الفصل الفصل 4 · Adeimantus said: ‘Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that

you make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they

are the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men,

lands and houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and

are always mounting guard.’ You may add, I replied, that they receive

no pay but only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or

a mistress. ‘Well, and what answer do you give?’ My answer is, that our

guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,—I should not be

surprised to find in the long-run that they were,—but this is not the

aim of our constitution, which was designed for the good of the whole

and not of any one part. If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for

having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not

purple but black, he would reply: ‘The eye must be an eye, and you

should look at the statue as a whole.’ ‘Now I can well imagine a fool’s

paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple

and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand,

that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the

other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. And a State

may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into

boon companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we are not

talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man

is expected to do his own work. The happiness resides not in this or

that class, but in the State as a whole. I have another remark to

make:—A middle condition is best for artisans; they should have money

enough to buy tools, and not enough to be independent of business. And

will not the same condition be best for our citizens? If they are poor,

they will be mean; if rich, luxurious and lazy; and in neither case

contented. ‘But then how will our poor city be able to go to war

against an enemy who has money?’ There may be a difficulty in fighting

against one enemy; against two there will be none. In the first place,

the contest will be carried on by trained warriors against well-to-do

citizens: and is not a regular athlete an easy match for two stout

opponents at least? Suppose also, that before engaging we send

ambassadors to one of the two cities, saying, ‘Silver and gold we have

not; do you help us and take our share of the spoil;’—who would fight

against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join with them in preying

upon the fatted sheep? ‘But if many states join their resources, shall

we not be in danger?’ I am amused to hear you use the word ‘state’ of

any but our own State. They are ‘states,’ but not ‘a state’—many in

one. For in every state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor,

which you may set one against the other. But our State, while she

remains true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of

Hellenic states.

To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of unity;

it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. This is a matter

of secondary importance, like the principle of transposition which was

intimated in the parable of the earthborn men. The meaning there

implied was that every man should do that for which he was fitted, and

be at one with himself, and then the whole city would be united. But

all these things are secondary, if education, which is the great

matter, be duly regarded. When the wheel has once been set in motion,

the speed is always increasing; and each generation improves upon the

preceding, both in physical and moral qualities. The care of the

governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from

innovation; alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon

end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at first, and

begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly

upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial

relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is

ruin and confusion everywhere. But if education remains in the

established form, there will be no danger. A restorative process will

be always going on; the spirit of law and order will raise up what has

fallen down. Nor will any regulations be needed for the lesser matters

of life—rules of deportment or fashions of dress. Like invites like for

good or for evil. Education will correct deficiencies and supply the

power of self-government. Far be it from us to enter into the

particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education,

and education will take care of all other things.

But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will

make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by

some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of

living. If you tell such persons that they must first alter their

habits, then they grow angry; they are charming people. ‘Charming,—nay,

the very reverse.’ Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good

graces, nor the state which is like them. And such states there are

which first ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the

constitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and out

of anything; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them, is their

leader and saviour. ‘Yes, the men are as bad as the states.’ But do you

not admire their cleverness? ‘Nay, some of them are stupid enough to

believe what the people tell them.’ And when all the world is telling a

man that he is six feet high, and he has no measure, how can he believe

anything else? But don’t get into a passion: to see our statesmen

trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the

Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. Minute

enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones.

And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to

Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all

things—that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon

the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any

sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No foreign god shall be supreme

in our realms...

Here, as Socrates would say, let us ‘reflect on’ (Greek) what has

preceded: thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens,

but only of the well-being of the State. They may be the happiest of

men, but our principal aim in founding the State was not to make them

happy. They were to be guardians, not holiday-makers. In this pleasant

manner is presented to us the famous question both of ancient and

modern philosophy, touching the relation of duty to happiness, of right

to utility.

First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas.

The utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of error, and

shows to us a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. It may be

admitted further that right and utility are co-extensive, and that he

who makes the happiness of mankind his object has one of the highest

and noblest motives of human action. But utility is not the historical

basis of morality; nor the aspect in which moral and religious ideas

commonly occur to the mind. The greatest happiness of all is, as we

believe, the far-off result of the divine government of the universe.

The greatest happiness of the individual is certainly to be found in a

life of virtue and goodness. But we seem to be more assured of a law of

right than we can be of a divine purpose, that ‘all mankind should be

saved;’ and we infer the one from the other. And the greatest happiness

of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest happiness in the

ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised in a life of pain, or

in a voluntary death. Further, the word ‘happiness’ has several

ambiguities; it may mean either pleasure or an ideal life, happiness

subjective or objective, in this world or in another, of ourselves only

or of our neighbours and of all men everywhere. By the modern founder

of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested motives of

action are included under the same term, although they are commonly

opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. The word happiness has not

the definiteness or the sacredness of ‘truth’ and ‘right’; it does not

equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the

conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the comforts and

conveniences of life; too little with ‘the goods of the soul which we

desire for their own sake.’ In a great trial, or danger, or temptation,

or in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely thought of. For these

reasons ‘the greatest happiness’ principle is not the true foundation

of ethics. But though not the first principle, it is the second, which

is like unto it, and is often of easier application. For the larger

part of human actions are neither right nor wrong, except in so far as

they tend to the happiness of mankind (Introd. to Gorgias and

Philebus).

The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or expedient

seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater authority. For

concerning political measures, we chiefly ask: How will they affect the

happiness of mankind? Yet here too we may observe that what we term

expediency is merely the law of right limited by the conditions of

human society. Right and truth are the highest aims of government as

well as of individuals; and we ought not to lose sight of them because

we cannot directly enforce them. They appeal to the better mind of

nations; and sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests

to resist. They are the watchwords which all men use in matters of

public policy, as well as in their private dealings; the peace of

Europe may be said to depend upon them. In the most commercial and

utilitarian states of society the power of ideas remains. And all the

higher class of statesmen have in them something of that idealism which

Pericles is said to have gathered from the teaching of Anaxagoras. They

recognise that the true leader of men must be above the motives of

ambition, and that national character is of greater value than material

comfort and prosperity. And this is the order of thought in Plato;

first, he expects his citizens to do their duty, and then under

favourable circumstances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State,

their happiness is assured. That he was far from excluding the modern

principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other

passages; in which ‘the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most

honourable’, and also ‘the most sacred’.

We may note

(1) The manner in which the objection of Adeimantus here, is designed

to draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates.

(2) The conception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of

politics and of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of

criticism, which, under the various names of harmony, symmetry,

measure, proportion, unity, the Greek seems to have applied to works of

art.

(3) The requirement that the State should be limited in size, after the

traditional model of a Greek state; as in the Politics of Aristotle,

the fact that the cities of Hellas were small is converted into a

principle.

(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the

light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the

‘charming’ patients who are always making themselves worse; or again,

the playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave

irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six

feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is

to be pardoned for his ignorance—he is too amusing for us to be

seriously angry with him.

(5) The light and superficial manner in which religion is passed over

when provision has been made for two great principles,—first, that

religion shall be based on the highest conception of the gods,

secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type shall be

maintained...

Socrates proceeds: But where amid all this is justice? Son of Ariston,

tell me where. Light a candle and search the city, and get your brother

and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her. ‘That won’t

do,’ replied Glaucon, ‘you yourself promised to make the search and

talked about the impiety of deserting justice.’ Well, I said, I will

lead the way, but do you follow. My notion is, that our State being

perfect will contain all the four virtues—wisdom, courage, temperance,

justice. If we eliminate the three first, the unknown remainder will be

justice.

First then, of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will

be wise because politic. And policy is one among many kinds of

skill,—not the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of

the husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of

the whole State. Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are

a small class in number, far smaller than the blacksmiths; but in them

is concentrated the wisdom of the State. And if this small ruling class

have wisdom, then the whole State will be wise.

Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in

another class—that of soldiers. Courage may be defined as a sort of

salvation—the never-failing salvation of the opinions which law and

education have prescribed concerning dangers. You know the way in which

dyers first prepare the white ground and then lay on the dye of purple

or of any other colour. Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no

soap or lye will ever wash them out. Now the ground is education, and

the laws are the colours; and if the ground is properly laid, neither

the soap of pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever wash them

out. This power which preserves right opinion about danger I would ask

you to call ‘courage,’ adding the epithet ‘political’ or ‘civilized’ in

order to distinguish it from mere animal courage and from a higher

courage which may hereafter be discussed.

Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. More than the preceding

virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. Some light is thrown

upon the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as

‘master of himself’—which has an absurd sound, because the master is

also the servant. The expression really means that the better principle

in a man masters the worse. There are in cities whole classes—women,

slaves and the like—who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the

better; and in our State the former class are held under control by the

latter. Now to which of these classes does temperance belong? ‘To both

of them.’ And our State if any will be the abode of temperance; and we

were right in describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused

through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to be of one mind,

and attuning the upper and middle and lower classes like the strings of

an instrument, whether you suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength

or wealth.

And now we are near the spot; let us draw in and surround the cover and

watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away and escape. Tell

me, if you see the thicket move first. ‘Nay, I would have you lead.’

Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult;

but we must push on. I begin to see a track. ‘Good news.’ Why, Glaucon,

our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our

eyes into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as

bad as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have

you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every

man doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation

of the State—what but this was justice? Is there any other virtue

remaining which can compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in

the scale of political virtue? For ‘every one having his own’ is the

great object of government; and the great object of trade is that every

man should do his own business. Not that there is much harm in a

carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself

into a carpenter; but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his

last and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single

individual is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil

is injustice, or every man doing another’s business. I do not say that

as yet we are in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. For the

definition which we believe to hold good in states has still to be

tested by the individual. Having read the large letters we will now

come back to the small. From the two together a brilliant light may be

struck out...

Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of

residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the

three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State,

although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony

than the first two. If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be

sought for in the relation of the three parts in the soul or classes in

the State to one another. It is obvious and simple, and for that very

reason has not been found out. The modern logician will be inclined to

object that ideas cannot be separated like chemical substances, but

that they run into one another and may be only different aspects or

names of the same thing, and such in this instance appears to be the

case. For the definition here given of justice is verbally the same as

one of the definitions of temperance given by Socrates in the

Charmides, which however is only provisional, and is afterwards

rejected. And so far from justice remaining over when the other virtues

are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with

difficulty be distinguished. Temperance appears to be the virtue of a

part only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of

the whole soul. Yet on the other hand temperance is also described as a

sort of harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. Justice seems

to differ from temperance in degree rather than in kind; whereas

temperance is the harmony of discordant elements, justice is the

perfect order by which all natures and classes do their own business,

the right man in the right place, the division and co-operation of all

the citizens. Justice, again, is a more abstract notion than the other

virtues, and therefore, from Plato’s point of view, the foundation of

them, to which they are referred and which in idea precedes them. The

proposal to omit temperance is a mere trick of style intended to avoid

monotony.

There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier Dialogues of

Plato (Protagoras; Arist. Nic. Ethics), ‘Whether the virtues are one or

many?’ This receives an answer which is to the effect that there are

four cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in

ethical philosophy), and one supreme over the rest, which is not like

Aristotle’s conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others,

but the whole of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal

conception of justice or order in the first education and in the moral

nature of man, the still more universal conception of the good in the

second education and in the sphere of speculative knowledge seems to

succeed. Both might be equally described by the terms ‘law,’ ‘order,’

‘harmony;’ but while the idea of good embraces ‘all time and all

existence,’ the conception of justice is not extended beyond man.

...Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. But

first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul.

His argument is as follows:—Quantity makes no difference in quality.

The word ‘just,’ whether applied to the individual or to the State, has

the same meaning. And the term ‘justice’ implied that the same three

principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own

business. But are they really three or one? The question is difficult,

and one which can hardly be solved by the methods which we are now

using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time.

‘The shorter will satisfy me.’ Well then, you would admit that the

qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose

them? The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race

intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because the

individual members of each have such and such a character; the

difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or

three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature,

desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul

comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry, however, requires

a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation

cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility

in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is

fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no necessity to

mention all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally assume that

opposites cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same relation. And

to the class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire and

avoidance. And one form of desire is thirst and hunger: and here arises

a new point—thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food; not of

warm drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single exception

of course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies that it

is good. When relative terms have no attributes, their correlatives

have no attributes; when they have attributes, their correlatives also

have them. For example, the term ‘greater’ is simply relative to

‘less,’ and knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge. But on the

other hand, a particular knowledge is of a particular subject. Again,

every science has a distinct character, which is defined by an object;

medicine, for example, is the science of health, although not to be

confounded with health. Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us

return to the original instance of thirst, which has a definite

object—drink. Now the thirsty soul may feel two distinct impulses; the

animal one saying ‘Drink;’ the rational one, which says ‘Do not drink.’

The two impulses are contradictory; and therefore we may assume that

they spring from distinct principles in the soul. But is passion a

third principle, or akin to desire? There is a story of a certain

Leontius which throws some light on this question. He was coming up

from the Piraeus outside the north wall, and he passed a spot where

there were dead bodies lying by the executioner. He felt a longing

desire to see them and also an abhorrence of them; at first he turned

away and shut his eyes, then, suddenly tearing them open, he

said,—‘Take your fill, ye wretches, of the fair sight.’ Now is there

not here a third principle which is often found to come to the

assistance of reason against desire, but never of desire against

reason? This is passion or spirit, of the separate existence of which

we may further convince ourselves by putting the following case:—When a

man suffers justly, if he be of a generous nature he is not indignant

at the hardships which he undergoes: but when he suffers unjustly, his

indignation is his great support; hunger and thirst cannot tame him;

the spirit within him must do or die, until the voice of the shepherd,

that is, of reason, bidding his dog bark no more, is heard within. This

shows that passion is the ally of reason. Is passion then the same with

reason? No, for the former exists in children and brutes; and Homer

affords a proof of the distinction between them when he says, ‘He smote

his breast, and thus rebuked his soul.’

And now, at last, we have reached firm ground, and are able to infer

that the virtues of the State and of the individual are the same. For

wisdom and courage and justice in the State are severally the wisdom

and courage and justice in the individuals who form the State. Each of

the three classes will do the work of its own class in the State, and

each part in the individual soul; reason, the superior, and passion,

the inferior, will be harmonized by the influence of music and

gymnastic. The counsellor and the warrior, the head and the arm, will

act together in the town of Mansoul, and keep the desires in proper

subjection. The courage of the warrior is that quality which preserves

a right opinion about dangers in spite of pleasures and pains. The

wisdom of the counsellor is that small part of the soul which has

authority and reason. The virtue of temperance is the friendship of the

ruling and the subject principles, both in the State and in the

individual. Of justice we have already spoken; and the notion already

given of it may be confirmed by common instances. Will the just state

or the just individual steal, lie, commit adultery, or be guilty of

impiety to gods and men? ‘No.’ And is not the reason of this that the

several principles, whether in the state or in the individual, do their

own business? And justice is the quality which makes just men and just

states. Moreover, our old division of labour, which required that there

should be one man for one use, was a dream or anticipation of what was

to follow; and that dream has now been realized in justice, which

begins by binding together the three chords of the soul, and then acts

harmoniously in every relation of life. And injustice, which is the

insubordination and disobedience of the inferior elements in the soul,

is the opposite of justice, and is inharmonious and unnatural, being to

the soul what disease is to the body; for in the soul as well as in the

body, good or bad actions produce good or bad habits. And virtue is the

health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease

and weakness and deformity of the soul.

Again the old question returns upon us: Is justice or injustice the

more profitable? The question has become ridiculous. For injustice,

like mortal disease, makes life not worth having. Come up with me to

the hill which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of

virtue, and the infinite forms of vice, among which are four special

ones, characteristic both of states and of individuals. And the state

which corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have

been describing, wherein reason rules under one of two names—monarchy

and aristocracy. Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and

of souls...

In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties,

Plato takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. And

the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the

faculties. The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. But

the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he

will not proceed a step without first clearing the ground. This leads

him into a tiresome digression, which is intended to explain the nature

of contradiction. First, the contradiction must be at the same time and

in the same relation. Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced

into either of the terms in which the contradictory proposition is

expressed: for example, thirst is of drink, not of warm drink. He

implies, what he does not say, that if, by the advice of reason, or by

the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from drinking, this proves

that thirst, or desire under which thirst is included, is distinct from

anger and reason. But suppose that we allow the term ‘thirst’ or

‘desire’ to be modified, and say an ‘angry thirst,’ or a ‘revengeful

desire,’ then the two spheres of desire and anger overlap and become

confused. This case therefore has to be excluded. And still there

remains an exception to the rule in the use of the term ‘good,’ which

is always implied in the object of desire. These are the discussions of

an age before logic; and any one who is wearied by them should remember

that they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in the first

development of the human faculties.

The psychology of Plato extends no further than the division of the

soul into the rational, irascible, and concupiscent elements, which, as

far as we know, was first made by him, and has been retained by

Aristotle and succeeding ethical writers. The chief difficulty in this

early analysis of the mind is to define exactly the place of the

irascible faculty (Greek), which may be variously described under the

terms righteous indignation, spirit, passion. It is the foundation of

courage, which includes in Plato moral courage, the courage of enduring

pain, and of surmounting intellectual difficulties, as well as of

meeting dangers in war. Though irrational, it inclines to side with the

rational: it cannot be aroused by punishment when justly inflicted: it

sometimes takes the form of an enthusiasm which sustains a man in the

performance of great actions. It is the ‘lion heart’ with which the

reason makes a treaty. On the other hand it is negative rather than

positive; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood, but does not, like

Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the vision of Truth or

Good. It is the peremptory military spirit which prevails in the

government of honour. It differs from anger (Greek), this latter term

having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. Although Aristotle

has retained the word, yet we may observe that ‘passion’ (Greek) has

with him lost its affinity to the rational and has become

indistinguishable from ‘anger’ (Greek). And to this vernacular use

Plato himself in the Laws seems to revert, though not always. By modern

philosophy too, as well as in our ordinary conversation, the words

anger or passion are employed almost exclusively in a bad sense; there

is no connotation of a just or reasonable cause by which they are

aroused. The feeling of ‘righteous indignation’ is too partial and

accidental to admit of our regarding it as a separate virtue or habit.

We are tempted also to doubt whether Plato is right in supposing that

an offender, however justly condemned, could be expected to acknowledge

the justice of his sentence; this is the spirit of a philosopher or

martyr rather than of a criminal.

We may observe how nearly Plato approaches Aristotle’s famous thesis,

that ‘good actions produce good habits.’ The words ‘as healthy

practices (Greek) produce health, so do just practices produce

justice,’ have a sound very like the Nicomachean Ethics. But we note

also that an incidental remark in Plato has become a far-reaching

principle in Aristotle, and an inseparable part of a great Ethical

system.

There is a difficulty in understanding what Plato meant by ‘the longer

way’: he seems to intimate some metaphysic of the future which will not

be satisfied with arguing from the principle of contradiction. In the

sixth and seventh books (compare Sophist and Parmenides) he has given

us a sketch of such a metaphysic; but when Glaucon asks for the final

revelation of the idea of good, he is put off with the declaration that

he has not yet studied the preliminary sciences. How he would have

filled up the sketch, or argued about such questions from a higher

point of view, we can only conjecture. Perhaps he hoped to find some a

priori method of developing the parts out of the whole; or he might

have asked which of the ideas contains the other ideas, and possibly

have stumbled on the Hegelian identity of the ‘ego’ and the

‘universal.’ Or he may have imagined that ideas might be constructed in

some manner analogous to the construction of figures and numbers in the

mathematical sciences. The most certain and necessary truth was to

Plato the universal; and to this he was always seeking to refer all

knowledge or opinion, just as in modern times we seek to rest them on

the opposite pole of induction and experience. The aspirations of

metaphysicians have always tended to pass beyond the limits of human

thought and language: they seem to have reached a height at which they

are ‘moving about in worlds unrealized,’ and their conceptions,

although profoundly affecting their own minds, become invisible or

unintelligible to others. We are not therefore surprized to find that

Plato himself has nowhere clearly explained his doctrine of ideas; or

that his school in a later generation, like his contemporaries Glaucon

and Adeimantus, were unable to follow him in this region of

speculation. In the Sophist, where he is refuting the scepticism which

maintained either that there was no such thing as predication, or that

all might be predicated of all, he arrives at the conclusion that some

ideas combine with some, but not all with all. But he makes only one or

two steps forward on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected

system of ideas, or even to a knowledge of the most elementary

relations of the sciences to one another.

BOOK 5.