869 



PLATO. 



PLATO. 



870 



01. 108, 1 (B.C. 347), and was succeeded as lecturer in the Academy by 

 his nephew Speusippua, though he had left Heracleides of Pontus, 

 another of his disciples, as his deputy there, when he took Speusippus 

 with him on his second journey to Sicily. 



The following is the list of his scholars as given by Diogenes of 

 Lae'rte : Speusippus, Hippothales, and Callippus of Athens ; Xeno- 

 crates of Chalcedon ; Aristotle of Stagira ; Heracleides of Pontus ; 

 Philippus of Opus ; Hestiaeus of Perinthus ; Dion of Syracuse ; 

 Amyclus of Heracleia ; Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsis ; Timolaus of 

 Cyzicus ; Eyseon of Lampsaeus ; Pithon and Heracleides of JEmis ; 

 and Demetrius of Amphipolis ; to which list some added the Athenian 

 orators Demosthenes, Hyperides, and Lycurgus, and the philosopher 

 Theophrastus. See also the contradictory lists of tyrants and good 

 statesmen who proceeded from the school of Plato, in Athenseus, xi. 

 p. 508, fol. ; and Plutarch, 'Adv. Colot.,' p. 1126. 



The works of Plato consist of a long series of dialogues, in all of 

 which, excepting the ' Laws,' the principal interlocutor is Socrates. 

 The form of the dialogue was not first introduced by Plato ; he is 

 said to have been preceded in that species of composition by Alexame- 

 nus of Teos, and by Zeno of Elea. It is probable however that 

 Plato's adoption of the form of dialogue resulted rather from the 

 nature of the case than from any direct imitation. The spirit of the 

 dialectics of the Eleatic school, with which Plato's philosophy was so 

 strongly imbued, depended mainly on its being in the form of question 

 and answer. The very name ' dialectics ' points to this : the word 

 SiaAfjfaOai signifies merely 'to converse,' as appears from the use 

 of the common word dislexis (BioAefis), ' conversation,' to signify 

 'dialectics,' in Aristopb., ' Nu.,' 317 ; for of course no weight will be 

 attributed to the explanation of the verb which Xenophon puts into 

 the mouth of Socrates (Xen., ' Memor.,' iv. 5, sec. 12), an explanation 

 which is obviously derived from its secondary and technical meaning. 

 That Plato then should write in tho form of dialogue seems to be the 

 natural consequence of his wish to investigate and analyse, dialecti- 

 cally and after the manner of Socrates, the various questions of 

 philosophy then in vogue. Nor is it at all necessary to suppose that 

 Plato was immediately indebted to any one for the dramatic tone 

 which characterises his dialogues : indications of a real dramatic 

 genius, and of imitative powers of the highest order, are scattered so 

 plentifully over all his works that we cannot fail to reccgnise every- 

 where the hand of an artist who copies nature alone. It is not 

 improbable that he studied, and with great profit, both Epicharmus 

 and Sophron : Alcimus, quoted by Diogenes of Laerte (iii. IS), says 

 that he transcribed most of the writings of the former ; and according 

 to Quintilian (i. 10, sec. 17), the philosopher was so foiid of the mimes 

 of riophron that he had a copy of them under his pillow when he died. 

 It seems however likely that he did not become acquainted with the 

 writings of these two authors till his first journey to Magna Grsecia 

 and Sicily ; and it is certain that several of his dialogues, and some of 

 those in which the dramatic element is most prominent, were com- 

 posed long before that time, so that he did not probably owe anything 

 to them in the first instance. 



lint though the form of Plato's works was not much influenced by 

 his acquaintance with other writers, it is impossible to overlook the 

 fact that, for their matter, they were composed with a continual 

 reference to the labours of his predecessors. In fact Plato's whole 

 system is rather critical and eclectic than dogmatical, and mauy of 

 his dialogues are rather reviews of the speculations of former philoso- 

 phers than formal enunciations of any doctrine of his own.- The 

 view which he took of philosophy was decidedly a literary one ; he 

 was the first of the Greek philosophers who can be considered as a 

 student as well as an expounder of philosophy, as may indeed be 

 inferred from the statement of Heracleides of Pontus, that he was 

 among the first to collect books and import them to Athens. (Proclus, 

 in ' Tim.,' i. p. 28 ; Diog. Laert., viii. 15.) Besides the great ideas 

 and peculiar system of Socrates, which he had learned during his 

 intercourse with that philosopher, Plato was thoroughly conversant 

 with the systems of Pythagoras, Heracleitus, Parmenides, Zeno, 

 Anaxagoras, and Protagoras ; his works abound with references to 

 their writings, and some of his dialogues are controversial tracts 

 directed against one or more of these philosophers ; nor had he 

 ur.'lected his contemporaries of the Socratic school, some of whom, as 

 Aristippus, Euclid, and Antisthenes, he criticises rather severely. 

 Cicero, in the passage of his treatise ' De Republic;'! ' (i. c. 10), referred 

 to above, sterna to consider that the philosophy of Pythagoras, com- 

 bined with the dialectics of Socrates, formed the main groundwork of 

 Plato'a philosophy. But that this is only a partial account of the 

 matter we shall see presently ; though Cicero is undoubtedly right in 

 attributing a great deal to the influence of the Pythagorean philoso- 

 phy on the opinions of Plato. It was from this, no doubt, that Plato 

 was induced to pay so much attention to Epicharmua, who was not 

 only a great comedian, but also a renowned Pythagorean philosopher. 

 (See Clinton's ' Fasti Hellenic!,' vol. ii. p. 36, note g.) The benefits 

 which Plato derived from a study of Epicharmus are distinctly 

 a-.-crted by Diogenes Lac'rtius (iii. 9-16), and some lines are very 

 pointedly quoted from one of bis comedies, in which ho prophesies 

 that some future writer would confute and overthrow all opponents 

 by adopting hU sayings and clothing them in a different dress. Plato 

 sometimes quotes Epicharmus by name (as in the 'Oorgias,' p. 505, D), 



and in one passage he pays him the high compliment of naming him 

 and Homer as the two chief poets, the one of comedy, the other of 

 tragedy. (' Theietet.,' p. 152, E.) Plato seems to have been also 

 familiar with the works of Empedocles, who stands half-way between 

 the Pythagoreans and the Elcatics, and who, as Thirlwall suggests 

 ('Hist of Greece,' ii. p. 139, note), may probably be looked upon as 

 the predecessor of Plato in his eclectic view of philosophy. There is 

 certainly a direct reference to the doctrines of Empedocles in the 

 ' Sophistes,' p. 242, D ; perhaps, also, as Heindorf thinks, in the 

 ' Lysis,' p. 214, B, though Stallbaum considers that Anaxagoras is 

 there referred to; and Hermann (' Opuscul.,' vol. vii. p. 106) has not 

 hesitated to recognise the very words of Empedocles in a celebrated 

 passage of the 'Phoodrus,' p. 246, B-C. 



On the whole then it is clear that Plato was well acquainted with 

 the labours of his predecessors and contemporaries. But though he 

 may have learned much from them, and though he certainly had" 

 borrowed some of his leading views from his great teacher Socrates, 

 we should nevertheless do him great injustice if we regarded him 

 merely as a compiler and systematiser of what had been already 

 advanced, and denied his claim to a place among the originators of 

 great thoughts. ' Plato's whole system is based upon gome grand and 

 novel ideas, which may indeed have been faintly conceived by others, 

 but which were never distinctly uttered and proclaimed till Plato 

 made his appearance. The opposition between the law and the facts, 

 between the general and the particular, between the objects of reflec- 

 tion and the objects of the senses, between the world of intelligence 

 and the visible world, was never clearly pointed out till Plato's time. 

 It is very true that Socrates did awaken the idea of science, and so 

 lay the foundation of dialectics, on which the philosophy of Plato was 

 chiefly built up (see this distinctly stated by Aristotle, ' Metaphys.,' xii. 

 4, 5); and it is for this reason that Plato has put into the mouth of his 

 master his speculations on this subject. The merit of Plato is that ho 

 expressed distinctly and systematically what Socrates only struggled 

 to articulate. The comprehensive view which Plato took of philosophy 

 in all its bearings implied a critical acquaintance with all the branches 

 of his subject and with the works of all his predecessors. From the 

 nature of the case, it was impossible that Socrates should fulfil these 

 previous conditions ; he was not and could not have been a literary 

 man, and it does not appear that he was qualified by his character 

 and habits, even if he had possessed the necessary opportunities, to 

 study the systems of other philosophers in an enlightened and critical 

 spirit. The kindred genius of Plato was luckily fostered by every 

 encouraging influence, and he stepped in to elaborate completely the 

 plan of which his master had sketched the rude outline. With many 

 features totally dissimilar, the relation between Socrates and Plato 

 very nearly resembles that between Kepler and Newton/; for Kepler's 

 laws stand related to the ' Principia ' of Newton much in the same 

 way as the Socratic idea of science_does to the dialectical system of 

 Plato. In fact, the case is much the same with every great advance in 

 philosophy ; the conception must precede its articulate utterance. 



Before we attempt to exhibit the method of Plato's philosophy as it 

 appears in his writings, it will be as well to consider briefly the 

 chronological arrangement of his dialogues, and the natural division 

 according to which they may bo classified. Owing to the great 

 admiration in which Plato has been held from his own time down to 

 the present, we have not only a complete collection of his works, but 

 also several dialogues included among them, which, beyond all manner 

 of doubt, were written by some imitators of the great philosopher. 

 Thus, the ' Eryxias ' and ' Axiochus ' were probably written by 

 -Hschines, the Socratic philosopher ; the ' Epinomis ' by Philip of 

 Opus; and 'The Second Alcibiades' by Xeuophon. Leaving out of 

 the question, then, these and other dialogues generally admitted to be 

 spurious, we may divide the genuine dialogues into three classes, 

 which we will arrange in the following chronological order, for reasons 

 most of which have been adduced by Schleiermacher, Hitter, and 

 others, but which our limits will not permit us to enter on in this place. 

 In the first class we would place the dialogues composed by Plato 

 before he set out upon his travels, namely, the ' Lysis,' ' Phsedrus,' 

 ' Laches,' ' Hippias major,' ' Protagoras,' ' Charmides,' ' Ion,' ' Meno,' 

 'Alcibiades I.,' 'Euthydemus,' ' Euthyphro,' 'Apology,' and 'Crito.' 

 To the second class we refer those which he wrote after returning 

 from his travels, and before his second journey to Sicily, namely, the 

 ' Qorgias,' ' Thesetetus,' ' Sophistes,' ' Politious,' ' Cratylus," ' Par- 

 menidcs,' ' Symposium, ' ' Meuexenus, ' ' Philebus," ' Phaedo,' and 

 perhaps also the ' Republic,' the ' Timseas,' and the ' Critiaa.' In the 

 third class we place by itself the long dialogue on the ' Laws,' which 

 is but loosely conntcted with the general system of Plato's works, and 

 seems to be quite an extraneous part of his philosophy. However, 

 notwithstanding this and other dissimilarities, we do not hesitate to 

 recognise hi the ' Laws' a genuine work of Plato. It is true that it is 

 the only one of his dialogues in which Socrates does not bear a part ; 

 it is true that there is a striking difference of style between the 'Laws' 

 and the other works of Plato ; there is in fact a greater difference 

 between the style of the 'Laws' and Plato's ordinary style, than 

 between this last and the style of the epistles, or even than that of 

 the dialogues which ara confessedly spurious ; there is a profusion of 

 auacolutha in it to an extent of which we find no example iu the 

 other works of Plato : and Ast has objected that the whole plan of 



