sentiment the town or district, the are first defined by a confessedly imper Church, the European public, the brotherhood of mankind — divide with it the interest once concentrated on the Hellenic city. Mr. Jowett thus sums up the chief advantages and disadvantages of this tendency : we have added an occasional gloss: fect method; they are afterwards seen in the light of a "higher knowledge” (p. 504 Steph.). The community of fmilies and property is hinted at in the first part; but the defence of it needs all the help of the "longer way," and in fact, is made the occasion for introducing the doctrine of Ideas, and with it the reign of philosophers, on the stage of the dialogue. Thus by artistic arrangement, as well as in express terms, dialectics is proclaimed as the central and necessary part of the system, to which all the previous discussions had been leading up, and without which they are shown to be imperfect. “The identification of ethics with politics has a tendency to give definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and ennoble men's notions of the aims of Government and of the duties of citizens; for ethics from one point of view [that of mankind as a single community] may be conceived as an idealized law and politics; and politics, as ethics reduced to the conditions of human society. There have been evils [loss of in- These considerations seem to illustrate dividuality, isolation of small communities, ste- a peculiarity of the "Republic" on which reotyping of institutions] which have arisen out Mr. Grote laid some stress, namely, the of the attempt to identify them, and this has abandonment of the Socratic cross-quesled to the separation or antagonism of them, tioning. The definitions of the virtues in which has been introduced by modern political the fourth book of the "Republic" are no writers. But we may also feel that something has been lost in their separation [that ethics better than those which are examined and tends to evaporate in sentiment, and politics to rejected in earlier dialogues, such as the "Charmides" and degenerate into mere police, protecting selfish indeed, and isolated "rights"]; and the ancient phi-they are sometimes actually the same. losophers who regarded the moral and intellec-"The logical and ethical difficulties still tual well-being of mankind first, and the wealth exist: they have never been elucidated; of nations and individuals second, may have a the Republic' does not pretend to elucisalutary influence on some of the speculations date them, but overlooks or overleaps of modern times. Many political maxims [e.g. laissez-faire, non-intervention, toleration] originate in a reaction against the opposite error; and when the errors arainst which they were directed have passed away, in their turn be- vol. ii. p. 151. comes errors." "Laches; them." Plato, it may be answered, does not profess to attain perfect certainty in this part of the argument; he leaves that to the dialectic which is the everretreating object of his pursuit. Compared with the "Laws" where the quesIt has been already observed that, al- tioning method and the theory of Ideas though Plato retained to the last his be- alike disappear, the first four books of the lief in the ideal State, and consequently in " Republic" mark a less advanced stage the dialectical system upon which it de- in the course of Platonic speculation. In pends, there are some dialogues in which the large element of traditional opinion, he gives much greater prominence than in and the disposition-hinted at rather others to experience and common opinion. than confessed to be content in the This difference shows itself in a curious pressure of circumstances with something way through the structure of the "Re-short of certainty, they recall the later public." The first four books contain and more dogmatic vein. Hence, the relittle that rises above traditional Hellenic lation between the two parts of the "Renotions: it is in the last six that Plato at- public" proves that a growing sense of tempts, as Mr. Jowett finely expresses it, practical aims and requirements was con"to unite the past of Greek history with sistent with an undiminished faith in the the future of philosophy." The effect of value of the ideal and of the scientific this peculiarity is, that all the main sub-methods which aim at absolute knowledge. jects receive a double treatment; the second proceeding on the basis of the first, and completing it from the higher point of view. Education is at first only music and gymnastic: Homer is excluded from it on the grounds of common morality. Afterwards education is a lifelong work, leading through the mathematical sciences to dialectics. Poetry is found to be the imitation of an imitation." The virtues 66 Plato had not, in Mr. Grote's sense of the The dialogues which compose Mr. Jow- 66 with the express acknowledgment that the denial of ideas will be the destruction of the human mind" (Parm. p. 135 B). So in the second part, Plato "did not mean to say that Being or Substance had no existence, but he is preparing for the development of his later view, that ideas were capable of relation." To some extent, too, the Megarian school were carrying on, but with a serious purpose, the Eristic methods of the Sophists; and Plato accordingly, who, in the "Euthydemus," had attacked the Sophistical dispu tations by an extravagant caricature, is now preparing himself to meet the destructive arguments of his Megarian contemporaries by weapons taken from their own armoury. ett's third volume (except perhaps the founder of the school "), and is a criticism "Gorgias ") are regarded by him as in all of the two forms of idealism, first the probability later than the Republic." Platonic Ideas, secondly the Eleatic One They have, as he shows in the successive or Being. The criticism is serious rather Introductions, many common characteris- than hostile. "No one can answer the tics, not only of language and dramatic questions which Parmenides asks of Soctreatment, but also of method and doc- rates. And yet these questions are asked trine. The style, in most of them, is comparatively hard and artificial, wanting in humour and liveliness; the personal interest and play of character is subordinated to logical arrangement; there is much less cross-questioning, and more positive result; definitions are not propounded, and one after another refuted, but are sought by a regular method of classification. The relation to earlier and to contemporary systems is much more prominent. Indeed, in these dialogues, especially in the "Theætetus" and " Sophist," we find much that belongs to the modern historical study of philosophy: the couceptions, for instance, of the development of doctrines, of the virtual identity of doctrines under different forms, of opposing tendencies" right and left wings" - of a school, of philosophical ideas implicit in literature and common opinion. And chief among the notes of progress or of decay which mark this part of Plato's course must be ranked the new aspects assumed by his theory of Ideas. We have seen that the notion of pre-existent Ideas is confined to a few dialogues (the “Meno," "Phædrus,” and “Phædo "), and that in the "Republic" they are represented (but without discussion) as all sub-a ordinate or derivative, compared with the Idea of good. The group of dialogues which we have now reached is chiefly occupied with questions turning on the relations of Ideas to each other, or with difficulties suggested in this part of the subject by Plato himself or by his contem-known: and by denying plurality to ideas poraries. The Megarian dialectic is again criticized in the Sophist," and in a manner which leads to more positive results and enables us better to understand their doctrines. The Megarians, like the Eleatics, sought for certainty in the universal, and, like Plato, identified the highest abstraction or "Being" with the Good. They also regarded this Being under the attributes of unity and rest, and thus denied that either motion or plurality could have "real" existence. These doctrines, which are not inconsistent with Plato's earlier writings, and perhaps are implicitly taught in them, were seen by him to be destructive to science. By denying motion they made it impossible to conceive the relation of the mind to the thing 66 they did away with predication (since an The Parmenides may be described idea could only be asserted of itself), and as the great critical or “elenctic" dialogue with the difference of kinds which is necesof the later stage of Platonism, holding sary for classification. The "Sophist somewhat the same place on the threshold works out two important conceptions, for of later metaphysics which the "Protago- which the way had been prepared, as Mr. ras" holds towards Plato's own theory. Jowett points out, in the Parmenides," Mr. Jowett's analysis is such as befits its that of relation between ideas, and that importance and obscurity. His view of of the ideas as motive powers. In them, the aim and purpose of the work is new, to use Plato's language, we must regard and is an example of that union of subtlety Being as both one and many, and also as and simplicity which renders him so con- both rest and motion. In the dialogue summate an interpreter. The dialogue these questions are perplexed by the consists of two divisions: the principal "puzzle about not-being," which is got speaker in both is Parmenides; the method over by making "not-being' equivalent pursued is the same, that of the Megarian to difference. But this, as Mr. Jowett dialectic (which, as the latest phase of the acutely remarks, though a useful shift, is Eleatic philosophy, is "fathered upon the not the permanently valuable part of the 1104 dialogue. "The greater service rendered This view is farther developed so as to result of applying a law of measure to measurable quantity, e.g. health, beauty, harmony, favourable climate); and (4) the cause or producer of the mixture. The first three are kinds: there may be many species of each, but all comprehended under a single notion. The last is mind or reason -that which furnishes our bodies with life and wise treatment, and, as we may argue by analogy, is the cause and deviser of the orderly and beautiful universe. (by Plato in the 'Sophist') to mental sci- give four orders or elements of existence: ence, is the recognition of the communion - (1) limit or definite numerical relation; of classes, which, although based by him (2)the unlimited, or more and less; (3) on his account of not-being is independent the mixture of the two (the product or of this. He clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the annihilation of reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging paths, we return to common sense (vol iii. p. 459). Moreover, in admitting the idea of motion into the ideal world, Plato was planting the germ of a theory capable of superseding his own. The idea of progress or development is perhaps to be traced in earlier dialogues; but only, as we saw, under a mythical form. The "return to common sense," that is to say, the attainment by The theory in this form shows several philosophy of a mode of conceiving one or of the latest tendencies of Platonism. more of the phases of experience, gives in The representation of the cause of existthis case an idea which reaches further ence as rational and half-personal - a soul than that of classification, and which of the universe parallel to the human soul was infinitely more difficult to ancient agrees with the passage in the "Sophthinkers. ist which (as we have seen) ascribes The "Sophist" is expressly represented motion and intelligence to the highest beby Plato as a continuation of the "Theæte-ing, and prepares us for the cosmogony of tus." The main element of connexion is the "Timæus." The prominence given to "not being," the confusion, as Mr. Jowett the conception of limit is a step to the reptranslates it into modern language, of ne- resentation of the Ideas as numbers - the gation and falsehood. There are other in- Pythagorean shape which Plato's theory dications, however, in the "Theætetus" finally appears to have assumed. On that Plato had begun to examine afresh the side of ethics the same conception, the vague and thin generalizations which as that of "measure" and "the mean,' underlie such words as being, whole, like- is a link of connexion with the "Statesness, sameness, motion, and that he was man," and with the ethical system of Arseeking to bring them into agreement with istotle. his Ideas. And amid the wealth of suggestions which characterizes that dialogue, we find "something not really different from generalization," by which Plato is laying the foundation of a rational psychology (vol. iii. p. 356, cf. Theæt. p. 186 D, and Parm. 132 A). The dialogue called the "Laws," which occupies most of Mr. Jowett's fourth volume, is perhaps the part of Plato which is least generally known. As a literary work it is certainly inferior to the "Republic;" and its great length, coupled with a style which those who are familiar The relation of the "Philebus" to the with Plato still find obscure, has led to "Sophist" and "Parmenides" is difficult this comparative neglect. Yet it offers, in to determine, because in it the dialectical some respects, the most interesting subelement is subordinated to the ethical and jects of study. No part of Plato, and, it physical. Mr. Jowett speaks of it as ear- may be said, no ancient writing, sums up lier in the well-known passage about One so well the highest religious thoughts of and the Many (Phileb. pp. 14 c-17 A), he heathenism. The anticipation of the subdiscerns the "germs of the attack upon sequent course of philosophy which is ofthe ideas, and the transition to a more ra- ten so remarkable in Plato is especially so tional philosophy” (vol. iii. p. 255). Zel- in the "Laws;" and the treatment of ler sees in the same passage a brief statement of results already attained in the "Parmenides." Each Idea, it is laid down, includes the One and a finite plurality, i.e. the notion of a higher kind, and those of lower kinds, into which the higher may be divided and it also "has in its nature " the finite (in the general notions), and the infinite or unlimited (in the particulars). some practical questions-for example, that of the different kinds of involuntary actions is at least as satisfactory as that of Aristotle. In its relation to earlier forms of Platonism the dialogue is of peculiar interest. Between the two types of society which Plato has hitherto contrasted that which ought to be and that he now interposes a third, that - which is which may be. Instead of the bold specu- and of raising up its own prophets with lation and the sweeping censure of exist- their cheap wisdom; the contest between ing things which mark his earlier works, popularity and higher things, fought out he is found treating antiquity with scru- in the minds of those to whom the capacpulous veneration, anxious to collect and build into a single structure all that the wisdom of legislators or immemorial custom has made most sacred. The ethical spirit which pervades the work is not less lofty than that of other parts of Plato; but it is gentle and tolerant. The hopeful tone inspired by the fancy of giving laws to an infant community is curiously mixed with the sobriety, the sense of illusion, the "browner tinge inseparable from the autumn of life. The defence of the genuineness of the "Laws" which Mr. Jowett offers is not only satisfactory, but exemplifies admirably the principles which ought to govern such cases. As a polemic, it is happily almost superfluous, the critics being nearly unanimous in admitting the work to be Plato's.* Much might still be said, especially in connexion with the "Laws," of the historical value of Plato: of the interest, that is to say, which his philosophy has, not merely as a stage in the discovery of truth, but as the reflection in the world of abstractions of a great and critical period of human history. "Il faut réfléchir," says Montesquieu, sur la Politique d'Aristote et sur les deux Républiques de Platon, si l'on veut avoir une juste idée des lois et des mœurs des anciens Grecs." And the peculiar vividness and sympathy with Greek life which distinguishes the work of the latest historian of Greece (Dr. Ernst Curtius) is due in great measure to the appreciative study of these ideals. In many ways, too, the lessons are of universal application. The Platonic formulas are broad aspects, presented to the distant view of the philosopher, of relations which belong to all known periods, as well as of those which especially characterized the Greece of Plato's own time. The fundamental contrast so constantly dwelt upon between "reality" and "appearance " is an expression of the struggle carried on at all times by the progressive element of true ideas against the vast slough of common opinion which ever threatens to engulf the better thoughts and strivings of men. The power which this opinion has of becoming embodied in sham ideas or generalizations of its own, Neither Mr. Jowett nor Dr. Thompson seems to have noticed that Zeller has long since withdrawn the doubts which at one time he expressed of the genuineness of the "Laws." See his "Gesch. d. Philosophie," ii. pp. 638, n. 2. ity has been given of directing the course of human affairs; the causes by which the possible statesman or teacher is perverted into the demagogue or the solitary enthusiast; the hopes of a new order of things by the reception, among men at large, of ideas which are to be first worked out by great thinkers:- these are the materials of which Plato has formed the warp and woof of his philosophy; and they are still full of meaning. In other respects, the attitude and tendencies of Plato must be judged with more exclusive reference to contemporary politics, and we may have to admit that he himself needs the help of some of the pleas which he urges, in the "Republic," on behalf of his order. He was not only opposed to the popular government and the wide political toleration which prevailed at Athens, but he hardly recognizes the merit even of statesmen who, like Pericles, certainly did not err by too great submission to the fancies of the multitude. He would have trusted rather to a strict and all-embracing discipline, administered by a small number of rulers, such as that which had powerfully impressed the Greek imagination through the great part in history played by Sparta. The same bias prevailed widely among speculative politicians, and perhaps was justified by the unhappy circumstances of the time. In an age of unsettlement and fierce passion, when the Greek States were tossing about and "like ships foundering at sea,' it was natural to look upon all movement either as the fitful ebb and flow of unreasoning impulses or as part of a ceaseless and inevitable change for the worse. It is characteristic, too, of those who have dwelt too exclusively upon the abstract notions of science to be "absolutist," confident in the value of their ideal, and impatient of the limitations of practice. doctrine of development or progress has taught the world two great lessons-not indeed of knowledge, but of Socratic wisdom in ignorance: faith in the future, and toleration of the present. We have learned to hope, though we cannot demonstrate, that we live in a world which grows better, as Plato would say, "under the hands of time," through the ceaseless working of infinite and silent agencies. Such a reflection should not lead to a spirit of fatalism, but rather to the feeling that, in judging of the efforts and tendencies around us, we should tolerate where we The cannot dogmatize. We may learn from what Plato has done, and from what he hoped to do, that the genuine pursuit of truth may be most fruitful in the direction least suspected by the inquirer himself, and that the errors which he condemns and would wish to destroy may contain the germs of still greater but more distant truth. From The Cornhill Magazine. A REMINISCENCE OF ETON LIFE. body esteemed Jickling. His house-fellows were ashamed of him, and regarded him as a black sheep in their small, eminently tidy fold; our tutor viewed him with a cool and careful eye. If it had been put to anybody in the school whom it would have been the least desirable fellow to mess with, hold a "lock-up "'* with, or indeed, be intimately associated with in any way, the answer would have been Jickling;" and this impression was more than doubled by the cynicism, not to say effrontery with which Jickling bore off his shortcomings. For of shame at his own unworthiness Jickling possessed none. At that time, when the school, not hav- Thus I had not been five minutes in his ing yet swollen to its present bulky pro- company on the night of my arrival, before portions, contained only six hundred and he informed me- -not a little to my confifty fellows, and Harrow, its arch-rival, sternation, when I understood what he something like half that number; when meant that he expected to be "swished" the new school-buildings on the Slough on the very next morning for having, in road were not yet dreamed of, and both the train down from Paddington, blown a fourth form and lower school attended ser- mouthful of peas into the face of an envice in the College Chapel like their supe- gine-driver, and been "nailed" in the act riors in the other divisions; when the Col- by a master who had got into the carriage lege Chapel itself was a cold and bleak next his at Ealing; and this communicasanctuary, with but three or four stainedglass windows and no brass candelabra; and when the College dining-hall, yet bleaker than the Chapel, had no stainedglass windows at all, no tesselated pavement, no polished wainscot, yawning fireplace, gilt scutcheons or stately portraits; when, instead of the Bucks constabulary who now patrol its streets day and night, there limped solitary old Tom Bott, in his light-blue livery, with the Eton arms on his left sleeve and the Waterloo medal on his breast; and when, in a word, Eton was not quite the place it is now, nor yet so different but that present Etonians may easily imagine what manner of a spot it was; then, in those days, when Dr. Goodford ruled over the upper school, and Mr. Coleridge over the lower, and when Spankie, the tart-man, still sold his wares opposite Mrs. Drury's boarding-house-1. the present writer, was sent to Eton, and became, after the usual fortnight's grace, the fag of Asheton, a fellow in the eight in the upper division of the fifth form, and a captain of my tutor's house. I think it better to premise, however, that this tale is not destined to commemorate adventures of my own, but those of a fellow-fag called Jickling-Jickling, who had already been at the school a year when I arrived there, and was by common consent accounted the most idle, unkempt, incapable, and, in a general way, the least promising among the six hundred and fifty of us. tion was quite of a piece with Jickling's habitual confidences respecting himself. He was continually playing a part in those short but painful interviews with the head master that are conducted in the presence of the sixth-form præpostor and two "holders down;" and nobody would have ventured to assert that he came out from these interviews otherwise than hardened in spirit - however it might be in person -and steadfastly minded to be peccant again as soon as he had the opportunity. He was one of those unfortunate boys who seem pre-doomed to go wrong. Though provided with good clothes enough, his dress was always shabby and ill-matched, the trousers of one suit doing duty with the waistcoat of another; and though he was supplied with money sufficient, and more than sufficient, for all his needs, yet he never had a sixpence, and was always in debt. Desperate passages of arms would take place between him and the Spankie already mentioned, as he endeav Lock-up (subaud.) boat. The lock-up boat is a cost of 5. It is distinguished from the chanceprivate skiff chartered for the boating-season at a boat" in that the subscriber to the latter pays 24. 103, but must take his chance of any boat that happens and has not the exclusive right to any particular boat. The cost of a "lock-up" may be shared by two friends, that of a chance boat cannot be. The word " lock-up," taken in another sense, indicates the hour at which boys must be back to their tutors' houses of an evening. This hour varies according to the season - the extremes being 8.45 P.M. at midsummer, and 5 P.M. during November and Decem to be unhired at the time he wants to row or scull It is a painful thing to say, but no-ber. |