Chapter XXXVII (5)

[Side-note: The remarks here made upon the effect of Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus against Sokrates.]

We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth--cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates--is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.[188] Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:--to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years--we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.[189]

[Footnote 188: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.]

[Footnote 189: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38.

Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii. Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).]

[Side-note: Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.]

The matter to which I here advert, illustrates a material distinction between some writings of Plato as compared with others, and between different points of view which his mind took on at different times. In the Platonic Apology, we find Sokrates confessing his own ignorance, and proclaiming himself to be isolated among an uncongenial public falsely persuaded of their own knowledge. In several other dialogues, he is the same: he cannot teach anything, but can only cross-examine, test, and apply the spur to respondents. But the Republic presents him in a new character. He is no longer a dissenter amidst a community of fixed, inherited, convictions.[190] He is himself on the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as spiritual, from whom all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is determined. Hence we now find him passing to the opposite pole; taking up the orthodox, conservative, point of view, the same as Melêtus and Anytus maintained in their accusation against Sokrates at Athens. He now expects every individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions, prescribed by authority: including among those opinions deliberate ethical and political fictions, such as that about the gold and silver earthborn men. Free-thinking minds, who take views of their own, and enquire into the evidence of these beliefs, become inconvenient and dangerous. Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic Apology, nor his negative Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic.

[Footnote 190: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 541.]

[Side-note: Idea of Good--The Chiefs alone know what it is--If they did not they would be unfit for their functions.]

One word more must be said respecting a subject which figures conspicuously in the Republic--the Idea or Form of Good. The chiefs alone (we read) at the end of their long term of study, having ascended gradually from the phenomena of sense to intellectual contemplation and familiarity with the unchangeable Ideas--will come to discern and embrace the highest of all Ideas--the Form of Good:[191] by the help of which alone, Justice, Temperance, and the other virtues, become useful and profitable.[192] If the Archons do not know how and why just and honourable things are good, they will not be fit for their duty.[193] In regard to Good (Plato tells us) no man is satisfied with mere appearance. Here every man desires and postulates that which is really good: while as to the just and the honourable, many are satisfied with the appearance, without caring for the reality.[194]

[Footnote 191: Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 533-534.]

[Footnote 192: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A.]

[Footnote 193: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 A.]

[Footnote 194: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 D.]

[Side-note: What is the Good? Plato does not know; but he requires the Chiefs to know it. Without this the Republic would be a failure.]

Plato proclaims this Real Good, as distinguished from Apparent Good, to be the paramount and indispensable object of knowledge, without which all other knowledge is useless. It is that which every man divines to exist, yearns for, and does everything with a view to obtain: but which he misses, from not knowing where to seek; missing also along with it that which gives value to other acquisitions.[195] What then is this Real Good--the Noumenon, Idea, or form of Good?

[Footnote 195: Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 A-E. [Greek: O(\ dê\ diô/kei me\n a(/pasa psuchê\ kai\ tou/tou e(/neka pa/nta pra/ttei, a)pomanteuome/nê ti\ ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k e)/chousa labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti\n ou)de\ pi/stei chrê/sasthai moni/mô|, oi(/a| kai\ peri\ ta)/lla, dia\ tou=to de\ a)potugcha/nei kai\ tô=n a)/llôn ei)/ ti o)/phelos ê)=n], &c.]

This question is put by Glaukon to Sokrates, with much earnestness, in the dialogue of the Republic. But unfortunately it remains unanswered. Plato declines all categorical reply; though the question is one, as he himself emphatically announces, upon which all the positive consequences of his philosophy turn.[196] He conducts us to the chamber wherein this precious and indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the door. In describing the condition of other men's minds--that they divine a Real Good--[Greek: Au)to\-a)gatho\n] or Bonum _per se_--do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle themselves in vain to grasp and determine what it is[197]--he has unconsciously described the condition of his own.

[Footnote 196: Certainly when we see the way in which Plato deals with the [Greek: i)de/a a)gathou=], we cannot exempt him from the criticism which he addresses to others, vi. p. 493 E. [Greek: ô(s de\ kai\ a)gatha\ kai\ kala\ tau=ta tê=| a)lêthei/a|, ê)/dê pôpote/ tou= ê)/kousas au)tô=n lo/gon dido/ntos ou) katage/laston?]

We may illustrate this procedure of Plato by an Oriental fable, cited in an instructive Dissertation of M. Ernest Renan.

"Aristoteles primum sub Almamuno (813-833, A.D.) arabicè factus est. Somniumque effictum à credulis hominibus: vidisse Almamunum in somno virum aspectu venerabili, solio insidentem: mirantem Almamunum quæsivisse, quisnam ille esset? responsum, Aristotelem esse. Quo audito, Chalifam ab eo quæsivisse, Quidnam Bonum esset? respondisse Aristotelem: Quod sapientiores probarent. Quærenti Chalifæ quid hoc esset? Quod lex divina probat--dixisse. Interroganti porro illi, Quid hoc? Quod omnes probarent--respondisse: _neque alii ultra quæstioni respondere voluisse_. Quo somnio permotum Almamunum à Græcorum imperatore veniam petiisse, ut libri philosophici in ipsius regno quærerentur: hujusque rei gratiâ viros doctos misisse." Ernest Renan, De Philosophiâ Peripateticâ apud Syros, commentatio Historica, p. 57; Paris, 1852.

Among the various remarks which might be made upon this curious dream, one is, that Bonum is always determined as having relation to the appreciative apprehension of some mind--the Wise Men, the Divine Mind, the Mind of the general public. _Bonum_ is that which some mind or minds conceive and appreciate as such. The word has no meaning except in relation to some apprehending Subject.]

[Footnote 197: Plato, Republ. vi. p. 505 E. [Greek: a)pomanteuome/nê ti ei)=nai, a)porou=sa de\ kai\ ou)k e)/chousa labei=n i(kanô=s ti/ pot' e)sti/n], &c.

The remarks of Aristotle in impugning the Platonic [Greek: i)de/an a)gathou=] are very instructive, Ethic. Nikom. i. p. 1096-1097; Ethic. Eudem. i. p. 1217-1218. He maintains that there exists nothing corresponding to the word; and that even if it did exist, it would neither be [Greek: prakto\n] nor [Greek: ktêto\n a)nthrô/pô|]. Aristotle here looks upon Good as being essentially relative or phenomenal: he understands [Greek: to\ a(plô=s a)gatho\n] to mean [Greek: to\ a)gatho\n to\ phaino/menon tô=| spoudai/ô|] (Eth. Nik. iii. p. 1113, b. 16-32). But he does not uniformly adhere to this meaning.]