reach the 
 deepest depths of our emotions. It comes direct 
 to us, as in the fifth symphony of Beethoven, 
 where we feel that destiny is knocking at our door. 
 When the palpitation of G and E flat begins we 
 feel awe-struck, and a shock goes over us. It 
 does not take a volume, and no book can reach us 
 
 3 2 9
 
 PLATO 
 
 as this does. Whether it be Beethoven or Schu- 
 mann, they reach us as nothing else can. 
 
 It is the same thing in painting. Great 
 painters are also men who express Platonic ideas. 
 What testifies to the prominence of the Floren- 
 tines in the world of art, and especially of paint- 
 in^? We know that they had in their midst a 
 Platonic school, and it was Marsilius Ficinus who 
 discoursed to them on Plato at the same time as 
 they gave birth to their Platonic ideas. This was 
 not mere accident ; such a word in this connection 
 is sacrilegious. There was, on the contrary, true 
 harmony between things. As Leonardo da Vinci 
 said, " When they heard of these things they 
 wanted to put Plato, they wanted to put his eternal 
 ideas into their pictures." Behind these rough 
 lines were Platonic ideas of prudence, of vigilance, 
 that became idealized under the brush ; these old 
 Florentines lived, in fact, under the influence of 
 Platonic ideas. 
 
 Plato again anticipated history by centuries. 
 He anticipated the Catholic Church of Christianity. 
 There is a peculiar parallelism too in Plato between 
 him and our gospels, where he said that in truth 
 there is no imitation. Truth imitates itself. And 
 in his "Laws," and in his dialogue called the 
 " Sophist," he anticipates Gothic architecture. 
 He pretended that he did not like the architecture 
 of his time ; and by the description of what he did 
 like he gave us a clue to things which came
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 centuries after. Greek architecture did not aspire 
 to the infinite ; it was made up of horizontal and 
 not vertical lines. If we look at the beautifully 
 preserved Greek temple at Nimes, in the south 
 of France, it will bring back to us the famous 
 words from Faust, "It is from this earth that 
 well up all my joys." The Greeks loved this 
 world, and this is the expression of their idea of 
 worship. It is small ; the interior is so small 
 that it is not meant to hold people for worship, 
 as no Greek ever went inside their temples. That 
 was meant for the gods only. They said their 
 prayers at home. When we have seen such a 
 temple as this we feel we want a different 
 temple, a different place of worship. In Gothic 
 architecture the interior is a great thing. It is 
 built for the people, and will take thousands 
 inside. If we visit the cathedrals at Canterbury, 
 at Kheims, at Amiens, we see the same idea in 
 them all. Every stone, moulding, and column is 
 different ; and all these things appeal to us and 
 we see at once why the Platonic idea of architec- 
 ture is far and away beyond the idea held by the 
 Greeks. We see in it the struggle between gravi- 
 tation and aspiration. We see in the Gothic, that 
 even the gargoyles and the buttresses have all a 
 meaning of their own. Is all this art or not art ? 
 And how does it all stand to Plato ? We shall 
 indeed find them all foreshadowed by him ; for we 
 hear him say, " Our architecture is not the proper 
 
 33i
 
 PLATO 
 
 architecture," and that he would not permit it in 
 his ideal state. What he wanted was an architec- 
 ture that was more spiritual ; that reminded one 
 more of the lessons of the next world ; that ex- 
 pressed more the ideals that showed a belief in 
 immortality. " Away with these decorations and 
 colours," is what he said ; for the Greeks went 
 in for painting their buildings. Now, in Gothic 
 architecture all this is different, and one feels 
 that it is really spiritualized. In the Middle Ages 
 people were ashamed of things material, of wood 
 and stone ; and thought that life was only fit to 
 live in the next world. So they took to putting 
 shape to their stones, and really so humanized 
 them that we feel as if they were moving and 
 singing objects. In Eheims, in Amiens we will 
 find this. "We do not see a portal to a church 
 but what we think that a big abbot is posted in 
 the centre of it ; and as we enter there seem to 
 be nothing but saints around his head ; and behind 
 him, too, all the stones are humanized. That 
 Gothic church is really like one of the religious 
 processions of the Middle Ages, with the abbot 
 at the head, and rows of knights at the two sides. 
 Here was spirit representing aspiration ; here was 
 all the great scholasticism of the Middle Ages 
 in religious elevation and spirituaiization. And 
 that is Gothic architecture which is intended to 
 represent the spiritual principle, where every stone 
 is spiritualized and the entire fabric is spiritual.
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 Even the turrets at the top of the building seem 
 to want to go higher in ecstasies of religion. It 
 is not enough for them to want to go to the holy 
 country ; they want to go higher and higher, and 
 straight into heaven. 
 
 All this was not Greek, and the Greeks paid 
 no attention to what Plato said about architecture. 
 What they wanted was moderate architecture. 
 Saxjipoo-rjvr) was their guiding principle in every- 
 thing, and they held to it in architecture as well. 
 If they had been shown the Venus of Milo, or the 
 head of Homer in the Louvre ; yes, they would 
 understand these, but not the architecture that 
 Plato wanted. It is in his book of the "Laws," 
 where he writes on the question of education, that 
 Plato gives us an insight into what is real archi- 
 tecture. And if the Greeks did not appreciate it, 
 can it be said that Gothic architecture is inferior to 
 the Greek architecture ? What is the Platonic idea 
 behind it ? And this brings us to the question, is 
 there a Platonic idea behind landscape painting ? 
 Is there art in still-life, if there is no Platonic idea 
 in Nature ? The latter is a sign of repression, 
 for we will find that in the period when the rococo 
 in art prevailed those nations were governed by 
 absolutism. There was no freedom, therefore no 
 freedom of idea. Our salvation cannot come from 
 a tenet, but only from a personality. It cannot 
 be given to us in the way that a Eoman, if he 
 wanted to make us perfectly happy, would say,
 
 PLATO 
 
 "BecomeaciM Romanus, and you are quite right." 
 Or, again, as the Athenians would say, " We will 
 make you an Athenian citizen." No, that is not 
 so. In art, in the aspiring to ideals, there is no 
 formality, there is no law which can make us a 
 part of any state. Our salvation is in personality 
 alone, which is derived from one man. It is like 
 the Christian religion. If we do not believe in 
 one person, in whom alone there is salvation, then 
 we are no Christians. This is why the Christian 
 fathers said that Plato was a Christian. We have 
 it in the writings of Irenseus and of Augustine, 
 and the idea was that in Plato there was that 
 mixture of art and philosophy which, by leaving 
 on one side dialectics and logic, became incarnate 
 in a personality. This is what Eationalists do 
 not understand. They can only think of ideas as 
 provable by ordinary logic. They do not see that 
 ideas must become persons to be efficient ; that 
 is what escapes them. It was Gladstone who 
 said, " I never met a man who was active in 
 politics, and was not also a believer in religion." 
 That is what is needed. The word must become 
 flesh ; Socrates in philosophy ; Themistocles in 
 politics ; Jesus in religion ; and that is the mean- 
 ing of our " Symposium." 
 
 Art can never be art unless we carry it into 
 ordinary, everyday life ; and when we do that we 
 shall find that it will deepen and enhance the 
 pleasure and profit of living. Where Art is not 
 
 334
 
 AND THE CRITICISM OF LIFE 
 
 taken seriously, that nation is suffering from a 
 great lack, the lack of everything that makes life 
 worth having. It may be a small matter, but let 
 us take the art of letter-writing. How many of 
 us violate the very first principles of art by the 
 monotonous use, for an opening, of that tiresome 
 personal pronoun "I." There are many ways of 
 expressing one's ideas, and as one grows more 
 artistic, one learns to fight shy of that pronoun 
 for an opening, and to begin the letter somewhat 
 more artistically. With all the thirst for ethical 
 moralizing which characterizes the present day, 
 we might turn to Plato, who teaches us more 
 in that artistic dialogue of the "Symposium," 
 where no dialectical acrobatics are indulged in, 
 than in all the rest of his dialogues put together. 
 Here we will find him anticipating this thirst, and 
 teaching us the art of persuasion. Persuasion is 
 really an art. We cannot, without this high 
 refinement of art which we call persuasion, con- 
 vince the other fellow. Success, indeed, means 
 the persuasion of the largest number to one's own 
 views and ideas. 
 
 It is vain for a man to say that he does not 
 care for art. In art we reach the highest 
 achievement of our mind. Art is everything in 
 which there is unity ; everything in which there 
 is harmony and cadence and rhythm. Even the 
 business man might be an artist, for Art throws 
 immense waves over the field of activity. Art at 
 
 335
 
 PLATO 
 
 its highest is a combination of everything that is 
 good and wise and strong ; it is both philosophy 
 and action ; it is both faith and science ; both 
 science and religion; and we should study it in 
 all aspects of our life. If all that we have been 
 discussing here has nothing to do with Plato, then 
 we do not understand Plato at all. In connection 
 with the national importance of art we have a 
 prominent instance of the Japanese, a people who 
 excel in art. They are, indeed, a living illustra- 
 tion of the " Symposium " of Plato, possessing, 
 as they do, all the forces which go to make a 
 great and a prosperous nation. 
 
 All this is of most serious concern to this great 
 nation. We should cultivate the sense of art in 
 all its branches, and make art our real sphere, 
 wherein we shall be both human and great. It 
 is thus by individual exertions that we shall com- 
 bine and make the nation greater and better than 
 it was before. When we have done this, then 
 Plato will sit at another banquet, at our own 
 banquet, and we shall drink to the great Greek 
 sage. 
 
 THE END 
 
 / 
 
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