THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 143 
this doctrine of ideas was developed into a philosophic system. 
If ideas are the only realities, the world of particulars must be 
derived from these, and, from their secondary nature, are devoid 
of stability. Thus the world of sense can furnish no real knowledge. 
Experience is but opinion, and reason is the source of all knowledge. 
Since, however, the world of sense is moulded after the 
pattern of the reality, and since there is plurality in the 
copy, there must also be plurality of ideas. These, however, 
must lead up to some higher idea—the idea of the good. To 
discover this chief good is the highest, the only real work of 
philosophy. Thus the soul by means of dialectic is able to free 
itself from the doubt and degradation into which it has fallen 
through contact with the world of sense, and regain a place more 
near the divine essence. 
The prominence thus given to dialectic as the source of all true 
knowledge, and the secondary position given to observation and the 
Natural Sciences, is everywhere apparent in the philosophy of Plato 
and Socrates, and constitutes the real defect in their system. Asan 
illustration of this, we may take the metaphor of the cavern in the 
seventh book of the Republic. In this it will be seen how the 
world of sense is looked upon as incapable of furnishing true 
knowledge, which is alone found by the soul in the sphere of pure 
ideas. 
Again, consider his view of the human soul. According to 
Plato, the head of man is a little cosmos, possessing a rational and 
immortal soul. To this head is attached a body possessing two 
emotional and mortal souls, one the seat of courage and anger, the 
other of the appetites and desires. While the higher soul was able 
to some extent to control these lower, it was itself polluted by their 
contact, which might finally lead to a degeneracy of the species. 
From this we may see that the weakness of the present system 
lay in the fact that it rendered impossible a scientific explanation of 
the phenomena of the material world. Dialectic was the Royal 
Science, and experience a source of delusion and degradation. This 
defect in the Platonic Philosophy it was the peculiar work of 
Aristotle to correct. 
ARISTOTLE. 
Aristotle, like Plato, divided the soul of man in a three-fold 
manner ; but instead of making them three distinct and antagonistic 
