68 Plato, Epist. vii. 325 C: Σκοποῦντι δή μοι ταῦτα τε καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς πράττοντας τὰ πολιτικά, &c. 325 E: Καὶ τοῦ μὲν σκοπεῖν μὴ ἀποστῆναι, πῆ ποτὲ ἄμεινον ἂν γίγνοιτο περί τε αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ δὴ καὶ περὶ τὴν πᾶσαν πολιτείαν, τοῦ δὲ πράττειν αὖ περιμένειν αἰεὶ καιρούς, τελευτῶντα δὲ νοῆσαι περὶ πασῶν τῶν νῦν πόλεων ὅτι κακῶς ξύμπασαι πολιτεύονται.
I have already stated in the 84th chapter of my History, describing the visit of Plato to Dionysius in Sicily, that I believe the Epistles of Plato to be genuine, and that the seventh Epistle especially contains valuable information. Some critics undoubtedly are of a different opinion, and consider them as spurious. But even among these critics, several consider that the author of the Epistles, though not Plato himself, was a contemporary and well informed: so that his evidence is trustworthy. See K. F. Hermann, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp. 282-283. The question has been again discussed recently by Ueberweg (Untersuch. über d. Aechth. u. Zeitf. d. Plat. Schriften, pp. 120-123-125-129), who gives his own opinion that the letters are not by Plato, and produces various arguments to the point. His arguments are noway convincing to me: for the mysticism and pedantry of the Epistles appear to me in full harmony with the Timæus and Leges, and with the Pythagorean bias of Plato’s later years, though not in harmony with the Protagoras, and various other dialogues. Yet Ueberweg also declares his full belief that the seventh Epistle is the composition of a well-informed contemporary, and perfectly worthy of credit as to the facts and K. F. Hermann declares the same. This is enough for my present purpose.
The statement, trusted by all the critics, that Plato’s first visit to Syracuse was made when he was about 40 years of age, depends altogether on the assertion of the seventh Epistle. How numerous are the assertions made by Platonic critics respecting Plato, upon evidence far slighter than that of these Epistles! Boeckh considers the seventh Epistle as the genuine work of Plato. Valentine Rose also pronounces it to be genuine, though he does not consider the other Epistles to be so (De Aristotelis Librorum Ordine, p. 25, p. 114, Berlin, 1854). Tennemann admits the Epistles generally to be genuine (System der Platon. Philos. i. p. 106).
It is undeniable that these Epistles of Plato were recognised as genuine and trusted by all the critics of antiquity from Aristophanes downwards. Cicero, Plutarch, Aristeides, &c., assert facts upon the authority of the Epistles. Those who declare the Epistles to be spurious and worthless, ought in consistency to reject the statements which Plutarch makes on the authority of the Epistles: they will find themselves compelled to discredit some of the best parts of his life of Dion. Compare Aristeides, Περὶ Ῥητορικῆς Or. 45, pp. 90-106, Dindorf.
Plato did not retire from political life until after the restoration of the democracy, nor devote himself to philosophy until after the death of Sokrates.
This very natural recital, wherein Plato (at the age of 75) describes his own youth between 21 and 28 — taken in conjunction with the other reasons just enumerated — impresses upon me the persuasion, that Plato did not devote himself to philosophy, nor publish any of his dialogues, before the death of Sokrates: though he may probably have composed dramas, and the beautiful epigrams which Diogenes has preserved. He at first frequented the society of Sokrates, as many other aspiring young men frequented it (likewise that of Kratylus, and perhaps that of various Sophists69), from love of ethical debate, admiration of dialectic power, and desire to acquire a facility of the same kind in his own speech: not with any view to take up philosophy as a profession, or to undertake the task either of demolishing or constructing in the region of speculation. No such resolution was adopted until after he had tried political life and had been disappointed:—nor until such disappointment had been still more bitterly aggravated by the condemnation of Sokrates. It was under this feeling that Plato first consecrated himself to that work of philosophical meditation and authorship, — of inquisitive travel and converse with philosophers abroad, — and ultimately of teaching in the Academy, — which filled up the remaining fifty years of his life. The death of Sokrates left that venerated name open to be employed as spokesman in his dialogues: and there was nothing in the political condition of Athens after 399 B.C., analogous to the severe and perilous struggle which tasked all the energies of her citizens from 409 B.C. down to the close of the war.
69 Compare Plat. Protag. 312 A-B, 315 A, where the distinction is pointedly drawn between one who visited Protagoras ἐπὶ τέχνῃ, ὡς δημιουργὸς ἐσόμενος, and others who came simply ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ, ὡς τὸν ἰδιώτην καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον πρέπει.
All Plato’s dialogues were composed during the fifty-one years after the death of Sokrates.
I believe, on these grounds, that Plato did not publish any dialogues during the life of Sokrates. An interval of fifty-one years separates the death of Sokrates from that of Plato. Such an interval is more than sufficient for all the existing dialogues of Plato, without the necessity of going back to a more youthful period of his age. As to distribution of the dialogues, earlier or later, among these fifty-one years, we have little or no means of judging. Plato has kept out of sight — with a degree of completeness which is really surprising — not merely his own personality, but also the marks of special date and the determining circumstances in which each dialogue was composed. Twice only does he mention his own name, and that simply in passing, as if it were the name of a third person.70 As to the point of time to which he himself assigns each dialogue, much discussion has been held how far Plato has departed from chronological or historical possibility; how far he has brought persons together in Athens who never could have been there together, or has made them allude to events posterior to their own decease. A speaker in Athenæus71 dwells, with needless acrimony, on the anachronisms of Plato, as if they were gross faults. Whether they are faults or not, may fairly be doubted: but the fact of such anachronisms cannot be doubted, when we have before us the Menexenus and the Symposion. It cannot be supposed, in the face of such evidence, that Plato took much pains to keep clear of anachronisms: and whether they be rather more or rather less numerous, is a question of no great moment.
70 In the Apologia, c. 28, p. 38, Sokrates alludes to Plato as present in court, and as offering to become guarantee, along with others, for his fine. In the Phædon, Plato is mentioned as being sick; to explain why he was not present at the last scene of Sokrates (Phædon, p. 59 B). Diog. L. iii. 37.
The pathos as well as the detail of the narrative in the Phædon makes one imagine that Plato really was present at the scene. But being obliged, by the uniform scheme of his compositions, to provide another narrator, he could not suffer it to be supposed that he was himself present.
I have already remarked that this mention of Plato in the third person (Πλάτων δέ, οἶμαι, ἠσθένει) was probably one of the reasons which induced Panætius to declare the Phædon not to be the work of Plato.
71 Athenæus, v. pp. 220, 221. Didymus also attacked Plato as departing from historical truth — ἐπιφυόμενος τῷ Πλάτωνι ὡς παριστοροῦντι — against which the scholiast (ad Leges, i. p. 630) defends him. Grœn van Prinsterer, Prosopogr. Plat. p. 16. The rhetor Aristeides has some remarks of the same kind, though less acrimonious (Orat. xlvii. p. 435, Dind.) than the speaker in Athenæus.
The Thrasyllean Canon is more worthy of trust than the modern critical theories by which it has been condemned.
I now conclude my enquiry respecting the Platonic Canon. The presumption in favour of that Canon, as laid down by Thrasyllus, is stronger (as I showed in the preceding chapter) than it is in regard to ancient authors generally of the same age: being traceable, in the last resort, through the Alexandrine Museum, to authenticating manuscripts in the Platonic school, and to members of that school who had known and cherished Plato himself.72 I have reviewed the doctrines of several recent critics who discard this Canon as unworthy of trust, and who set up for themselves a type of what Plato must have been, derived from a certain number of items in the Canon — rejecting the remaining items as unconformable to their hypothetical type. The different theories which they have laid down respecting general and systematic purposes of Plato (apart from the purpose of each separate composition), appear to me uncertified and gratuitous. The “internal reasons,” upon which they justify rejection of various dialogues, are only another phrase for expressing their own different theories respecting Plato as a philosopher and as a writer. For my part I decline to discard any item of the Thrasyllean Canon, upon such evidence as they produce: I think it a safer and more philosophical proceeding to accept the entire Canon, and to accommodate my general theory of Plato (in so far as I am able to frame one) to each and all of its contents.
72 I find this position distinctly asserted, and the authority of the Thrasyllean catalogue, as certifying the genuine works of Plato, vindicated, by Yxem, in his able dissertation on the Kleitophon of Plato (pp. 1-3, Berlin, 1846). But Yxem does not set forth the grounds of this opinion so fully as the present state of the question demands. Moreover, he combines it with another opinion, upon which he insists even at greater length, and from which I altogether dissent — that the tetralogies of Thrasyllus exhibit the genuine order established by Plato himself among the Dialogues.
Unsafe grounds upon which those theories proceed.
Considering that Plato’s period of philosophical composition extended over fifty years, and that the circumstances of his life are most imperfectly known to us — it is surely hazardous to limit the range of his varieties, on the faith of a critical repugnance, not merely subjective and fallible, but withal entirely of modern growth: to assume, as basis of reasoning, the admiration raised by a few of the finest dialogues — and then to argue that no composition inferior to this admired type, or unlike to it in doctrine or handling, can possibly be the work of Plato. “The Minos, Theagês, Epistolæ, Epinomis, &c., are unworthy of Plato: nothing so inferior in excellence can have been composed by him. No dialogue can be admitted as genuine which contradicts another dialogue, or which advocates any low or incorrect or un-Platonic doctrine. No dialogue can pass which is adverse to the general purpose of Plato as an improver of morality, and a teacher of the doctrine of Ideas.” On such grounds as these we are called upon to reject various dialogues: and there is nothing upon which, generally speaking, so much stress is laid as upon inferior excellence. For my part, I cannot recognise any of them as sufficient grounds of exception. I have no difficulty in believing, not merely that Plato (like Aristophanes) produced many successive novelties, “not at all similar one to the other, and all clever”73 — but also that among these novelties, there were inferior dialogues as well as superior: that in different dialogues he worked out different, even contradictory, points of view — and among them some which critics declare to be low and objectionable: that we have among his works unfinished fragments and abandoned sketches, published without order, and perhaps only after his death.
73 Aristophan. Nubes, 547-8.
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Ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ καινὰς ἰδέας εἰσφέρων
σοφίζομαι,
Οὐδὲν ἀλλήλαισιν ὁμοίας, καὶ πάσας δεξιάς. |
Opinions of Schleiermacher, tending to show this.
It may appear strange, but it is true, that Schleiermacher, the leading champion of Plato’s central purpose and systematic unity from the beginning, lays down a doctrine to the same effect. He says, “Truly, nothing can be more preposterous, than when people demand that all the works even of a great master shall be of equal perfection — or that such as are not equal, shall be regarded as not composed by him”. Zeller expresses himself in the same manner, and with as little reserve.74 These eminent critics here proclaim a general rule which neither they nor others follow out.
74 Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Menon, vol. iii. p. 337. “Und wahrlich, nichts ist wohl wunderlicher, als wenn man verlangt, dass alle Werke auch eines grossen Meisters von gleicher Volkommenheit seyn sollten — oder die es nicht sind, soll er nicht verfertigt haben.”
Compare Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., vol. ii. p. 322, ed. 2nd.
It is to be remembered that this opinion of Schleiermacher refers only to completed works of the same master. You are not authorised in rejecting any completed work as spurious, on the ground that it is not equal in merit to some other. Still less, then, are you authorised in rejecting, on the like ground, an uncompleted work — a professed fragment, or a preliminary sketch. Of this nature are several of the minor items in the Thrasyllean canon.
M. Boeckh, in his Commentary on the dialogue called Minos, has assigned the reasons which induce him to throw out that dialogue, together with the Hipparchus, from the genuine works of Plato (and farther to consider both of them, and the pseudo-Platonic dialogues De Justo and De Virtute, as works of Σίμων ὁ σκυτεύς: with this latter hypothesis I have here no concern). He admits fully that the Minos is of the Platonic age and irreproachable in style — “veteris esse et Attici scriptoris, probus sermo, antiqui mores totus denique character, spondent” (p. 32). Next, he not only admits that it is like Plato, but urges the too great likeness to Plato as one of the points of his case. He says that it is a bad, stupid, and unskilful imitation of different Platonic dialogues: “Pergamus ad alteram partem nostræ argumentationis, eamque etiam firmiorem, de nimiâ similitudine Platonicorum aliquot locorum. Nam de hoc quidem conveniet inter omnes doctos et indoctos, Platonem se ipsum haud posse imitari: ni forté quis dubitet de sanâ ejus mente” (p. 23). In the sense which Boeckh intends, I agree that Plato did not imitate himself: in another sense, I think that he did. I mean that his consummate compositions were preceded by shorter, partial, incomplete sketches, which he afterwards worked up, improved, and re-modelled. I do not understand how Plato could have composed such works as Republic, Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposion, Phædrus, Phædon, &c., without having before him many of these preparatory sketches. That some of these sketches should have been preserved is what we might naturally expect; and I believe Minos and Hipparchus to be among them. I do not wonder that they are of inferior merit. One point on which Boeckh (pp. 7, 8) contends that Hipparchus and Minos are unlike to Plato is, that the collocutor with Sokrates is anonymous. But we find anonymous talkers in the Protagoras, Sophistês, Politikus, and Leges.
I find elsewhere in Schleiermacher, another opinion, not less important, in reference to disallowance of dialogues, on purely internal grounds. Take the Gorgias and the Protagoras: both these two dialogues are among the most renowned of the catalogue: both have escaped all suspicion as to legitimacy, even from Ast and Socher, the two boldest of all disfranchising critics. In the Protagoras, Sokrates maintains an elaborate argument to prove, against the unwilling Protagoras, that the Good is identical with the Pleasurable, and the Evil identical with the Painful — in the Gorgias, Sokrates holds an argument equally elaborate, to show that Good is essentially different from Pleasurable, Evil from Painful. What the one affirms, the other denies. Moreover, Schleiermacher himself characterises the thesis vindicated by Sokrates in the Protagoras, as “entirely un-Sokratic and un-Platonic”.75 If internal grounds of repudiation are held to be available against the Thrasyllean canon, how can such grounds exist in greater force than those which are here admitted to bear against the Protagoras — That it exhibits Sokrates as contradicting the Sokrates of the Gorgias — That it exhibits him farther as advancing and proving, at great length, a thesis “entirely un-Sokratic and un-Platonic”? Since the critics all concur in disregarding these internal objections, as insufficient to raise even a suspicion against the Protagoras, I cannot concur with them when they urge the like objections as valid and irresistible against other dialogues.
75 Schleiermacher, Einl. zum Protag. vol. i. p. 232. “Jene ganz unsokratische und unplatonische Ansicht, dass das Gute nichts anderes ist als das Angenehme.”
So also, in the Parmenides, we find a host of unsolved objections against the doctrine of Ideas; upon which in other dialogues Plato so emphatically insists. Accordingly, Socher, resting upon this discrepancy as an “internal ground,” declares the Parmenides not to be the work of Plato. But the other critics refuse to go along with this inference. I think they are right in so refusing. But this only shows how little such internal grounds are to be trusted, as evidence to prove spuriousness.
I may add, as farther illustrating this point, that there are few dialogues in the list against which stronger objections on internal grounds can be brought, than Leges and Menexenus. Yet both of them stand authenticated, beyond all reasonable dispute, as genuine works of Plato, not merely by the Canon of Thrasyllus, but also by the testimony of Aristotle.76
76 See Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 384: and still more, Zeller, Plat. Studien, pp. 1-131, Tübingen, 1839. In that treatise, where Zeller has set forth powerfully the grounds for denying the genuineness of the Leges, he relied so much upon the strength of this negative case, as to discredit the direct testimony of Aristotle affirming the Leges to be genuine. In his Phil. d. Griech. Zeller altered this opinion, and admitted the Leges to be genuine. But Strümpell adheres to the earlier opinion given by Zeller, and maintains that the partial recantation is noway justified. (Gesch. d. Prakt. Phil. d. Griech. p. 457.)
Suckow mentions (Form der Plat. Schriften, 1855, p. 135) that Zeller has in a subsequent work reverted to his former opinion, denying the genuineness of the Leges. Suckow himself denies it also; relying not merely on the internal objections against it, but also on a passage of Isokrates (ad Philippum, p. 84), which he considers to sanction his opinion, but which (in my judgment) entirely fails to bear him out.
Suckow attempts to show (p. 55), and Ueberweg partly countenances the same opinion, that the two passages in which Aristotle alludes to the Menexenus (Rhet. i. 9, 30; iii. 14, 11) do not prove that he (Aristotle) considered it as a work of Plato, because he mentions the name of Sokrates only, and not that of Plato. But this is to require from a witness such precise specification as we cannot reasonably expect. Aristotle, alluding to the Menexenus, says, Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ: just as, in alluding to the Gorgias in another place (Sophist. Elench. 12, p. 173), he says, Καλλικλῆς ἐν τῷ Γοργίᾳ: and again, in alluding to the Phædon, ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης (De Gen. et Corrupt. ii. 9, p. 335): not to mention his allusions in the Politica to the Platonic Republic, under the name of Sokrates. No instance can be produced in which Aristotle cites any Sokratic dialogue, composed by Antisthenes, Æschines, &c., or any other of the Sokratic companions except Plato. And when we read in Aristotle’s Politica (ii. 3, 3) the striking compliment paid — Τὸ μὲν οὖν περιττὸν ἔχουσι πάντες οἱ τοῦ Σωκράτους λόγοι, καὶ τὸ κομψόν, καὶ τὸ καινότομον, καὶ τὸ ζητητικόν· καλῶς δὲ πάντα ἴσως χαλεπόν — we cannot surely imagine that he intends to designate any other dialogues than those composed by Plato.
Any true theory of Plato must recognise all his varieties, and must be based upon all the works in the Canon, not upon some to the exclusion of the rest.
While adhering therefore to the Canon of Thrasyllus, I do not think myself obliged to make out that Plato is either like to himself, or equal to himself, or consistent with himself, throughout all the dialogues included therein, and throughout the period of fifty years during which these dialogues were composed. Plato is to be found in all and each of the dialogues, not in an imaginary type abstracted from some to the exclusion of the rest. The critics reverence so much this type of their own creation, that they insist on bringing out a result consistent with it, either by interpretation specially contrived, or by repudiating what will not harmonise. Such sacrifice of the inherent diversity, and separate individuality, of the dialogues, to the maintenance of a supposed unity of type, style, or purpose, appears to me an error. In fact,77 there exists, for us, no personal Plato any more than there is a personal Shakespeare. Plato (except in the Epistolæ) never appears before us, nor gives us any opinion as his own: he is the unseen prompter of different characters who converse aloud in a number of distinct dramas — each drama a separate work, manifesting its own point of view, affirmative or negative, consistent or inconsistent with the others, as the case may be. In so far as I venture to present a general view of one who keeps constantly in the dark — who delights to dive, and hide himself, not less difficult to catch than the supposed Sophist in his own dialogue called Sophistês — I shall consider it as subordinate to the dialogues, each and all: and above all, it must be such as to include and acknowledge not merely diversities, but also inconsistencies and contradictions.78
77 The only manifestation of the personal Plato is in the Epistolæ. I have already said that I accept these as genuine, though most critics do not. I consider them valuable illustrations of his character, as far as they go. They are all written after he was more than sixty years of age. And most of them relate to his relations with Dionysius the younger, with Dion, and with Sicilian affairs generally. This was a peculiar and outlying phase of Plato’s life, during which (through the instigation of Dion, and at the sacrifice of his own peace of mind) he became involved in the world of political action: he had to deal with real persons, passions, and interests — with the feeble character, literary velleities, and jealous apprehensions of Dionysius — the reforming vehemence and unpopular harshness of Dion — the courtiers, the soldiers, and the people of Syracuse, all moved by different passions of which he had had no practical experience. It could not be expected that, amidst such turbulent elements, Plato as an adviser could effect much: yet I do not think that he turned his chances, doubtful as they were, to the best account. I have endeavoured to show this in the tenth volume of my History of Greece, c. 84. But at all events, these operations lay apart from Plato’s true world — the speculation, dialectic, and lectures of the Academy at Athens. The Epistolæ, however, present some instructive points, bearing upon Plato’s opinions about writing as a medium of philosophical communication and instruction to learners, which I shall notice in the suitable place.
78 I transcribe from the instructive work of M. Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’Averroïsme, a passage in which he deprecates the proceeding of critics who presume uniform consistency throughout the works of Aristotle, and make out their theory partly by forcible exegesis, partly by setting aside as spurious all those compositions which oppose them. The remark applies more forcibly to the dialogues or Plato, who is much less systematic than Aristotle:—
“On a combattu l’interprétation d’Ibn-Rosehd (Averroès), et soutenu que l’intellect actif n’est pour Aristote qu’une faculté de l’ame. L’intellect passif n’est alors que la faculté de recevoir les φαντάσματα: l’intellect actif n’est que l’induction s’exerçant sur les φαντάσματα et en tirant les idées générales. Ainsi l’on fait concorder la théorie exposée dans le troisième livre du Traité de l’Ame, avec celle des Seconds Analytiques, où Aristote semble réduire le rôle de la raison à l’induction généralisant les faits de la sensation. Certes, je ne me dissimule pas qu’Aristote paraît souvent envisager le νοῦς comme personnel à l’homme. Son attention constante à repéter que l’intellect est identique à l’intelligible, que l’intellect passe à l’acte quand il devient l’objet qu’il pense, est difficile à concilier avec l’hypothèse d’un intellect séparé de l’homme. Mais il est dangereux de faire ainsi coincider de force les différents aperçus des anciens. Les anciens philosophaient souvent sans se limiter dans un système, traitant le même sujet selon les points de vue qui s’offraient à eux, ou qui leur étaient offerts par les écoles antérieures, sans s’inquiéter des dissonances qui pouvaient exister entre ces divers tronçons de théorie. Il est puéril de chercher à les mettre d’accord avec eux-mêmes, quand eux-mêmes s’en sont peu souciés. Autant vaudrait, comme certains critiques Allemands, déclarer interpolés tous les passages que l’on ne peut concilier avec les autres. Ainsi, la théorie des Seconds Analytiques et celles du troisième livre de l’Ame, sans se contredire expressément, représentent deux aperçus profondément distincts et d’origine différente, sur le fait de l’intelligence.” (Averroès et l’Averroïsme, p. 96-98, Paris, 1852.)
There is also in Strümpell (Gesch. der Prakt. Phil. der Griech. vor Aristot. p. 200) a good passage to the same purpose as the above from M. Renan: disapproving this presumption, — that the doctrines of every ancient philosopher must of course be systematic and coherent with each other — as “a phantom of modern times”: and pointing out that both Plato and Aristotle founded their philosophy, not upon any one governing ἀρχὴ alone, from which exclusively consequences are deduced, but upon several distinct, co-ordinate, independent, points of view: each of which is by turns followed out, not always consistently with the others.
Variety and abundance visible in Plato’s writings.
On looking through the collection of works enumerated in the Thrasyllean Canon, the first impression made upon us respecting the author is, that which is expressed in the epithets applied to him by Cicero — “varius et multiplex et copiosus”. Such epithets bring before us the variety in Plato’s points of view and methods of handling — the multiplicity of the topics discussed — the abundance of the premisses and illustrations suggested:1 comparison being taken with other literary productions of the same age. It is scarcely possible to find any one predicate truly applicable to all of Plato’s works. Every predicate is probably true in regard to some:—none in regard to all.
1 The rhetor Aristeides, comparing Plato with Æschines (i.e. Æschines Socraticus, disciple of Sokrates also), remarks that Æschines was more likely to report what Sokrates really said, from being inferior in productive imagination. Plato (as he truly says Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 295, Dindorf) τῆς φύσεως χρῆται περιουσίᾳ, &c.
Plato both sceptical and dogmatical.
Several critics of antiquity considered Plato as essentially a sceptic — that is, a Searcher or Enquirer, not reaching any assured or proved result. They denied to him the character of a dogmatist: they maintained that he neither established nor enforced any affirmative doctrines.2 This latter statement is carried too far. Plato is sceptical in some dialogues, dogmatical in others. And the catalogue of Thrasyllus shows that the sceptical dialogues (Dialogues of Search or Investigation) are more numerous than the dogmatical (Dialogues of Exposition) — as they are also, speaking generally, more animated and interesting.
2 Diogen. Laert. iii. 52. Prolegom. Platon. Philosoph. c. 10, vol. vi. 205, of K. F. Hermann’s edition of Plato.
Poetical vein predominant in some compositions, but not in all.
Again, Aristotle declared the writing of Plato to be something between poetry and prose, and even the philosophical doctrine of Plato respecting Ideas, to derive all its apparent plausibility from poetic metaphors. The affirmation is true, up to a certain point. Many of the dialogues display an exuberant vein of poetry, which was declared — not by Aristotle alone, but by many other critics contemporary with Plato — to be often misplaced and excessive — and which appeared the more striking because the dialogues composed by the other Sokratic companions were all of them plain and unadorned.3 The various mythes, in the Phædrus and elsewhere, are announced expressly as soaring above the conditions of truth and logical appreciation. Moreover, we find occasionally an amount of dramatic vivacity, and of artistic antithesis between the speakers introduced, which might have enabled Plato, had he composed for the drama as a profession, to contend with success for the prizes at the Dionysiac festivals. But here again, though this is true of several dialogues, it is not true of others. In the Parmenidês, Timæus, and the Leges, such elements will be looked for in vain. In the Timæus, they are exchanged for a professed cosmical system, including much mystic and oracular affirmation, without proof to support it, and without opponents to test it: in the Leges, for ethical sermons, and religious fulminations, proclaimed by a dictatorial authority.
3 See Dionys. Hal. Epist. ad Cn. Pomp. 756, De Adm. Vi Dic. Dem. 956, where he recognises the contrast between Plato and τὸ Σωκρατικὸν διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν. His expression is remarkable: Ταῦτα γὰρ οἵ τε κατ’ αὐτὸν γενόμενοι πάντες ἐπιτιμῶσιν ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα οὐδὲν δεῖ με λέγειν. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 761; also 757. See also Diog. L. iii. 37; Aristotel. Metaph. A. 991, a. 22.
Cicero and Quintilian say the same about Plato’s style: “Multum supra prosam orationem, et quam pedestrem Græci vocant, surgit: ut mihi non hominis ingenio, sed quodam Delphico videatur oraculo instinctus”. Quintil. x. 1, 81. Cicero, Orator, c. 20. Lucian, Piscator, c. 22.
Sextus Empiricus designates the same tendency under the words τὴν Πλάτωνος ἀνειδωλοποίησιν. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. 189.
The Greek rhetors of the Augustan age — Dionysius of Halikarnassus and Kækilius of Kalaktê — not only blamed the style of Plato for excessive, overstrained, and misplaced metaphor, but Kækilius goes so far as to declare a decided preference for Lysias over Plato. (Dionys. Hal. De Vi Demosth. pp. 1025-1037, De Comp. Verb. p. 196 R; Longinus, De Sublimitat. c. 32.) The number of critics who censured the manner and doctrine of Plato (critics both contemporary with him and subsequent) was considerable (Dionys. H. Ep. ad Pomp. p. 757). Dionysius and the critics of his age had before their eyes the contrast of the Asiatic style of rhetoric, prevalent in their time, with the Attic style represented by Demosthenes and Lysias. They wished to uphold the force and simplicity of the Attic, against the tumid, wordy, pretensive Asiatic: and they considered the Phædrus, with other compositions of Plato, as falling under the same censure with the Asiatic. See Theoph. Burckhardt, Cæcili Rhet. Frag., Berlin, 1863, p. 15.
Form of dialogue — universal to this extent, that Plato never speaks in his own name.
One feature there is, which is declared by Schleiermacher and others to be essential to all the works of Plato — the form of dialogue. Here Schleiermacher’s assertion, literally taken, is incontestable. Plato always puts his thoughts into the mouth of some spokesman: he never speaks in his own name. All the works of Plato which we possess (excepting the Epistles, and the Apology, which last I consider to be a report of what Sokrates himself said) are dialogues. But under this same name, many different realities are found to be contained. In the Timæus and Kritias the dialogue is simply introductory to a continuous exposition — in the Menexenus, to a rhetorical discourse: while in the Leges, and even in Sophistês, Politikus, and others, it includes no antithesis nor interchange between two independent minds, but is simply a didactic lecture, put into interrogatory form, and broken into fragments small enough for the listener to swallow at once: he by his answer acknowledging the receipt. If therefore the affirmation of Schleiermacher is intended to apply to all the Platonic compositions, we must confine it to the form, without including the spirit, of dialogue.
No one common characteristic pervading all Plato’s works.
It is in truth scarcely possible to resolve all the diverse manifestations of the Platonic mind into one higher unity; or to predicate, about Plato as an intellectual person, anything which shall be applicable at once to the Protagoras, Gorgias, Parmenidês, Phædrus, Symposion, Philêbus, Phædon, Republic, Timæus, and Leges. Plato was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and inquisitor, mathematician, philosopher, poet (erotic as well as satirical), rhetor, artist — all in one:4 or at least, all in succession, throughout the fifty years of his philosophical life. At one time his exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, manifesting itself in a string of ingenious doubts and unsolved contradictions: at another time, he is full of theological antipathy against those who libel Helios and Selênê, or who deny the universal providence of the Gods: here, we have unqualified confessions of ignorance, and protestations against the false persuasion of knowledge, as alike widespread and deplorable — there, we find a description of the process of building up the Kosmos from the beginning, as if the author had been privy to the inmost purposes of the Demiurgus. In one dialogue the erotic fever is in the ascendant, distributed between beautiful youths and philosophical concepts, and confounded with a religious inspiration and furor which supersedes and transcends human sobriety (Phædrus): in another, all vehement impulses of the soul are stigmatised and repudiated, no honourable scope being left for anything but the calm and passionless Nous (Philêbus, Phædon). Satire is exchanged for dithyramb, and mythe, and one ethical point of view for another (Protagoras, Gorgias). The all-sufficient dramatising power of the master gives full effect to each of these multifarious tendencies. On the whole — to use a comparison of Plato himself5 — the Platonic sum total somewhat resembles those fanciful combinations of animals imagined in the Hellenic mythology — an aggregate of distinct and disparate individualities, which look like one because they are packed in the same external wrapper.
4 Dikæarchus affirmed that Plato was a compound of Sokrates with Pythagoras. Plutarch calls him also a compound of Sokrates with Lykurgus. (Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 2, p. 718 B.)
Nemesius the Platonist (Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiv. 5-7-8) repeats the saying of Dikæarchus, and describes Plato as midway between Pythagoras and Sokrates; μεσεύων Πυθαγόρου καὶ Σωκράτους. No three persons could be more disparate than Lykurgus, Pythagoras, and Sokrates. But there are besides various other attributes of Plato, which are not included under either of the heads of this tripartite character.
The Stoic philosopher Sphærus composed a work in three books — Περὶ Λυκούργου καὶ Σωκράτους — (Diog. La. vii. 178). He probably compared therein the Platonic Republic with the Spartan constitution and discipline.