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1* 



HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. No. V. 



(Continued from page 68 .) 



SECOND PERIOD. 

 PLATO. 



THOUGH Socrates laid bare the errors of former systems, and showed 

 how they might be avoided for the future, he erected no scheme of 

 philosophy of his own. Contented with the successful event of his 

 exertions in the cause of truth and morality, he left the development 

 of the mysteries of nature to such of his successors as might be com- 

 petent to build on the foundation he had laid. His immediate fol- 

 lowers cautiously avoided entering on so vast an undertaking, and 

 shrunk from a responsibility which their master had not been willing 

 to encounter. Plato was the gifted mortal, for whom was reserved 

 ,the honour of carrying into effect the ideas suggested by his great 

 instructor, and we shall endeavour to set before our readers as clear 

 an account of his philosophical principles as the brief space remaining 

 to us will permit. 



Plato states that his predecessors had sought to establish theories 

 withest knowing the nature of the science whose principles they 

 attempt to lay down, and indulge in speculations on objects without 

 inquiring into the qualities of that intelligence by which we are made 

 aware of the existence of those objects. He, however, thinking that 

 a workman should understand the nature of his tools before he 

 begins to use them, commences by an examination into the faculties 

 and operations of the mind. He separates the soul into two parts, 

 the physical essence of life and muscular action which we have in 

 common with brute animals, preserving the name of mind to that 

 principle by means of which we perceive, think, reason that faculty, 

 in short, by the possession of which we are distinguished from other 

 animals, and which renders the judgment of man superior to the in- 

 stinct of beasts. 



Taking this for a definition of the mind, we shall proceed with his 

 chain of reasoning. The mind has two principal faculties, percep- 

 tion and thought, perception being the impression received from an 

 external object, thought the operation of the mind on its ideas, by 

 which it is enabled to examine, compare, and connect them in that 

 harmonious form which may be termed judgment, and which is to 

 ideas what language is to words, that is to say, a symmetrical union 

 of the several members. 



There appear to.be three distinct operations of the mind; the 

 first is perception. This exists from infancy, and resides in our senses, 

 and may be termed the relation which exists between the object 

 perceived and the individual perceiving. Our senses render us 

 capable of seeing, feeling, and smelling ; but we cannot exercise 

 these faculties without there be some object to see, some matter to 

 touch, some odour to smell. Perceptions then are the sensible effects 



