Chapter IX: Part 9

There is, in the intellectual sphere, something very like this in France. The course of instruction for the youth of France, in all the institutions which are sustained and directed by the State, is very elaborately and admirably organized. It used to be said of a recent Minister of Public Instruction, that it was his glory to reflect that he could sit in his bureau and read from a manual on his table the lesson which was being taught at that particular moment in all the public schools in France. Now, the French Government manuals are admirable. There has been an immense improvement in our English schoolbooks since their compilers condescended to look into the schoolbooks of France. The lesson thus given at a particular hour throughout the country would probably be in every way excellent--the best of its kind. But what is the broad result of this monstrous uniformity, this _par ordre supérieur_, in every department of a youth's education? It turns out admirable scholars, devoted to scholarship, and admirable theoretical politicians educated in the philosophy of citizenship above every nation in the world. But when a tremendous shock, as at this moment, has broken up their accustomed order, and thrown each in a measure on his own resources to choose the wisest course in perilous emergencies, an utter want of the highest faculty--the faculty of self-guidance in emergencies--is revealed; the people have been as shepherdless sheep, and for want of the higher leadership, we may say, France has been lost.

We see, then, all that is fair in aspect in this vision of one happy, united, and prosperous Church in the country, leaving no room for Nonconformity; but we see too plainly the disastrous cost at which it would be purchased. And we turn to gaze upon another vision, fairer, nobler, more fruitful by far, which would realize our aspiration for the religious future of our land. The country full of a zealous and independent ministry of the Gospel, independent in the highest sense, which includes dependence on Christ; each community working out in entire freedom its conception of what a Church ought to be and what a Church ought to do, and under the guidance of one whom it recognises as Christ's minister, ordained for its service by the manifest unction of the Spirit: diversities of gifts, diversities of methods, diversities of operations, diversities of results; but each Christian company honouring the other and rejoicing in its work, recognising that each one is adding a contribution to a great whole which can be built up only of these independent cells of spiritual life; the whole spiritual body, the Church of England, having no visible form of unity, but manifesting itself spiritually in the whole social estate, the commercial, intellectual, and political activity of England; a fair image, it seems to us, whose grand and solemn aspect could only be parodied by the most elaborate and comprehensive pattern of a law-made National Church.

The broad truth about our times from a spiritual point of view is--and it is a truth on which both Churchmen and Nonconformists may stand--that we have utterly outgrown the power of Establishment to help us, if it ever had any; and that the spiritual conversion and education of the community must be carried on by some higher method, or abandoned in despair. We are struggling out of the _pupa_ state of protection, when the ark of our religious estate was slung tenderly by a net-work of bands and ligatures to the government wall. Slowly, with sore effort and pain, as is the way with all these supreme acts of development, we are emerging into a higher, because freer and more spiritual stage of our religious life as a people. Anxiously and fearfully those who have been trained under the shadow of Protection watch the process. We Independents, who have been nursed in a freer school, look calmly on the pains and struggles: we have faith in the destiny of the fair, bright-winged creature which is being born.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Wordsworth's 'Excursion.'

[37] He must not be confounded with Thomas Goodwin, also an Independent, who was a member of the Assembly.

[38] This was not, so to speak, Robinson's private word. It was the tradition of the Separatists. Greenwood writes from his prison to the same effect in Elizabeth's days.

[39] The action of Nonconformity in reviving religious life, as in the Free Church of the Canton de Vaud, is a very instructive chapter of modern Continental ecclesiastical history.

ART. VI.--_The Dialogues of Plato._ Translated into English, with Analyses and Introductions, by B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek. Four vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1871.

PROFESSOR JOWETT has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world a complete English translation of Plato's 'Dialogues;' for it certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands of all, conveyed in language, divested, as far as possible, of mere technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible and alluring to average students of ancient or modern philosophy. And as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted. We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their integrity, without foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which the nature of Mr. Grote's great work rendered necessary, and of the occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr. Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful, endeavour to present Plato--in part, at least--in a popular form to the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philosophy, which is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is constantly working out with variations the same leading ideas, it is essential to the English student to have the work complete. The _Republic_, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and Vaughan has for some time been before the world, is to a considerable extent a _résumé_ of Plato's earlier views--an epitome of Platonism, in fact; but a student may know the _Republic_ fairly well, and yet have a vast deal to learn from such dialogues as the _Theætetus_, the _Philebus_, the _Parmenides_, the _Timæus_--all very difficult in their way; or from the more genial _Protagoras_, _Phædo_, and _Gorgias_; or the more transcendental and imaginative _Phædrus_ and _Symposium_, which last may be called the most fascinating and brilliant of the dialogues, excepting always the _Republic_ itself. Some of the minor, easier, and shorter dialogues, which fall within the range of average school reading--the _Apology_, the _Crito_, the _Menexenus_, the _Lysis_, the _Charmides_, the _Ion_--hardly touch the Socratic philosophy in its deeper sense; they are genial sketches of the idiosyncrasies of the wise old man, or deal with matters distinct from dialectics properly so called. Very little of Plato proper (so to speak) will be learnt from these alone. But the subtle reasonings of Plato, in some of his greater works, are sufficiently difficult to make even the best Greek scholars glad to have occasional recourse to studied English versions, on which they can with tolerable confidence rely.

Mr. Jowett has not given us a general introductory dissertation on Plato, or Socrates, or on the Sophists, or on the influence of ῥητορικὴ, or on the progress of Greek philosophy--subjects in themselves, as he doubtless felt, almost interminable, and already so well discussed in Mr. Grote's great work, 'Plato and the other Companions of Socrates,' and his 'History of Greece.' His preface, comprised in the modest limits of four pages of large print, might seem intended as a protest against the licence of writing long introductions, which, after all, are, perhaps, seldom read. We could have wished, indeed, to see some opinion expressed on a point of not less interest than importance--how far the Socrates of Plato, who differs so widely from the Socrates of Aristophanes, partook of the Platonic _ideality_, and was a typical and imaginary talker, used as a peg, so to speak, to hang speculative opinions upon, rather than the real author of all or any of the conversations attributed to him by his pupil. Mr. Jowett, however, though he has given us no general introduction, has been liberal, even to diffuseness, in the special introductions to the separate dialogues. In these, which are drawn with a masterly hand, and are of great value and interest, he gives us the object and scope, as well as the condensed and analyzed matter of each dialogue, so as to form a most useful summary to the right understanding of it. Such introductions, though they add greatly to the bulk of the work, are necessary, and all editors and translators of single dialogues have adopted them, _e.g._, Dr. Thompson in his _Phædrus_ and _Georgias_, Mr. Cope in his translation of the latter dialogue, Mr. Campbell in his _Theætetus_, Messrs. Davies and Vaughan in their translation of the _Republic_, Professor Geddes in his edition of the _Phædo_, and Stallbaum in all his dialogues. In fact, the diffuseness and almost desultoriness of some dialogues--the ποικιλία, or variety of matter introduced--render a clear and well-arranged analysis of each absolutely necessary for the right understanding of it. Such a work, with the further advantage of a good index of Platonic words and topics, by Dr. Alfred Day, had been published the year before (Bell and Daldy, 1870). By such aids, we more easily attain the real scope of a dialogue than by the perusal of the dialogue itself. A casual reader would think that the _Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_ are primarily essays on 'Platonic Love,' or the _Gorgias_ a satire upon the vanity of the Sophists, and that each of these ends with a topic totally alien from that with which it commenced. Thus Plato might appear a desultory essayist rather than a close thinker. But when a student is forewarned that the _Phædrus_ is, in fact, a critical and psychological essay on the true principles of rhetoric, or, rather, of dialectic as distinct from rhetoric; that the point of the _Gorgias_ (in the words of the Master of Trinity) is 'a discussion of the ethical principles which conduct to political well-being,' or, as Mr. Jowett somewhat differently puts it, 'not to answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth;' and that the _Symposium_ is a sketch of the course of transcendental thought and education in the science of abstract beauty, which can alone fit man for the inheritance and enjoyment of a blessed eternity;--when all this is made perfectly clear to a reader at the outset, he not only sees each dialogue in quite a new light, but what is far more important, he then only realizes why it was written, and what it was really designed to inculcate. Thus much we have said, almost apologetically, for the addition of so very much introductory matter in four octavo volumes, already of a bulk sufficient to discourage some of the less enterprising class of readers.

Viewed as a literary composition, and as emanating from one who has the highest reputation for Greek scholarship, as well as for Platonism, we must plainly say that Professor Jowett's work has its serious demerits as well as its merits. The style is somewhat jaunty rather than closely faithful to the original. It is throughout far more of a paraphrase than of a translation, in the accurate sense of the word. Over the verbal difficulties, the subtle syntactical niceties, even the grammatical meaning of the more involved sentences, the author passes very lightly. He shows that unconcern for Greek, as mere Greek, that ῥᾳστώνη of an interpreter of philosophy rather than of a philosopher's very words, which we should hardly have looked for in a professor of the language. The grammarian, in fact, is so merged in the philosopher that his peculiar province has become quite secondary. No doubt considerable latitude must be conceded to those who would win the attention of purely English readers. Between the Greek and the English idioms, where no compromise can be made, the preference must be given to the latter; otherwise, the version will be, or, at least, is liable to be, somewhat stiff, pedantic, awkward, and wanting in that brilliant and genial spirit of _talk_ that the original undoubtedly had to a Greek, and which, in truth, gives the chief fascination to the exquisite and perfect language of Plato.

With all this, and more that might be pleaded in Mr. Jowett's defence or excuse, there are certainly very many of his renderings which show a laxity that is neither necessary for the relief of the English reader nor satisfactory to the accurate Greek scholar. There seem to us even indications of haste, which, though not, perhaps, to be wondered at, when the vastness of the whole work is considered, must certainly be set down as a blemish in the performance of it. We may go considerably further, and express our fears that actual errors in the rendering are by no means very infrequent. We say this, not in a random way, nor from a casual inspection, but after having carefully gone over _five_ of the dialogues (_Phædo_, _Phædrus_, _Theætetus_, _Philebus_, _Symposium_) _verbatim_ with Plato and Mr. Jowett's translation. Some passages we have noted for critical remark, not, of course, as exhausting all that could be said with truth, but as examples of the kind of incompleteness, or vagueness, or faultiness of rendering of which we have taken occasion rather seriously to complain.

Let us take first the opening of the _Symposium_, of which the following is a _close_ translation, made with due regard to tenses, moods, arrangement of words, and other niceties of the original:

'_Apollodorus._ I flatter myself I am pretty well practised
in the matter you are asking about. The fact is, only the
day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from
my house at Phalerum, when an acquaintance of mine, who had
caught sight of me from behind, called to me from a
distance, and with a joke on my name as he called,
exclaimed, "_Ho there! you, Apollodorus, of Phalerum, wait
for me!_" So I stopped till he came up. "Why, Apollodorus!"
he said, "I was looking for you just now, as I wanted to
hear a full account about the party Agathon gave to
Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of the company who
were present at the feast,--in a word, to learn what was
said in their speeches about _Love_. Another friend did
indeed essay to give me some account--he had heard it from
Phoenix, the son of Philippus, and he said that you also
knew--but, to confess the truth, he had nothing definite to
tell. Do _you_, therefore, give me information in full; for
none so fit as yourself to report the conversations of your
bosom-friend. But first tell me," he said, "Were you
present yourself at this party, or not?"'

We do not think that the above, though quite a literal version, strikes on the English ear as in any way harsh. Whether the much looser rendering of Professor Jowett has a more truly English ring, or any other advantage, as a set-off to the evident laxity of it, we leave as an open question for others to decide. Here it is _in extenso_:--

'I believe that I am prepared with an answer. For the day
before yesterday I was coming from my own home at Phalerum
to the city, and one of my acquaintances who had caught a
sight of the back of me at a distance, in a merry mood
commanded me to halt. "Apollodorus," he cried, "O thou man
of Phalerum, halt!" So I did as I was bid; and then he
said, "I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now,
that I might hear about the discourses in praise of love,
which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others,
at Agathon's supper. Phoenix, the son of Philip, told
another person who told me of them, and he said that you
knew; but he was himself very indistinct, and I wish that
you would give me an account of them. Who but you should be
the reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell
me," he said, "were you present at this meeting?"'

It might, perhaps, seem to savour of pedantry, to remark, that the nice distinctions between the aorists διαπυθέσθαι and διήγησαι and the imperfect διηγεῖτο, are needlessly slurred over; but the clause παίζων ἅμα τῇ κλήσει must mean something more than 'in merry mood.' We do not know precisely what the joke was; but probably φαληρὸς or φαλαρὸς was applied to one who had a bare patch on his head, a white whisker perhaps, or some such facial peculiarity.

Let this, however, pass. We admit there is no serious error here, but the passage will fairly well illustrate the kind of paraphrastic version Professor Jowett has generally adopted,--we do not say wrongly, for we repeat that it is quite a matter of taste and judgment; and neither of these qualities in so experienced a scholar is it our desire to impugn. His object was to give the _matter_ of Plato, certainly not to compose 'a crib' for young students. But, whatever the motive was, we are rather afraid that this slipshod way of translating, and of inverting or perverting the order of the Greek words, not unfrequently borders closely on inaccuracy. For instance, and not to go further than the first chapter of this same _Symposium_ (p. 173, A.), Apollodorus says, in his impulsive way, that he has kept close company with Socrates for something less than three years; 'Before that, I used to run from one to another without any fixed object; and though I persuaded myself I was doing something, I was the most miserable of men; aye, as miserable as you (Glaucon) are, in thinking you ought to do anything rather than study philosophy.'

The point of the passage is the hit at his friend as one of the χρηματιστικοὶ (not 'traders,' but) those absorbed in money-making, and the eulogy of his own novitiate in philosophy. In Mr. Jowett's version the passage stands thus: 'I used to be running about the world, thinking that I was doing something, and would have done anything rather than be a philosopher; I was almost as miserable as you are now.' A little further down (173, D.) he appears to us to miss the true sense, or, at least, to misrepresent it. The friend (ἕταιρος) says to Apollodorus, 'How ever you came to be called by this name, "The Excitable," I know not; for in your conversations you are always the same; you are savage at yourself and everybody else except Socrates.'

An impulsive man does things by fits and starts, and does not, like Apollodorus, in this matter at least, follow a consistent course. We doubt if the right meaning is conveyed by the following: 'True in this to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you acquired, of Apollodorus the madman, for your humour is always to be out of humour with yourself and with everybody except Socrates.'

One more instance of what seems a very slovenly rendering, we will add from _Symp._, p. 179, E. In this passage every clause of the original seems, for some reason inexplicable to us, to be disarranged, and the whole to be hashed up, as it were, into a new hodge-podge:--

'Far other was the reward of the true love of Achilles
towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love
(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish
error into which Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was
surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the
other heroes; and he was much younger, as Homer informs us,
and he had no beard). And greatly as the gods honour the
virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the
beloved to the lover is more admired, and valued, and
rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine
and more worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware,
for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid
death, and return home, and live to a good old age, if he
abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless, he gave his
life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only on
his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods
honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the
Islands of the Blest.'

What Plato really says, with all the logical accuracy of carefully balanced sentences, is as follows:--

'Far different was the honour they paid to Achilles, the
son of Thetis, in sending him to the Islands of the Blest,
because when he knew from his mother that he was destined
to die on the field if he slew Hector, but if he did not,
to return home and die old, he had the courage to make the
nobler choice,--to take the part of his lover Patroclus and
avenge his death, and so not only to die for him, but to do
more, to die after him (_i.e._, when he could no longer
help him). _That_ was the reason why the gods held him in
such extraordinary regard, and paid him such special
honour, viz., because he held his lover in such high
esteem. Æschylus, by the way, talks absurdly in saying that
it was Achilles who was the lover of Patroclus. For
Achilles was much better looking, not only than Patroclus,
but than all the heroes without exception; and besides
that, beardless, and so greatly his junior, as Homer
affirms. But, be that as it may, it is a truth that the
gods do hold in special honour this chivalrous spirit when
it is shown in attachment to another; albeit they feel more
regard and admiration, and have more disposition to confer
benefits, when the favourite shows affection for his lover,
than when the lover does so towards his favourite; for the
lover has more of the divine in him than the favourite,
since he is inspired by them. For these reasons also they
honoured Achilles more than Alcestis, by sending him to the
Isles of the Blest.'

A comparison of these two versions will show how widely--we had nearly said, how recklessly--the Greek Professor departs from the letter of his author. A conspicuous example of this occurs also at p. 194, E., where about one hundred Greek words are expressed in less than seventy of English; whereas the differences of idiom require, as a rule, in really accurate translation from Greek, the use of, at the very least, one-third more English words. The difficulty to us is to see wherein lies the gain on the side of the loose paraphrase--unless, perhaps, in brevity, _i.e._, in giving something less than Plato gives. Even as a matter of accuracy, we might object to the rendering of τὴν ἀρετὴν τὴν περὶ τὸν ἔρωτα, 'the virtue of love.' It means evidently, 'bravery shown in the cause of love,' which surely is a very different thing. So, too, in p. 183, A., δουλείας δουλεύειν οἵας οὐδ' ἂν δοῦλος οὐδεὶς, is not 'to be a servant of servants,' but 'to perform services such as no menial would.' In p. 186, E., ἡ ἰατρικὴ πᾶσα διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου κυβερνᾶται, 'it is by the influence of love (_i.e._, a knowledge of the natural loves and desires) that the whole art of the physicians is regulated,' Mr. Jowett wrongly refers τοῦ θεοῦ to Æsculapius, whereas Ἔρως is clearly meant. Just below (p. 187, B.), ὁ ῥυθμὸς ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος καὶ βραδέος γέγονε, is not 'rhythm is composed of elements short and long'--a proposition hardly intelligible--but 'time (in music) is made up of quick and slow,' _i.e._, when two instruments either slacken or quicken their pace so as to harmonize with each other and keep true time. And in p. 205, D., τὸ μὲν κεφάλαιόν ἐστι πᾶσα ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐπιθυμία καὶ τοῦ εὐδαιμονεῖν, ὁ μέγιστός τε καὶ δολερὸς ἔρως παντὶ, is not, 'You may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is due to the great and subtile power of love,' but 'Love is, in its most general sense, all that desire which men feel for good things and for happiness--that greatest of all loves, which every man finds so deceptive.' The meaning is, that no form of love is so generally deceptive and disappointing as the desire to be happy. Again, in p. 206, D., is a passage very badly rendered. All the delicate and accurate points in the imagery are missed, and the coyness of an animal not in a state of desire, compared with the free and ecstatic surrender of itself to the favourite when it is so disposed, so exquisitely expressed by the Platonic words, is not expressed at all, or in phrases neither appropriate nor significant. The sense, in fact, is very superficially given. The philosopher is speaking of mental, not of bodily τόκος, and means to say that when an idea has been conceived, the author of it keeps it to himself till he can find a congenial person (the καλὸς, and not the αἰσχρὸς) who will help him to bring it into the world. The same notion exactly occurs in _Theætet._, p. 150, and is repeated more explicitly shortly below, p. 209, B., though even that passage is very inaccurately rendered:--

'And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in
him, and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity
desires to beget and generate. And he wanders about seeking
beauty, that he may beget offspring--for in deformity he
will beget nothing--and embraces the beautiful rather than
the deformed; and when he finds a fair, and noble, and
well-nurtured soul, and there is a union of the two in one
person, he gladly embraces him, and to such an one he is
full of fair speech about virtue, and the nature and
pursuits of a good man.'

In this version the words, 'and there is a union of the two in one person,' are hardly intelligible. But in a correct rendering, as follows, their meaning is at once apparent:--

'When, again, one of these (viz., whose aspirations are for
mental rather than for bodily offspring) has been pregnant
with some great idea from early youth--as may be expected
in one possessing a god-like nature--and when at length,
the proper age having arrived, he first feels a desire to
bring forth and give it birth, then he, too, I take it,
goes about looking for the beautiful, on which (_i.e._, in
contact with which) he may generate; for on the unsightly
he will never be able to do so. Accordingly, he not only
likes to keep company (ἀσπάζεται) with the persons (bodies)
which are comely rather than with those which are ugly,
as being in a condition of pregnancy, but, whenever he
falls in with a soul which is beautiful, noble, and apt
to learn, then he does heartily welcome the union of the
two (viz., the handsome body combined with the beautiful
soul); and in his converse with such a man as this, he at
once finds himself at no loss for words about virtue, and
the duties that a good man ought to engage in, and his
pursuits.'

Of course, all this is said in respect of that philosophic and unsensual παιδεραστία which is a favourite fiction with Plato. A well-disposed youth, who has some idea or theory to communicate, is supposed to keep it to himself till he meets with some older friend, whose mental qualities, as well as bodily appearance, inspire him with affection and confidence. The result is the τόκος ἐν καλῷ, the bringing out the idea or eliciting and giving tangible form to it, by the aid, the sympathy, and the co-operation of the good-looking and congenial friend.

A little below (p. 210, D.), an erroneous rendering goes far to make nonsense of a very grand and transcendental passage--one of the first passages, probably, in all Plato. The philosopher says, that a youth should be trained gradually in the science of beauty, rising ever higher and higher in the objects of his admiration, 'that by looking to the beautiful, now wide in its scope (πολὺ ἤδη), he may no longer by a menial service (δουλεύων ὥσπερ οἰκέτης) to the beauty in some one--that is, being content to admire the comeliness of a stripling, or of some particular person, or institution--became a feeble and trifling character, but, betaking himself to the vast ocean of beauty, and contemplating it, may give birth to many fine and stately discourses and sentiments on the boundless field of philosophy.'

The confusion of Mr. Jowett's rendering here appears to us extraordinary. 'Being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth, or man, or institution, himself a slave, mean and calculating, but looking at the abundance of beauty, and drawing towards the sea of beauty, and creating and beholding(!) many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom.'

We are compelled to ask, in all earnestness, Would such construing as this be tolerated from a boy of the sixth form in any public school in the kingdom? Our suspicions are aroused, that the Oxford Greek Professor has admitted aid from less competent hands, and, in a too generous confidence, has failed to look closely over the contributions which he invited and received. Plato, we cannot doubt, in the above passage, has been expounding his own aspirations for leaving behind him what he elsewhere calls 'offspring of the mind,'--viz., immortal records of his own genius in the composition of his Dialogues. He goes on to speak of the ultimate attainment of that highest καλὸν, the knowledge of abstract science, or rather of science, ἐπιστήμη, in the abstract; and in language evidently borrowed from the economy of the Eleusinian mysteries, he proceeds to ask what must be the happiness of those who, as the result of a right discipline on earth, attain hereafter to the enjoyment of the τὸ θεῖον μονοεῖδες, the Beatific Vision of God, or rather (if we might say) of 'Godness,' unmixed with human frailties and imperfections. The passage itself reads almost like one inspired; and it is very remarkable how exalted and spiritual an idea of the Deity Plato had realized. He seems to transcend the _anthropomorphic_ doings and sayings attributed to the Jehovah of the Old Testament. In rendering such a passage, Mr. Jowett should have devoted especial pains to attain the closest accuracy possible, for every word is a jewel. Yet he wrongfully renders τὰ καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα, 'fair actions,' and τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, 'fair notions,' (p. 211, C.), whereas 'institutions' (laws, &c.), and 'lessons,' or 'instructions,' are really meant; and the important words, ἐκεῖνο ᾧ δεῖ θεωμένου, 'contemplating that beauty by and with the proper faculty, _i.e._, νῷ, with mind, not with mere eyes,' he omits, apparently because ὁρῶντι ᾧ ὁρατὸν τὸ καλὸν occurs a little further on.

We have devoted some space to the examination of the _Symposium_, because we have found in it, perhaps more than elsewhere, indications of hasty and superficial rendering. Yet Mr. Jowett himself says, in his introduction, 'Of all the works of Plato, the _Symposium_ is the most perfect in form,--more than any other Platonic dialogue, it is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty "as of a statue."' Special care, therefore, should have been taken in presenting it accurately to the English reader. Turn we now to the _Phædo_,--that remarkable essay, which has exercised more influence than some are willing to suppose on all subsequent theology, and which, though of little weight as an argument in _proof_ of the immortality of the soul, is of such special interest as standing alone among the writings of the age in advocating anything approaching to the Christian idea of a good man's hopes and prospects of a happy existence hereafter. For even Aristotle, it is well known, in a professed treatise on the laws and ends that influence men's action (the 'Ethics'), in no case appeals to moral responsibility, obedience to Divine commands, or the hopes of a happy eternity. He does not seem to rise above the conception of the half-conscious Homeric ghost or εἴδωλον wandering disconsolate in the shades below. And even of this state of existence he speaks doubtfully (Eth. i. ch. x.) In this treatise, the _Phædo_, we may say at once, and with pleasure, Mr. Jowett has given us a tolerably close, as well as a fairly accurate rendering throughout. It is hard indeed to believe that the two dialogues can have been translated by the same hand. Let us cite, as a good example, the following extract (p. 66, B.):--

'And when they consider all this, must not true
philosophers make a reflection, of which they will speak to
one another in such words as these: We have found, they
will say, a path of speculation which seems to bring us and
the argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the
body, and while the soul is mingled with this mass of evil,
our desire will not be satisfied, and our desire is of the
truth? For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by
reason of the mere requirement of food; and also is liable
to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search
after truth, and by filling us as full of loves, and lusts,
and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly,
prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a
thought. For whence come wars, and fightings, and
factions--whence, but from the lusts of the body? For wars
are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be
acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and
in consequence of all these things, the time which ought to
be given to philosophy is lost. Moreover, if there is time,
and an inclination towards philosophy, yet the body
introduces a turmoil, and confusion, and fears into the
course of speculation, and hinders us from seeing the
truth; and all experience shows that if we would have pure
knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the
soul in herself must behold all things in themselves; then,
I suppose, that we shall attain that which we desire, and
of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom: not
while we live, but after death, as the argument shows; for
if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have
pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow--either
knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all,
after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be
in herself alone and without the body.'

There is not a word we could wish altered in the above, except, indeed, that 'a path of speculation which seems to bring us _and the argument_ to the conclusion,' should rather have been, 'a kind of path which carries us on, _with reason for our guide_ (μετὰ τοῦ λόγου), in the speculation.' A little below (67, B.), μὴ καθαρῷ καθαροῦ ἐφάπτεσθαι, is not exactly, 'no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure'--a version that savours too much of the language of Christian theology--but, 'to realize the pure with that faculty which is not itself pure,' _i.e._, with νοῦς not entirely dissociated from σῶμα. The abstract, he says, cannot be realized by the intellect while bound up with the concrete. In p. 80, B., τὸ νοητὸν and τὸ ἀνόητον are not 'the intelligible and the unintelligible;' nor, in p. 81, D., is τὸ ὁρατὸν, 'sight.' Everyone knows that τὰ αἰσθητὰ, 'the sensuous,' or things which are the objects of sense, are opposed to τὰ νοητὰ, those which are abstract, and can be realized only by the mind; and a soul, or ghost, is said μετέχειν τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, not as 'cloyed with sight,' but as 'having yet something of the visible,' or concrete, _i.e._, some lingering remnants of _body_, which render it visible.

The passage in p. 82, E., is rather difficult, and has been misunderstood by others. Mr. Jowett's rendering is, 'the soul is only able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance; and philosophy, seeing the horrible nature of her confinement, and that the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity,' &c. We think that τοῦ εἱργμοῦ ἡ δεινότης means, 'the strong tie, or hold, that the prison--_i.e._, the body--has on the soul;' and that ὅτι δι' ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶ means, 'that it, the prison, is actually _liked_.' Thus, says Plato, attached as the soul is to the allurements and pleasures of the body, the latter 'helps the captive to remain in captivity.' Thus, in Æsch., Prom. v. 39:

Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἥ θ' ὁμιλία,

and elsewhere, δεινὸν, 'a serious matter,' is opposed to φαῦλον, what is trifling and unimportant.

On the whole, this version of the _Phædo_ is well and carefully executed. As a treatise, it is of the highest interest, if only from the firm belief it everywhere shows in the immortality of the soul--a belief which is nothing short of a real faith, and which seems almost to _labour_ at demonstration by varied and often very subtle arguments, as if the writer was half conscious, all the while, that demonstration in such a matter is quite beyond the province either of logic or physics. But 'dialectics' were thought equal to any difficulty. Says Cebes (p. 72, E.), 'Yes, I entirely think so; we are not walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that _the living spring from the dead_; and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.' In this remarkable passage we recognise the same sublime faith which gave birth to the ecstatic exclamation, 'I _know_ that my Redeemer liveth,' and also the germs of the doctrine of a Resurrection in τὸ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. No pagan writer before Plato had attained to such exalted ideas of the destiny of a good man, _to be with God_ in the life hereafter. He is full of hope, Socrates says (p. 63, B.), that he shall meet in the other world the wise and the good who have departed hence before him, and still more sure that he shall go to those blessed beings whom (with his usual acquiescence in the popular mythology) he calls ἀγαθοὶ δεσπόται. The doctrine of Resurrection is not really distinct from that of Metempsychosis, both being in fact held by Orphic or Pythagorean teachers (ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος, p. 70, C.), as was that of a final judgment, often insisted on by Plato, as by Pindar and Æschylus before him. The fixed notion with the ancient physicists was, that _soul_ (ψυχὴ, or vitality) was air (πνεῦμα, _spiritus_, _animus_, ἄνεμος),--for all turn upon this notion. When a person died, his last gasp was supposed to be the vital air or soul leaving the body, and departing into its kindred and eternal ether. The air, in fact, was thought to be full of souls; and each nascent form, whether of man or animal, in drawing its first breath, might inhale _a life_, _i.e._, the actual ψυχὴ that had animated some former body. Hence arose the notion of cycles of existence, of more or less duration, and of triple lives of probation on earth (Pind. ol. ii. 68). This doctrine of a return to earth after some period of residence in Hades is plainly affirmed, _Phæd._, p. 107, E., and 113, A., and _Phædr._, p. 249. One of the penalties of a misspent life was thought to be a detention on earth in an inferior and grovelling state of existence. 'If we tell the wicked' (says Socrates in _Theætetus_, p. 177, A.) 'that if they do not get rid of that cleverness of theirs, that place which is pure and free from evil will never receive them after they are dead, but that here on earth they will have to pass an existence like to themselves--bad associating with bad; all this they will hear as the language of fools addressed to men of cunning and genius.'

The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (_Phæd._, p. 70, A.), 'the moment it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a puff of wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical value attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous force and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no idea. In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, B.), 'the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην γενέσθαι).' Life, then, according to Plato, should be a constant process of assimilation to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, _Theæt._, p. 176, B.), a discipline and a learning how to die (_Phæd._, p. 67, D.), because God is the type and fount as it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth. 'The release from evil,' ἀποφυγὴ κακῶν, was a favourite topic with Plato, whose mind had received a strongly cynical impression from the prevalent selfishness and injustice of the Athenians, and especially from the crowning act of fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in putting Socrates to death. That, in his view, was simply to extinguish truth, to banish justice, to ignore intellectuality, reason, and philosophy as the guides of life. His speculations on the _origin_ of evil, and the permission of its existence on earth, are very interesting. In the grand passage (_Theætet._, p. 176, A.), he thinks that its existence, as a correlative of good, is a necessary law, _i.e._, there would be no such thing as _good_ if it were not in contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of cold only by the opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted state of life. But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit--the Semitic doctrine of a Satan--as the personal author of evil. In _Republ._, ii. p. 379, C., he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is more of evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all things that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for _some other causes'_ (ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan mind did not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan nations had no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235). Of penal abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea; in truth, the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, _Phædr._, p. 249, A.; τὸ τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, _Gorg._, p. 523, B.), as well as of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into the other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners respectively go. (_Gorg._, p. 526, B.) So _Phædo_, p. 113, D.:--

'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of
each severally conveys them, first of all, they have
sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and
piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither
well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and mount such
conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the
lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil
deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have
done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards
of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those
who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of
their crimes--who have committed many and terrible deeds of
sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like--such are
hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and
_they never come out_.' (Jowett, p. 464.)

The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of the _Republic_.

Thinkers will not be deterred from asking themselves, with all solemnity and in all love of truth, How far is this doctrine of a hell really a revealed truth, or a Platonic speculation, or both? If it is both one and the other, either Plato anticipated Christian Revelation, or Revelation confirmed Plato. Plato, without doubt, did not _invent_ a doctrine which was familiar to the Semitic theology long before him. Still, it may be true that the Platonic theories are totally independent of Jewish traditions, and that the belief in a penal state of existence after death (so clearly developed in the well-known passage of Virgil, _Æn._, vi. 735, _seq._), like that of a last Judgment, had its origin rather in the speculation of mystics, and passed into the popular theology of Christian teachers. The doctrine of retribution for sin (τίσις) may be clearly traced to the Pythagorean dogma δράσαντι παθεῖν, so often insisted upon by Æschylus,--'the doer must suffer.' It was manifest to all, that such suffering was no rule upon earth, since many villains escaped scot-free; and therefore a filling up of the measure hereafter was thought a necessary condition for the sinner. The beneficence of Christianity consisted primarily in this, that it held out a hope that such a debt of suffering could be paid vicariously; whereas the only hope of release held out by Plato (p. 114, A.) was the forgiveness of the persons who had been wronged on earth. This ancient idea of a stern law of reciprocity, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' is distinctly attributed by Aristotle, who calls it τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς, to Pythagoras, Eth. N. V. ch. 8. Be this as it may, it is a very interesting fact that Plato, the first writer of pagan antiquity who describes a bright, supernal heaven, the abode of gods and blessed men who hold converse with them, and a dismal, infernal abode of fire (_Phædo_, p. 110-113,) derives all his imagery in describing the latter from the effects of volcanic outbreaks, to which he even definitely compares it (p. 111, D.) His description of heaven, which in the _Phædrus_ (p. 247, C.) he places far above the sky, the ὑπερουράνιος τόπος, with some reference to the Hesiodic doctrine of a supernal firmament or floor, in the _Phædo_ is a singular compound of the Homeric Olympus and the Elysium and Isles of the Blest in the legends of the earlier poets. Those legends placed Elysium below, and the Isles of the Blest _on_ the earth. Plato's heaven is on the earth indeed, but on a part of it elevated far above the Mediterranean basin, where, he says, men live in a comparatively dim and misty atmosphere. His account suggests the idea that he had heard some tradition of the healthy and prosperous life of the natives on the sunny slopes of the giant Himalaya mountains. But Plato's heaven is also, to a considerable extent, the heaven of the Revelation. Both are described in very materialistic terms. To this day, the popular notion of heaven is undoubtedly associated with saints in white garments, crowns and thrones of gold and gems, music, brightness, and eternal hallelujahs. One little coincidence between the Platonic and the Apocalyptic account is too remarkable to be omitted. In Plato (p. 110, D.) we are told that, besides silver and gold, heaven is spangled with gems of which earthly gems are but fragments, σάρδια τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας καὶ σμαράγδους. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation (ver. 3) we read, ἰδοὺ θρόνος ἔκειτο ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καθήμενος· καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἦν ὅμοιος ὁράσει λίθῳ ἰάσπιδι καὶ σαρδίνῳ (al. σαρδίῳ)· καὶ ἶρις κυκλόθεν τοῦ θρόνου ὅμοιος ὁράσει σμαραγδίνῳ.

Scarcely less remarkable is the coincidence of the _four rivers_ that surround the abode of shades in the under world (_Phædo_, p. 112, E.), and the four rivers that encompassed the 'Garden of Eden' (Genesis ii. 10-14). As for the river Acheron and the Acherusian lake, not only does the word contain, like _Achelöus_, the root _aq_, water, but the involved notion of ἄχος, 'grief,' suggested its fitness as an infernal river, not less than the Κώκυτος, named from groans. The disappearance of a river in a chasm or 'swallow,' like the Styx in Arcadia and the Erasinus in Argolis, also gave credibility to the existence of infernal rivers, as much as volcanic ebullitions seemed to be proofs of subterranean fire lakes. But it is rather curious that a geographical identity in name should exist between the Acherusian lake and river in Thesprotia (Thucyd., i. 46), and the semi-mythical lake and river in the above passages of the _Phædo_. The tendency to localize adits to the regions below was very strong; so the lake Avernus, and the promontory of Tænarus, and the καταῤῥάκτης ὀδὸς at Colonus (Soph. Œd. Col. 1590) were all regarded with awe as places giving direct communication with the shades below.

The simple but very touching narrative of the death of Socrates at the conclusion of the dialogue, sets forth in golden words the calm resignation, the perfect faith and happiness of the death of a truly good man. The brevity and want of detail in the last scene is very remarkable. Mr. Jowett gives it thus:--

'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange
outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that
they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a
man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience.
When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our
tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs
began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to
the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and
then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he
pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel, and
he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards,
and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them
himself, and said, When the poison reaches the heart, that
will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the
groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered
himself up, and said (they were his last words)--he said,
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay
the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there
anything else? There was no answer to this question: but in
a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants
uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes
and mouth.'

We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it bears the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That Plato himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us at the beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, B.) The narrative, to say nothing of the improbability of the execution of a distinguished criminal taking place before a company of friends at a social meeting, seems to us framed in ignorance of the medical nature of either narcotic or alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit the popular notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word means 'hemlock' or some other compound drug). The idea was, as is clear from the verse in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes--

εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια,--