this, that the former had demonstrated the insufficiency of the usual moral definitions in reference to the ideas of virtue as connected with temperance (owopooúvn), bravery, and holiness, to which the latter had called attention generally. The profound dialogue Parmenides, on the other hand, we cannot with Schleiermacher regard either as a mere dialectic exercise, or as one of the earlier works of Plato (comp. Ed. Zeller's Platonische Studien, p. 184, &c.), but rather see ourselves compelled to assign it a place in the second series of the dialogues of Plato. The foundation of this series is formed by the dialogues Theaetetus, Sophistes, and Politicus, which have clearly a mutual connection. Before the Theaetetus Schleiermacher places the Gorgias, and the connection of the two is indubitable, in so far as they both exhibit the constant and essential in opposition to the changeable and contingent, the former in the domain of cognizance, the latter in that of moral action; and as the Theaetetus is to be placed before the Sophistes, Cratylus and other dialogues, so is the Gorgias to be placed at the head of the Politicus, Philebus and the Politeia. Less certain is the position assigned by Schleiermacher to the Menon, Euthydemus and Cratylus, between the Theaetetus and Sophistes. The Menon seems rather expressly designed to form a connecting link between the investigations of the Gorgias and those of the Theaetetus, and on the one hand to bring into view the distinction discussed in the latter between correct notion and true apprehension, in its application to the idea of virtue; on the other hand, by means of this distinction to bring nearer to its final decision the question respecting the essence of the good, as of virtue and the possibility of teaching it. It might be more difficult to assign to the Euthydemus its definite place. Although with the ridicule of the empty polemical artifices of sophists which is contained in it, there are connected intimations respecting wisdom as the art of those who are in a condition at the same time to produce and to use what they produce, the dialogue nevertheless should probably be regarded as an occasional piece. The Cratylus opposes to the scoffing art of the sophist, dealing in grammatical niceties, the image of dialectic art which recognises and fashions language as a necessary production of the human mind. It should, however, find its appropriate place not before the Sophistes (where Schleiermacher places it), but after it, as the application of dialectic to language could hardly become a matter of inquiry until the nature of dialectic had been discussed, as is done in the Sophistes. The Eleatic stranger, when questioned by Socrates respecting the nature and difference of the sophist, the statesman and the philosopher (Soph. p. 217), answers only the first two of these questions, in the dialogues that bear those names, and if Plato had intended a third and similar investigation respecting the nature of the philosopher, he has not undertaken the immediate fulfilment of his design. Schleiermacher therefore assumes that in the Banquet and Phaedon taken together the model of the philosopher is exhibited in the person of Socrates, in the former as he lived, glorified by the panegyric of Alcibiades, and marked by the function, so especially peculiar to him, of love generating in the beautiful (p. 206); in the latter as he appears in death, longing to become pure spirit. (Schleiermacher's Platon, ii. 2. p. 358, &c.) The contents of the two dialogues, however, and their organization as regarded from the point of view of this assumption, is not altogether intelligible. (Comp. Hermann, p. 525. 27.) But as little should we, with Ed. Zeller (l. c. p. 194, &c.), look for the missing member of the trilogy, of which we have part in the Sophistes and Politicus, in the exclusively dialectical Parmenides. (Comp. Hermann, p. 671, note 533.) But Plato might the sooner have given up the separate exhibition of the philosopher, partly inasmuch as the description of him is already mixed up with the representation of the sophist and the politician, partly as the picture is rendered complete by means of the Symposium and the Phaedon, as well as by the books on the state. Meantime the place which Schleiermacher assigns to those two dialogues between the Sophistes and Philebus may be regarded as amply justified, as even Hermann admits in opposition to Ast and Socher (pp. 398, 469, 526). Only we must reserve room at this same place for the Parmenides. In this most difficult of the Platonic dialogues, which has been treated of at length by Ed. Zeller (1. c.), Stallbaum (Platonis Parmenides, cum IV. libris Prolegomenorum, Lips. 1839), Brandis (Geschichte der Griech. Röm. Philosophie, ii. 1, p. 234, &c., comp. p. 169, note), and others, we find on the one hand the outlines of the doctrine of ideas with the difficulties which oppose themselves to it briefly discussed, on the other hand a considerably more extended attempt made to point out in connection with the conceptions considered in themselves, and in particular with the most universal of them, the One and Existence, the contradictions in which the isolated, abstract contemplation of those conceptions involves us; manifestly in order to pave the way for the solution of those difficulties. In this the Parmenides is closely connected with the Sophistes, and might be placed immediately after the Cratylus, before the Symposium and Phaedon. But that the Philebus is to be regarded as the immediate transition from the second, dialectical, series of dialogues to the third, Schleiermacher has incontrovertibly shown; and the smaller dialogues, which as regards their contents and form are related to those of the second series, in so far as they are not banished as spurious into the appendix, should be ranked with them as occasional treatises. In the third series the order for the books on the state (Politeia), the Timaeus and the Critias, has been expressly marked by Plato himself, and with the books on the state those on the laws connect themselves as a supplement. Ast, though throughout polemically opposed to Schleiermacher, sees himself compelled in the main to recognise the threefold division made by the latter, as he distinguishes Socratic dialogues, in which the poetic and dramatic prevail (Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias and Phaedon), dialectic dialogues (Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus and Cratylus), and purely scientific, or Socratico-Platonic dialogues (Philebus, Symposium, Politeia, Timaeus and Critias. (Platons Leben und Schriften, Leipzig, 1816.) But through this new conception and designation of the first series, and by adding, in the separation of the second and third series, an external ground of division to the internal one, he has been brought to unsteady and arbitrary assumptions which leave out of consideration the internal references. Socher's attempt to establish in place of such arrangements depending upon internal con the Symposium and the Philebus are separated from the Sophistes and Politicus, with which they are much more closely connected than with the delineative works, the Politeia, Timaeus, &c. (Comp. Brandis, Geschichte der Griechisch-Römischen Philosophie, ii. 1, p. 164, &c.) Lastly, as regards the genuineness of the writings of Plato, we cannot, indeed, regard the investigations on the subject as brought to a definitive conclusion, though we may consider ourselves convinced that only a few occasional pieces, or delineations of Socratic conversations, are open to doubts of any importance, not those dialogues which are to be regarded as the larger, essential members of the system. Even if these in part were first published by disciples of Plato, as by Hermodorus (who has been accused of smuggling in spurious works only through a misunderstanding of a passage in Cicero, ad Att. xiii. 21), and by Philippus the Opuntian; and though, further, little can be built upon the confirmation afforded by their having been received into the trilogies of the grammarian Aristophanes, the authenticity of the most important of them is demonstrated by the testimonies of Aristotle and some other incontrovertible authorities (the former will be found carefully collected in Zeller's Platonische Studien, p. 201, &c. Respecting the latter comp. Hermann, l. c. i. p. 410, &c.). Notwithstanding these testimonies, the Parmenides, Sophistes, and Politicus (by Socher, l. c. p. 280, &c.; see on the other hand Hermann, l. c. p. 506, &c. 575, note nection a purely chronological arrangement, depending on the time of their composition (Ueber Platons Schriften, München, 1820), has been followed by no results that can in any degree be depended on, as the date of the composition can be approximately determined by means of the anachronisms (offences against the time in which they are supposed to take place) contained in them in but a few dialogues as compared with the greatly preponderating number of those in which he has assigned it from mere opinion. K. F. Hermann's undertaking, in the absence of definite external statements, to restore a chronological arrangement of the dialogues according to traces and marks founded in facts, with historical circumspection and criticism, and in doing so at the same time to sketch a faithful picture of the progress of the mental life and development of the writer of them, is considerably more worth notice. (Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie. 1ster Theil, Heidelberg, 1839, p. 368, &c.) In the first period, according to him, Plato's Socrates betrays no other view of life, or scientific conception, than such as we become acquainted with in the historical Socrates out of Xenophon and other unsuspicious witnesses (Hippias, Ion, Alcibiades I., Charinides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, and Euthydemus). Then, immediately after the death of Socrates, the Apology, Criton, Gorgias, Euthyphron, Menon, and Hippias Major belong to a transition step. In the second, or Megaric period of development dialectic makes its appearance as the true technic of phi-131), and the Menon (by Ast, p. 398, &c.; see in losophy, and the ideas as its proper objects (Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus, Parmenides). Lastly in the third period the system itself is exhibited (Phaedrus, Menexenus, Symposium, Phaedo, Philebus, Politeia, Timaeus, Critias, and the Laws). But although Hermann has laboured to establish his assumptions with a great expenditure of acuteness and learning, he has not attained to results that can in any degree stand the test of examination. For the assumptions that Plato in the first period confined himself to an analytic treatment of ideas, in a strictly Socratic manner, and did not attain to a scientific independence till he did so through his removal to Megara, nor to an acquaintance with the Pythagorean philosophy, and so to the complete development of his dialectic and doctrine of ideas, till he did so through his travels, -for these assumptions all that can be made out is, that in a number of the dialogues the peculiar fea tures of the Platonic dialectic and doctrine of ideas do not as yet make their appearance in a decided form. But on the one hand Hermann ranks in that class dialogues such as the Euthydemus, Menon, and Gorgias, in which references to dialectic and the doctrine of ideas can scarcely fail to be recognised; on the other it is not easy to see why Plato, even after he had laid down in his own mind the outlines of his dialectic and doctrine of ideas, should not now and then, according to the separate requirements of the subject in hand, as in the Protagoras and the smaller dialogues which connect themselves with it, have looked away from them, and transported himself back again completely to the Socratic point of view. Then again, in Hermann's mode of treating the subject, dialogues which stand in the closest relation to each other, as the Gorgias and Theaetetus, the Euthydemus and Theaetetus, are severed from each other, and assigned to different periods; while the Phaedon, reply Hermann, p. 482, &c.), have been assailed on exceedingly insufficient grounds; the books on the Laws in a manner much more deserving of attention (especially by Zeller, l. c. 1-115; but comp. Hermann, p. 547); but yet even the latter are with preponderating probability to be regarded as genuine. On the other hand the Epinomis is probably to be assigned to a disciple of Plato (comp. Hermann, p. 410. 22), the Minos and Hipparchus to a Socratic (A. Böckh, in Platonis Minoën qui vulgo fertur, p. 9, undertakes to make good the claim of Simon to them). The second Alcibiades was attributed by ancient critics to Xenophon (Athen. xi. p. 506, c.). The Anterastae and Clitophon are probably of much later origin (see Hermann, p. 420, &c. 425, &c.). The Platonic letters were composed at different periods; the oldest of them, the seventh and eighth, probably by disciples of Plato (Hermann, p. 420, &c.). The dialogues Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, Axiochus, and those on justice and virtue, were with good reason regarded by ancient critics as spurious, and with then may be associated the Hipparchus, Theages, and the Definitions. The genuineness of the first Alcibiades seems doubtful, though Hermann defends it (p. 439, &c.). The smaller Hippias, the Ion, and the Menexenus, on the other hand, which are allowed by Aristotle, but assailed by Schleiermacher (i. 2, p. 295, ii. 3, p. 367, &c.) and Ast (p. 303, &c. 448), might very well maintain their ground as occasional compositions of Plato. As regards the thorough criticism of these dialogues in more recent times, Stallbaum in particular, in the prefaces to his editions, and Hermann (p. 366, &c. 400, &c.), have rendered important services. However groundless may be the Neo-platonic assumption of a secret doctrine, of which not even the passages brought forward out of the insititious Platonic letters (vii. p. 341, e. ii. p. 314, c.) contain to become like the Eternal. This impulse is the love which generates in Truth, and the development of it is termed Dialectics. The hints respecting the constitution of the soul, as independent of the body; respecting its higher and lower nature; respecting the mode of apprehension of the former, and its objects, the eternal and the selfexistent; respecting its corporisation, and its any evidence (comp. Hermann, i. pp. 544, 744, note 755), the verbal lectures of Plato certainly did contain an extension and partial alteration of the doctrines discussed in the dialogues, with an approach to the number-theory of the Pythagoreans; for to this we should probably refer the "unwritten assumptions" (ǎypapa dóyμara), and perhaps also the divisions (Siaipéσreis), which Aristotle mentions (Phys. iv. 2, ib. Simpl. f. 127, de Generat. et Cor-longing by purification to raise itself again to rupt. ii. 3; ib. Joh. Philop. f. 50; Diog. Laert. iii. 80). His lectures on the doctrine of the good, Aristotle, Heracleides Ponticus, and Hestiaeus, had noted down, and from the notes of Aristotle some valuable fragments have come down to us (Arist. de Anima, i. 2; ib. Simpl. et Joh. Philop. ; Aristox. Harmonica, ii. p. 30; comp. Brandis, de Perditis Aristotelis Libris, p. 3, &c.; and Trendelenburg, Platonis de Ideis et Numeris Doctrina). The Aristotelic monography on ideas was also at least in part drawn from lectures of Plato, or conversations with him. (Aristot. Metaph. i. 9. p. 990, b. 11, &c.; ib. Alex. Aphrod. in Schol. in Arist. p. 564, b. 14, &c.; Brandis, l. c. p. 14, &c.) matter. III. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO. The attempt to combine poetry and philosophy (the two fundamental tendencies of the Greek mind), gives to the Platonic dialogues a charm, which irresistibly attracts us, though we may have but a deficient comprehension of their subjectEven the greatest of the Grecian poets are censured by Plato, not without some degree of passion and partiality, for their want of clear ideas, and of true insight (de Rep. iii. p. 387, a., ii. p. 377, x. pp. 597, c., 605, a., 608, a., v. p. 476, b., 479, 472, d., vi. p. 507, a., de Leg. iv. p. 719, c., Gorg. p. 501, b.). Art is to be regarded as the capacity of creating a whole that is inspired by an invisible order (Phileb. pp. 64, 67, Phaedr. p. 264, d.); its aim, to guide the human soul (Phaedr. pp. 261, a. 277, c. 278, a., de Rep. x. p. 605, c.). The living, unconsciously-creative impulse of the poet, when purified by science, should, on its part, bring this to a full development. Carrying the Socratic dialogue to greater perfection, Plato endeavours to draw his hearers, by means of a dramatic intuition, into the circle of the investigation; to bring them, by the spur of irony, to a consciousness either of knowledge or of ignorance; by means of myths, partly to waken up the spirit of scientific inquiry, partly to express hopes and anticipations which science is not yet able to confirm. (See Alb. Jahn, Dissertatio Platonica qua tum de Causa et Natura Mythorum Platonicorum disputatur, tum Mythus de Amoris Ortu Sorte et Indole explicatur. Bernae, 1839.) Plato, like Socrates, was penetrated with the idea that wisdom is the attribute of the Godhead, that philosophy, springing from the impulse to know, is the necessity of the intellectual man, and the greatest of the goods in which he participates (Phaedr. p. 278, d., Lysis, p. 218, a., Apolog. p. 23, Theaet. p. 155, d., Sympos. p. 204, a., Tim. p. 47, a.). When once we strive after Wisdom with the intensity of a lover, she becomes the true consecration and purification of the soul (Phaedr. p. 60, e., Symp. p. 218, b.), adapted to lead us from the nightlike to the true day (de Rep. vii. p. 521, d. vi. p. 485, b.). An approach to wisdom, however, presupposes an original communion with Being, truly so called; and this communion again presupposes the divine nature or immortality of the soul, and the impulse its higher existence: these hints, clothed in the form of mythus (Phaedr. p. 245, c.), are followed up in the Phaedrus by panegyrics on the love of beauty, and discussions on dialectics (pp. 251255), here understood more immediately as the art of discoursing (pp. 265, d. 266, b. 269, c.). Out of the philosophical impulse which is developed by Dialectics not only correct knowledge, but also correct action springs forth. Socrates' doctrine respecting the unity of virtue, and that it consists in true, vigorous, and practical knowledge; that this knowledge, however, lying beyond sensuous perception and experience, is rooted in self-consciousness and has perfect happiness (as the inward harmony of the soul) for its inevitable consequence :this doctrine is intended to be set forth in a preliminary manner in the Protagoras and the smaller dialogues attached to it. They are designed, therefore, to introduce a foundation for ethics, by the refutation of the common views that were entertained of morals and of virtue. For although not even the words ethics and physics occur in Plato (to say nothing of any independent delineation of the one or the other of these sciences), and even dialectics are not treated of as a distinct and separate province, yet he must rightly be regarded as the originator of the threefold division of philosophy (Aristocles, ap. Euseb. Praep. Ev. xi. 33; comp. Aristot. Top. i. 14, Anal. Post. i. 33), inasmuch as he had before him the decided object to develop the Socratic method into a scientific system of dialectics, that should supply the grounds of our knowledge as well as of our moral action (physics and ethics), and therefore separates the general investigations on knowledge and understanding, at least relatively, from those which refer to physics and ethics. Accordingly, the Theaetetus, Sophistes, Parmenides, and Cratylus, are principally dialectical; the Protagoras, Gorgias, Politicus, Philebus, and the Politics, principally ethical; while the Timaeus is exclusively physical. Plato's dialectics and ethics, however, have been more successful than his physics. The question," What is knowledge," had been brought forward more and more definitely, in proportion as the development of philosophy generally advanced. Each of the three main branches of the ancient philosophy, when at their culminating point, had made a trial at the solution of that question, and considered themselves bound to penetrate beneath the phenomenal surface of the affections and perceptions. Heracleitus, for example, in order to gain a sufficient ground for the common (¿vvóv), or, as we should say, for the universally admitted, though in contradiction to his fundamental principle of an eternal generation, postulates a worldconsciousness; Parmenides believed that he had discovered knowledge in the identity of simple, unchangeable Being, and thought; Philolaus, and with him the flower of the Pythagoreans generally, in the consciousness we have of the unchangeable relations of number and measure. When, however, up the assertion, that knowledge consists in right conception, united with discourse or explanation; for even thus an absolutely certain knowledge will be presupposed as the rule or criterion of the explanation, whatever may be its more accurate definition (p. 200, c. &c.). Although, therefore, Plato concludes the dialogue with the declaration that he has not succeeded in bringing the idea of knowledge into perfect clearness (p. 210, a.), but that it must be something which excludes all changeableness, something which is its own guarantee, simple, uniform, indivisible (p. 205, c., comp. 202, d.), and not to be reached in the science of num the conflict of these principles, each of them untenable in its own one-sidedness, had called forth the sophists, and these had either denied knowledge altogether, or resolved it into the mere opinion of momentary affection, Socrates was obliged above all things to show, that there was a knowledge independent of the changes of our sensuous affections, and that this knowledge is actually found in our inalienable consciousness respecting moral require ments, and respecting the divinity, in conscientious self-intellection. To develope this by induction from particular manifestations of the moral and religious sense, and to establish it, by means of definition, in a comprehensible form,—that is, in its generality,―bers (p. 195, d.): of this the reader, as he spontasuch was the point to which his attention had mainly to be directed. Plato, on the contrary, was constrained to view the question relating to the essence and the material of our knowledge, as well of that which develops itself for its own sake, as of that which breaks out into action,-of the theoretical as well as of the practical, more generally, and to direct his efforts, therefore, to the investigation of its various forms. In so doing he became the originator of the science of knowledge,-of dialectics. No one before him had gained an equally clear percep- But before Plato could pass on to his investigation of the subjective and objective elements of our tions respecting the modes of development and the knowledge; no one of the theoretical and the prac-forms of knowledge, he was obliged to undertake tical side of it; and no one before him had attempted to discover its forms and its laws. The doctrine of Heracleitus, if we set aside the postulate of a universal world-consciousness, had been weakened down to the idea that knowledge is confined to the consciousness of the momentary affection which proceeds from the meeting of the motion of the subject with that of the object; that each of these affections is equally true, but that each, on account of the incessant change of the motions, must be a different one. With this idea that of the atomistic theory coincided, inasmuch as it was only by means of arbitrary hypotheses that the latter could get over the consciousness of ever-changing sensuous affections. In order to refute this idea from its very foundation, once for all, Plato's Theaetetus sets forth with great acuteness the doctrine of eternal generation, and the results which Protagoras had drawn from it (p. 153, &c.); he renounces the apparent, but by no means decisive grounds, which lie against it (p. 157, e. &c.) ; but then demonstrates that Protagoras must regard his own assertion as at once true and false; that he must renounce and give up all determinations respecting futurity, and consequently respecting utility; that continuity of motion being presupposed, no perception whatever could be attained; and that the comparison and combination of the emotions or perceptions presupposes a thinking faculty peculiar to the soul (reflection), distinct from mere feeling (pp. 171, &c. 179, 182-184). The man who acknowledges this, if he still will not renounce sensualism, yet will be inclined from his sense-perceptions to deduce recollection; from it, conception; from conception, when it acquires firmness, knowledge (Phaedo, p. 96, c.); and to designate the latter as correct conception; although he will not be in a condition to render any account of the rise of incorrect conceptions, or of the difference between those and correct ones, unless he presupposes a knowledge that lies, not merely beyond conception generally, but even beyond correct conception, and that carries with it its own eyidence (Theaet. p. 187). He will also be obliged to give neously reproduces the investigation, was intended to convince himself (comp. Charmid. p. 166, c. 169, c., Sophist. p. 220, c.). That knowledge, however, grounded on and sustained by logical inference (airías λoyiou, Meno, p. 98, a., de Rep. iv. p. 431, c.), should verify itself through the medium of true ideas (Tim. p. 51, c., de Rep. vi. p. 54, d.), can only be considered as the more perfect determination of the conclusion to which he had come in the Theaetetus. to determine the objects of knowledge, and to grasp that knowledge in its objective phase. To accomplish this was the purpose of the Sophistes, which immediately attaches itself to the Theaetetus, and obviously presupposes its conclusions. In the latter dialogue it had already been intimated that knowledge can only take place in reference to real existence (Theaet. p. 206, e. and 201, a.). This was also the doctrine of the Eleatics, who nevertheless had deduced the unconditional unity and unchangeableness of the existent, from the inconceivableness of the non-existent. If, however, non-existence is absolutely inconceivable, then also must error, false conception, be so likewise. First of all, therefore, the non-existent was to be discussed, and shown to have, in some sort, an existence, while to this end existence itself had to be defined. In the primal substance, perpetually undergoing a process of transformation, which was assumed by the Ionian physiologists, the existent, whether understood as duality, trinity, or plurality, cannot find place (p. 242, d.); but as little can it (with the Eleatics) be even so much as conceived in thought as something absolutely single and one, without any multiplicity (p. 244, b. &c.). Such a thing would rather again coincide with Non-existence. For a multiplicity even in appearance only to be admitted, a multiformity of the existent must be acknowledged (p. 245, c. d.). Manifold existence, however, cannot be a bare multiformity of the tangible and corporeal (p. 246, a. f.), nor yet a plurality of intelligible incorporeal Essences (Ideas), which have no share either in Action or in Passion, as Euclid and his school probably taught; since so conceived they would be destitute of any influence on the world of the changeable, and would indeed themselves entirely elude our cognizance (p. 248, a. f.). But as in the Theaetetus, the inconceivableness of an eternal generation, without anything stable, had been the result arrived at (comp. Sophist. p. 249, b.), so in the Sophistes the opposite idea is disposed of, namely, that the absolutely unchangeable existence alone really is, and that all change is mere appearance. Plato was obliged, therefore, to un-thinking souls (Phileb. p. 15, a., de Rep. vii. p. 532, dertake this task,-to find a Being instead of a a., Tim. p. 51, Phaedo, p. 100, b. p. 102. c. &c). Becoming, and vice versa, and then to show how To that only which can be conceived as an entirely the manifold existences stand in relation to each formless and undetermined mass, or as a part of a other, and to the changeable, i. e. to phenomena. whole, or as an arbitrary relation, do no ideas Existence, Plato concludes, can of itself consist whatever correspond (Parm. p. 130, c.). neither in Rest nor in Motion, yet still can share in both, and stand in reciprocal community (p. 250, a. &c.). But certain ideas absolutely exclude one another, as rest, for example, excludes motion, and sameness difference. What ideas, then, are capable of being united with each other, and what are not so, it is the part of science (dialectics) to decide (p. 252, e.). By the discussion of the relation which the ideas of rest and motion, of sameness and difference, hold to each other, it is explained how motion can be the same, and not the same, how it can be thought of as being and yet not being; consequently, how the non-existent denotes only the variations of existence, not the bare negation of it (p. 256, d. &c.). That existence is not at variance with becoming, and that the latter is not conceivable apart from the former, Plato shows in the case of the two principal parts of speech, and their reciprocal relation (p. 258. c., &c. 262). From this it becomes evident in what sense dialectics can be characterised at once as the science of understanding, and as the science of the self-existent, as the science of sciences. In the Phaedrus (p. 261; comp. pp. 266, b. 270, d.) it is presented to us in the first instance as the art of discoursing, and therewith of the true education of the soul and of intellection. In the Sophistes (p. 261, e. &c.) it appears as the science of the true connection of ideas; in the Philebus (p. 16, c.) as the highest gift of the gods, as the true Promethean fire; while in the Books on the Republic (vi. p. 511, b.) pure ideas, freed from all form and presupposition, are shown to be grasped and developed by it. In the Theaetetus simple ideas, reached only by the spontaneous activity of thought, had presented themselves as the necessary conditions of knowledge; in the Sophistes, the objects of knowledge come before us as a manifold existence, containing in itself the principles of all changes. The existence of things, cognisable only by means of conception, is their true essence, their idea. Hence the assertion (Parmen. p. 135, b.) that to deny the reality of ideas is to destroy all scientific research. Plato, it is true, departed from the original meaning of the word idea (namely, that of form or figure) in which it had been employed by Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and probably also by Democritus; inasmuch as he understood by it the unities (évades, μovádes) which lie at the basis of the visible, the changeable, and which can only be reached by pure thinking (eiλikpivǹs diávoia) (Phaedr. p. 247, de Rep. ii. p. 380, ix. p. 585, b. vi. p. 507, b., Phileb. p. 15, Tim. p. 51, b.); but he retained the characteristic of the intuitive and real, in opposition to the mere abstractness of ideas which belong simply to the thinking which interposes itself. He included under the expression idea every thing stable amidst the changes of mere phenomena, all really existing and unchangeable definitudes, by which the changes of things and our knowledge of them are conditioned, such as the ideas of genus and species, the laws and ends of nature, as also the principles of cognition, and of moral action, and the essences of individual, concrete, VOL. III. But how are we to understand the existence of ideas in things? Neither the whole conception, nor merely a part of it, can reside in the things; neither is it enough to understand the ideas to be conceptions, which the soul beholds together with the things (that is, as we should call them, subjectively valid conceptions or categories), or as bare thoughts without reality. Even when viewed as the archetypes of the changeable, they need some more distinct definition, and some security against obvious objections. This question and the difficulties which lie against its solution, are developed in the Parmenides, at the beginning of the dialogue, with great acuteness. To introduce the solution to that question, and the refutation of these difficulties, is the evident intention of the succeeding dialectical antinomical discussion of the idea of unity, as a thing being and not being, according as it is viewed in relation to itself and to what is different. How far Plato succeeded in separating ideas from mere abstract conceptions, and making their reality distinct from the natural causality of motion, we cannot here inquire. Neither can we enter into any discussions respecting the Platonic methods of division, and of the antinomical definitions of ideas, respecting the leading principles of these methods, and his attempt in the Cratylus to represent words as the immediate copy of ideas, that is, of the essential in things, by means of the fundamental parts of speech, and to point out the part which dialectics must take in the development of language. While the foundation which Plato lays for the doctrine of ideas or dialectics must be regarded as something finished and complete in itself, yet the mode in which he carries it out is not by any means beyond the reach of objections; and we can hardly assume that it had attained any remarkably higher development either in the mind of Plato himself, or in his lectures, although he appears to have been continually endeavouring to grasp and to represent the fundamental outlines of his doctrine from different points of view, as is manifest especially from the argumentations which are preserved to us in Aristotle's work on Plato's ideas. (Brandis, de perditis Aristotelis Libris de Ideis et de Bono, p. 14, &c.; also Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römischen Philosophie, vol. ii. p. 227, &c.) That Plato, however, while he distinctly separated the region of pure thinking or of ideas from that of sensuous perception and the world of phenomena, did not overlook the necessity of the communion between the intelligible and the sensible world, is abundantly manifest from the gradations which he assumes for the development of our cognition. In the region of sense-perception, or conception, again, he distinguishes the comprehension of images, and that of objects (eikaσia and wiσtis), while in the region of thinking he separates the knowledge of those relations which belong indeed * The meaning of the somewhat novel, though convenient, word, antinomical (antinomisch) will be evident to any one who examines the Greek word dvTivoμKós, to which it is equivalent. [TRANSL.] DD |