The Greeks 17 



of the same philosophic temper. His significance in the his- 

 torical interpretation of experience lies in the fact that he was 

 the earliest to develop the inductive method, that his critical 

 analysis of the process of knowledge marked the genesis of 

 epistemology, and that he was the first to formulate a complete 

 system of ethics, based upon the phenomena of actual experi- 

 ence and interpreted in the light of the highest ideals of human 

 activity. 



The work of Plato (427-347 B. C.) was an organisation and 

 an extension of the theory of Socrates. The knowledge that 

 Socrates conceived to be the truth that governed all virtuous 

 action Plato interpreted more fundamentally as after all the 

 true nature of be*ing, as the ultimate reality. The relation between 

 Socrates and Plato is no less clear in epistemology and meta- 

 physics. The concept at which Socrates arrived through his in- 

 dividual method of interrogation, of the elimination of unessen- 

 tial elements, and the inductive formulation of a complete defi- 

 nition, Plato expressed metaphysically in his theory of the Idea. 



Such being the general course of the Platonic interpretation 

 of experience, it is necessary to go back to the point at which 

 he took up the problem left by Socrates, in order to realise the 

 manner in which Plato developed his theory and embodied in 

 it elements that had been gradually developing from the time 

 of the earliest Greek speculation. 



All philosophy, according to Plato, begins with the recog- 

 nition of a problem, with the realisation of some phase of exist- 

 ence that has not yet been organised as a part of our rational- 

 ised experience. This doubt or difficulty arouses in us a desire 

 to understand and to solve the problem which our experience 

 presents to us, and the process of solution is a discipline that is 

 moral as well as intellectual, for virtue and knowledge have no 

 teleological distinction, however much they may differ in their 

 genesis. There seems to be in man an instinct to attain virtue 

 and knowledge, to realise his true nature in the functional inter- 

 action of these two aspects of his experience, and until that ideal 

 is accomplished the soul's true nature is not realised, and the 

 spirit of man can find no rest. The passionate desire for truth, 

 the insatiable urging towards full insight into the nature of vir- 



