thing they called Ideas. It followed, as an almost direct conse- 

 quence of their mode of argument that there must be an Idea 

 wherever there is a general term; and their procedure much re- 

 sembled that of a man who, having to count a number of objects, 

 should think he could only manage if there were more of them, 



for the Ideas are just a reduplication of the things of sense 



There is an Idea of the same name answering to each group of 

 sensible substances, and existing apart from them." 



In reading the interpretation by Aristotle of the Platonic 

 doctrine of Ideas, it must be remembered that, though Aristotle was 

 a pupil of Plato, yet his conceptions and report of his master's 

 teaching might readily have been altered by his own special views. 

 And this is all the more probable because, as Aristotle himself is 

 careful to indicate, his metaphysics does not contain, strictly 

 speaking, a history of preceding thought. His avowed purpose is 

 to show how previous thought had served as an introduction to his 

 own "First Philosophy". He therefore, as Burnet and Taylor, 

 as well as others, have pointed out, looks upon Plato's and all 

 earlier works as introductions to his own. But, if one bear this in 

 mind, the report of Aristotle cannot but be of inestimable value 

 in comprehending Plato's theory of Ideas. The selection given 

 above shows that Plato was much indebted to Socrates, who, it will 

 be remembered, endeavoured to find by analysis the essential 

 characteristics of ethical actions. His aim was to find and define 

 concepts, and the first period of Plato's work exhibits Socrates' 

 pupil pursuing a similar task; as Gomperz says, in the " first series 

 of his writings Plato appears as an ethical conceptualist". 1 Not 

 only was the brilliant pupil, however, influenced by the method of 

 Socrates, but also by the speculations of the Eleatics and Pytha- 

 goreans, and this, combined with the effect of the religious beliefs 

 of Orphism upon Plato's poetic and imaginative nature, led him 

 in the course of his development to transcend the teachings of 

 Socrates. He devotes his interest to problems respecting the soul, 

 its nature and destiny, and gradually there results the theory of 

 Ideas, and, in the Republic, that mighty edifice, which, as someone 

 has said, houses in its many chambers all the parts of the Platonic 

 system, in the Republic, there is placed before the reader his 



i Greek Thinkers Vol. II, P. 289. 



50 



