94 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



Plato includes a detailed examination of the theory 

 of Ideas, and its culmination in the Idea of the 

 Good. The great question to determine is 

 " whether inherent movement or causal activity is 

 attributed to them." On the one side we have the 

 criticism of Aristotle, on the other numerous pas- 

 sages in which Plato certainly treats them as 

 causes. Dr. Martineau seems to accept Aristotle's 

 criticism in the case of the Ideas generally, but to 

 make an exception in favour of the 'iS'a rajaOov, 

 as " a cause which brings them to phenomenal 

 birth." But surely far too much is allowed to 

 Aristotle's criticism. Mr. Jowett, who certainly 

 has a right to speak on such a matter, says plainly 

 that "the stereotyped form which Aristotle has 

 given the Ideas is not found in Plato;" 1 and Lotze, 

 in a most valuable chapter in his Logic, points out, 

 not only that the transcendency doctrine ascribed 

 to Plato (and with it the Aristotelian criticism) 

 falls to the ground, but that the "immanental" 

 view of Aristotle is as powerless to explain the 

 possibility of knowledge. The truth, we believe, 

 is that Plato's doctrine included the elements of 

 a contradiction, of which he only gradually became 

 conscious. The "dead hand" of Eleaticism was 

 upon him, and Aristotle, seeing this, made him 

 consistent with himself by denying causality to 

 the Ideas ; whereas Plato, inconsistently perhaps, 



1 Introduction to Parmenides, p. 124. 



