1 8 The Concept of Method 



tuous action are the twofold source of all human activity that 

 has ultimate spiritual significance. 



How then is the soul of man to realise this perfect activity — 

 how is it to become self-active in a true sense, and independent 

 of the misleading idola of daily experience ? The answer to this 

 question involves the consideration of Plato's conception of 

 knowledge and a brief statement of his epistemological theory. 

 His problem is ultimately the same as that of Kant, though the 

 Greek and the German solution differ considerably. Both start 

 with that very apparent distinction between the phenomena of 

 sense-perception and the logical ideas of the reason, which had 

 exercised the mind of Heraclitus, of Anaxagoras, of Democritus, 

 and the Sophists. There is on the one hand the actually exist- 

 ing multiplicity of impressions and common opinions: con- 

 trasted with that unorganized and apparently heterogeneous ex- 

 perience, there is in man's mind a constant urging toward the 

 discovery of something permanent among the changes and 

 chances of this mortal life, of something unified among the 

 variety, of something spiritual which is the reality behind the 

 deceptions of the purely physical. 



The solution of the difficulty involved in this apparently uni- 

 versal contrast in experience Plato explained in his " Theory of 

 Ideas." The Heraclitean flux and the Socratic insistence upon 

 universal truths Plato combined, and held that these universal 

 truths, which are permanent entities, manifest certain phases of 

 themselves through material things. But on account of the phy- 

 sical limitations of the material, it can never fully express the 

 complete reality which exists in the " Idea " ; nor from a purely 

 logical standpoint can a concept which is universal be adequately 

 realised in a form which is particular, individual, and subject to 

 the limitations of time, space, and material, and which after all 

 only partially participates in the nature of the " Idea " which is 

 the ultimate reality. The logical can never be synonymous with 

 the sensible, nor the teleological with the genetic. 



The striving to realise the nature of the " Ideas " constitutes 

 the process of experience and of education, but the method is 

 difficult and involves many degrees ranging from ignorance and 

 error up to the perfect realisation of the principle or " Idea " 

 of humanity. At the end of the sixth book of the " Republic," 



