69 Seneca, Epistol.
About this disposition, manifested by many philosophers, and in a particular manner by Plato, to “embrace logical phantoms as real causes,” I transcribe a good passage from Malebranche.
“Je me sens encore extrêmement porté à dire que cette colonne est dure par sa nature; ou bien que les petits liens dont sont composés les corps durs, sont des atômes, dont les parties ne se peuvent diviser, comme étant les parties essentieles et dernières des corps — et qui sont essentiellement crochues ou branchues.
Mais je reconnois franchement, que ce n’est point expliquer la difficulté; et que, quittant les préoccupations et les illusions de mes sens, j’aurais tort de recourir à une forme abstraite, et d’embrasser un fantôme de logique pour la cause que je cherche. Je veux dire, que j’aurois tort de conçevoir, comme quelque chose de réel et de distinct, l’idée vague de nature et d’essence, qui n’exprime que ce que l’on sait: et de prendre ainsi une forme abstraite et universelle, comme une cause physique d’un effet très réel. Car il y a deux choses dont je ne saurais trop défier. La première est, l’impression de mes sens: et l’autre est, la facilité que j’ai de prendre les natures abstraites et les idées générales de logique, pour celles qui sont réelles et particulières: et je me souviens d’avoir été plusieurs fois séduit par ces deux principes d’erreur.” (Malebranche — Recherche de la Vérité, vol. iii., liv. vi., ch. 8, p. 245, ed. 1772.)
The foregoing picture given by Sokrates of the wanderings of his mind (τὰς ἐμὰς πλάνας) in search of Causes, is interesting, not only in reference to the Platonic age, but also to the process of speculation generally. Almost every one talks of a Cause as a word of the clearest meaning, familiar and understood by all hearers. There are many who represent the Idea of Cause as simple, intuitive, self-originated, universal; one and the same in all minds. These philosophers consider the maxim that every phenomenon must have a Cause — as self-evident, known à priori apart from experience: as something which no one can help believing as soon as it is stated to him.70 The gropings of Sokrates are among the numerous facts which go to refute such a theory: or at least to show in what sense alone it can be partially admitted. There is no fixed, positive, universal Idea, corresponding to the word Cause. There is a wide divergence, as to the question what a Cause really is, between different ages of the same man (exemplified in the case of Sokrates): much more between different philosophers at one time and another. Plato complains of Anaxagoras and other philosophers for assigning as Causes that which did not truly deserve the name: Aristotle also blames the defective conceptions of his predecessors (Plato included) on the same subject. If there be an intuitive idea corresponding to the word Cause, it must be a different intuition in Plato and Aristotle — in Plato himself at one age and at another age: in other philosophers, different from both and from each other. The word is equivocal — πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον, in Aristotelian phrase — men use it familiarly, but vary much in the thing signified. That is a Cause, to each man, which gives satisfaction to the inquisitive feelings — curiosity, anxious perplexity, speculative embarrassment of his own mind. Now doubtless these inquisitive feelings are natural and widespread: they are emotions of our nature, which men seek (in some cases) to appease by some satisfactory hypothesis. That answer which affords satisfaction, looked at in one of its aspects, is called Cause; Beginning or Principle — Element — represent other aspects of the same Quæsitum:—
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“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile Fatum Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari,” |
is the exclamation of that sentiment of wonder and uneasiness out of which, according to Plato and Aristotle, philosophy springs.71 But though the appetite or craving is common, in greater or less degree, to most persons — the nourishment calculated to allay it is by no means the same to all. Good (says Aristotle) is that which all men desire:72 but all men do not agree in their judgment, what Good is. The point of communion between mankind is here emotional rather than intellectual: in the painful feeling of difficulty to be solved, not in the manner of conceiving what the difficulty is, nor in the direction where solution is to be sought, nor in the solution itself when suggested.73
70 Dugald Stewart, Elem. Philos. Hum. Mind, vol. i. ch. 1, sect. 2, pp. 98-99, ed. Hamilton, also note c same volume.
“Several modern philosophers (especially Dr. Reid, On the Intell. Powers) have been at pains to illustrate that law of our nature which leads us to refer every change we perceive in the universe to the operation of an efficient cause. This reference is not the result of reasoning, but necessarily accompanies the perception, so as to render it impossible for us to see the change, without feeling a conviction of the operation of some cause by which it is produced; much in the same manner in which we find it impossible to conceive a sensation, without being impressed with a belief of the existence of a sentient being. Hence I conceive it is that when we see two events constantly conjoined, we are led to associate the idea of causation or efficiency with the former, and to refer to it that power or energy by which the change is produced; in consequence of which association we come to consider philosophy as the knowledge of efficient causes, and lose sight of the operation of mind in producing the phenomena of nature. It is by an association somewhat similar that we connect our sensations of colour with the primary qualities of body. A moment’s reflection must satisfy any one that the sensation of colour can only reside in a mind.… In the same way we are led to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of power, force, energy, causation, which are all attributes of mind, and can exist in a mind only.”
71 Virgil, Georg. ii. 490-92. Compare Lucretius, vi. 50-65, and the letter of Epikurus to Herodotus, p. 25, ed. Orelli. Plato, Theætêt. p. 155 D. μάλα γὰρ φιλοσόφου τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, τὸ θαυμάζειν· οὐ γὰρ ἀρχὴ ἄλλη φιλοσοφίας, ἢ αὕτη:— Aristotel. Metaphys. A. p. 982, b. 10-20. διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ νῦν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἠρξαντο φιλοσοφεῖν, ὁ δὲ ἀπορῶν καὶ θαυμάζων οἴεται ἀγνοεῖν.
72 Aristotel. Ethic. Nikom. i. 1. διὸ καλῶς ἀπεφῄναντο τἀγαθόν, οὖ πάντες ἐφίενται. Plato, Republ. vi. p. 505 E. Ὅ δὴ διώκει μὲν ἁπᾶσα ψυχὴ καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα πάντα πράττει, ἀπομαντευομένη τι εἶναι, ἀποροῦσα δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἔχουσα λαβεῖν ἱκανῶς τί ποτ’ ἐστίν, &c.
Seneca, Epistol. 118. “Bonum est, quod ad se impetum animi secundum naturam movet.”
73 Aristotle recognises the different nature of the difficulties and problems which present themselves to the speculative mind: he looks back upon the embarrassments of his predecessors as antiquated and even silly, Metaphysic. N. 1089, a. 2. Πολλὰ μὲν οὖν τὰ αἴτια τῆς ἐπὶ ταύτας τὰς αἰτίας ἐκτροπῆς, μάλιστα δὲ τὸ ἀπορῆσαι ἀρχαϊκῶς, which Alexander of Aphrodisias paraphrases by ἀρχαϊκῶς καὶ εὐηθῶς. Compare A 993, a. 15.
In another passage of the same book, Aristotle notes and characterises the emotion experienced by the mind in possessing what is regarded as truth — the mental satisfaction obtained when a difficulty is solved, 1090, a. 38. Οἱ δὲ χωριστὸν ποιοῦντες (τὸν ἀριθμόν), ὅτι ἐπὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν οὐκ ἔσται τὰ ἀξιώματα, ἀληθῆ δὲ τὰ λεγόμενα καὶ σαίνει τὴν ψυχήν, εἶναί τε ὑπολαμβάνουσι καὶ χωριστὰ εἶναι· ὁμοίως δὲ τὰ μεγέθη τὰ μαθηματικά.
The subjective origin of philosophy — the feelings which prompt to the theorising process, striking out different hypotheses and analogies — are well stated by Adam Smith, ‘History of Astronomy,’ sect. ii. and iii.
Dissension and perplexity on the question. — What is a cause? revealed by the picture of Sokrates — no intuition to guide him.
When Sokrates here tells us that as a young man he felt anxious curiosity to know what the cause of every phenomenon was, it is plain that at this time he did not know what he was looking for: that he proceeded only by successive steps of trial, doubt, discovered error, rejection: and that each trial was adapted to the then existing state of his own mind. The views of Anaxagoras he affirms to have presented themselves to him as a new revelation: he then came to believe that the only true Cause was, a cosmical reason and volition like to that of which he was conscious in himself. Yet he farther tells us, that others did not admit this Cause, but found other causes to satisfy them: that even Anaxagoras did not follow out his own general conception, but recognised Causes quite unconnected with it: lastly, that neither could he (Sokrates) trace out the conception for himself.74 He was driven to renounce it, and to turn to another sort of Cause — the hypothesis of self-existent Ideas, in which he then acquiesced. And this last hypothesis, again, was ultimately much modified in the mind of Plato himself, as we know from Aristotle. All this shows that the Idea of Cause — far from being one and the same to all, like the feeling of uneasiness which prompts the search for it — is complicated, diverse, relative, and modifiable.
74 The view of Cause, which Sokrates here declares himself to renounce from inability to pursue it, is substantially the same as what he lays down in the Philêbus, pp. 23 D, 27 A, 30 E.
In the Timæus Plato assigns to Timæus the task (to which Sokrates in the Phædon had confessed himself incompetent) of following into detail the schemes and proceedings of the Demiurgic or optimising Νοῦς. But he also assumes the εἴδη or Ideas as co-ordinate and essential conditions.
Different notions of Plato and Aristotle about causation, causes regular and irregular. Inductive theory of causation, elaborated in modern times.
The last among the various revolutions which Sokrates represents himself to have undergone — the transition from designing and volitional agency of the Kosmos conceived as an animated system, to the sovereignty of universal Ideas — is analogous to that transition which Auguste Comte considers to be the natural progress of the human mind: to explain phenomena at first by reference to some personal agency, and to pass from this mode of explanation to that by metaphysical abstractions. It is true that these are two distinct modes of conceiving Causation; and that in each of them the human mind, under different states of social and individual instruction, finds satisfaction. But each of the two theories admits of much diversity in the mode of conception. Plato seems to have first given prominence to these metaphysical causes; and Aristotle in this respect follows his example: though he greatly censures the incomplete and erroneous theories of Plato. It is remarkable that both these two philosophers recognised Causes irregular and unpredictable, as well as Causes regular and predictable. Neither of them included even the idea of regularity, as an essential part of the meaning of Cause.75 Lastly, there has been elaborated in modern times, owing to the great extension of inductive science, another theory of Causation, in which unconditional regularity is the essential constituent: recognising no true Causes except the phenomenal causes certified by experience, as interpreted inductively and deductively — the assemblage of phenomenal antecedents, uniform and unconditional, so far as they can be discovered and verified. Certain it is that these are the only causes obtainable by induction and experience: though many persons are not satisfied without looking elsewhere for transcendental or ontological causes of a totally different nature. All these theories imply — what Sokrates announces in the passage just cited — the deep-seated influence of speculative curiosity, or the thirst for finding the Why of things and events, as a feeling of the human mind: but all of them indicate the discrepant answers with which, in different enquirers, this feeling is satisfied, though under the same equivocal name Cause. And it would have been a proceeding worthy of Plato’s dialectic, if he had applied to the word Cause the same cross-examining analysis which we have seen him applying to the equally familiar words — Virtue — Courage — Temperance — Friendship, &c. “First, let us settle what a Cause really is: then, and not till then, can we succeed in ulterior enquiries respecting it.”76
75 Monboddo, Ancient Metaphysics, B. 1. ch. iv. p. 32. “Plato appears to have been the first of the Ionic School that introduced formal causes into natural philosophy. These he called Ideas, and made the principles of all things. And the reason why he insists so much upon this kind of cause, and so little upon the other three, is given us by Aristotle in the end of his first book of Metaphysics, viz., that he studied mathematics too much, and instead of using them as the handmaid of philosophy, made them philosophy itself.… Plato, however, in the Phædon says a good deal about final causes; but in the system of natural philosophy which is in the Timæus, he says very little of it.”
I have already observed that Plato in the Timæus (48 A) recognises erratic or irregular Causation — ἡ πλανωμένη αἰτία. Aristotle recognises Αἰτία among the equivocal words πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα; and he enumerates Τύχη and Αὐτόματον — irregular causes or causes by accident — among them (Physic. ii. 195-198; Metaphys. K. 1065, a.) Schwegler, ad Aristot. Metaphys. vi. 4, 3, “Das Zufällige ist ein nothwendiges Element alles Geschehens”. Alexander of Aphrodisias, the best of the Aristotelian commentators, is at pains to defend this view of Τύχη — Causation by accident, or irregular.
Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (ii. 80-81, p. 188, Schneider), notices the labour and prolixity with which the commentators before him set out the different varieties of Cause; distinguishing sixty-four according to Plato, and forty-eight according to Aristotle. Proklus adverts also (ad Timæum, iii. p. 176) to an animated controversy raised by Theophrastus against Plato, about Causes and the speculations thereupon.
An enumeration, though very incomplete, of the different meanings assigned to the word Cause, may be seen in Professor Fleming’s Vocabulary of Philosophy.
76 See Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy, Appendix, p. 585. The debates about what was meant in philosophy by the word Cause are certainly older than Plato. We read that it was discussed among the philosophers who frequented the house of Perikles; and that that eminent statesman was ridiculed by his dissolute son Xanthippus for taking part in such useless refinements (Plutarch, Perikles, c. 36). But the Platonic dialogues are the oldest compositions in which any attempts to analyse the meaning of the word are preserved to us.
Αἴτιαι, Ἀρχαί, Στοιχεῖα (Aristot. Metaph. Δ.), were the main objects of search with the ancient speculative philosophers. While all of them set to themselves the same problem, each of them hit upon a different solution. That which gave mental satisfaction to one, appeared unsatisfactory and even inadmissible to the rest. The first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica gives an instructive view of this discrepancy. His own analysis of Cause will come before us hereafter. Compare the long discussions on the subject in Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhon. Hypo. iii. 13-30; and adv. Mathemat. ix. 195-250. The discrepancy was so great among the dogmatical philosophers, that he pronounces the reality of the causal sequence to be indeterminable — ὅσον μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπὸ τῶν δογματικῶν, οὐδ’ ἂν ἐννοῆσαί τις τὸ αἴτιον δύναιτο, εἴ γε πρὸς τῷ διαφώνους καὶ ἀλλοκότους (ἀποδιδόναι) ἐννοίας τοῦ αἰτίου ἔτι καὶ τὴν ὑπόστασιν αὐτοῦ πεποιήκασιν ἀνεύρετον διὰ τὴν περὶ αὐτὸ διαφωνίαν. Seneca (Epist. 65) blends together the Platonic and the Aristotelian views, when he ascribes to Plato a quintuple variety of Causa.
The quadruple variety of Causation established by Aristotle governed the speculations of philosophers during the middle ages. But since the decline of the Aristotelian philosophy, there are few subjects which have been more keenly debated among metaphysicians than the Idea of Cause. It is one of the principal points of divergence among the different schools of philosophy now existing. A volume, and a very instructive volume, might be filled with the enumeration and contrast of the different theories on the subject. Upon the view which a man takes on this point will depend mainly the scope or purpose which he sets before him in philosophy. Many seek the solution of their problem in transcendental, ontological, extra-phenomenal causes, lying apart from and above the world of fact and experience; Reid and Stewart, while acknowledging the existence of such causes as the true efficient causes, consider them as being out of the reach of human knowledge; others recognise no true cause except personal, quasi-human, voluntary, agency, grounded on the type of human volition. Others, again, with whom my own opinion coincides, following out the analysis of Hume and Brown, understand by causes nothing more than phenomenal antecedents constant and unconditional, ascertainable by experience and induction. See the copious and elaborate chapter on this subject in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s ‘System of Logic,’ Book iii. ch. 5, especially as enlarged in the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of that work, including the criticism on the opposite or volitional theory of Causation; also the work of Professor Bain, ‘The Emotions and the Will,’ pp. 472-584. The opposite view, in which Causes are treated as something essentially distinct from Laws, and as ultra-phenomenal, is set forth by Dr. Whewell, ‘Novum Organon Renovatum,’ ch. vii. p. 118 seq.
Last transition of the mind of Sokrates from things to words — to the adoption of the theory of ideas. Great multitude of ideas assumed, each fitting a certain number of particulars.
There is yet another point which deserves attention in this history given by Sokrates of the transitions of his own mind. His last transition is represented as one from things to words, that is, to general propositions:77 to the assumption in each case of an universal proposition or hypothesis calculated to fit that case. He does not seem to consider the optimistic doctrine, which he had before vainly endeavoured to follow out, as having been an hypothesis, or universal proposition assumed as true and as a principle from which to deduce consequences. Even if it were so, however, it was one and the same assumption intended to suit all cases: whereas the new doctrine to which he passed included many distinct assumptions, each adapted to a certain number of cases and not to the rest.78 He assumed an untold multitude of self-existent Ideas — The Self-Beautiful, Self-Just, Self-Great, Self-Equal, Self-Unequal, &c. — each of them adapted to a certain number of particular cases: the Self-Beautiful was assumed as the cause why all particular things were beautiful — as that, of which all and each of them partakes — and so of the rest.79 Plato then explains his procedure. He first deduced various consequences from this assumed hypothesis, and examined whether all of them were consistent or inconsistent with each other. If he detected inconsistencies (as e.g. in the last half of the Parmenidês), we must suppose (though Plato does not expressly say so) that he would reject or modify his fundamental assumption: if he found none, he would retain it. The point would have to be tried by dialectic debate with an opponent: the logical process of inference and counter-inference is here assumed to be trustworthy. But during this debate Plato would require his opponent to admit the truth of the fundamental hypothesis provisionally. If the opponent chose to impugn the latter, he must open a distinct debate on that express subject. Plato insists that the discussion of the consequences flowing from the hypothesis, shall be kept quite apart from the discussion on the credibility of the hypothesis itself. From the language employed, he seems to have had in view certain disputants known to him, by whom the two were so blended together as to produce much confusion in the reasoning.
77 Aristotle (Metaphysic. A. 987, b. 31, Θ. 1050, b. 35) calls the Platonici οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις: see the note of Bonitz.
78 Plato, Phædon, p. 100 A. ἀλλ’ οὖν δὴ ταύτῃ γε ὥρμησα, καὶ ὑποθέμενος ἑκάστοτε λόγον ὃν ἂν κρίνω ἐῤῥωμενέστατον εἶναι, ἃ μὲν ἂν μοι δοκῇ τούτῳ ξυμφωνεῖν, τίθημι ὡς ἀληθῆ ὄντα, καὶ περὶ αἰτίας καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων· ἃ δ’ ἂν μή, ὡς οὐκ ἀληθῆ.
79 Aristotle controverts this doctrine of Plato in a pointed manner, De Gen. et Corrupt. ii. 9, p. 335, b. 10, also Metaphys. A. 991, b. 3. The former passage is the most animated in point of expression, where Aristotle says — ὥσπερ ὁ ἐν τῷ Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς ἄλλοις ὡς οὐδὲν εἰρηκόσιν, ὑποτίθεται — which is very true about the Platonic dialogue Phædon, &c. But in both the two passages, Aristotle distinctly maintains that the Ideas cannot be Causes of any thing.
This is another illustration of what I have observed above, that the meaning of the word Cause has been always fluctuating and undetermined.
We see that, while Aristotle affirmed that the Ideas could not be Causes of anything, Plato here maintains that they are the only true Causes.
Ultimate appeal to hypothesis of extreme generality.
But if your opponent impugns the hypothesis itself, how are you to defend it? Plato here tells us: by means of some other hypothesis or assumption, yet more universal than itself. You must ascend upwards in the scale of generality, until you find an assumption suitable and sufficient.80
80 Plato, Phædon, p. 101 E.
We here see where it was that Plato looked for full, indisputable, self-recommending and self-assuring, certainty and truth. Among the most universal propositions. He states the matter here as if we were to provide defence for an hypothesis less universal by ascending to another hypothesis more universal. This is illustrated by what he says in the Timæus — Propositions are cognate with the matter which they affirm: those whose affirmation is purely intellectual, comprising only matter of the intelligible world, or of genuine Essence, are solid and inexpugnable: those which take in more or less of the sensible world, which is a mere copy of the intelligible exemplar, become less and less trustworthy — mere probabilities. Here we have the Platonic worship of the most universal propositions, as the only primary and evident truths.81 But in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, he delivers a precept somewhat different, requiring the philosopher not to rest in any hypothesis as an ultimatum, but to consider them all as stepping-stones for enabling him to ascend into a higher region, above all hypothesis — to the first principle of every thing: and he considers geometrical reasoning as defective because it takes its departure from hypothesis or assumptions of which no account is rendered.82 In the Republic he thus contemplates an intuition by the mind of some primary, clear, self-evident truth, above all hypotheses or assumptions even the most universal, and transmitting its own certainty to every thing which could be logically deduced from it: while in the Phædon, he does not recognise any thing higher or more certain than the most universal hypothesis — and he even presents the theory of self-existent Ideas as nothing more than an hypothesis, though a very satisfactory one. In the Republic, Plato has come to imagine the Idea of Good as distinguished from and illuminating all the other Ideas: in the Timæus, it seems personified in the Demiurgus; in the Phædon, that Idea of Good appears to be represented by the Nous or Reason of Anaxagoras. But Sokrates is unable to follow it out, so that it becomes included, without any pre-eminence, among the Ideas generally: all of them transcendental, co-ordinate, and primary sources of truth to the intelligent mind — yet each of them exercising a causative influence in its own department, and bestowing its own special character on various particulars.
81 Plato, Timæus, p. 29 B. ὧδε οὖν περί τε εἰκόνος καὶ τοῦ παραδείγματος διοριστέον, ὡς ἄρα τοὺς λόγους, ὧνπέρ εἰσιν ἐξηγηταί, τούτων αὐτῶν καὶ ξυγγενεῖς ὄντας. τοῦ μὲν οὖν μονίμου καὶ βεβαίου καὶ μετὰ νοῦ καταφανοῦς, μονίμους καὶ ἀμεταπτώτους … τοὺς δὲ τοῦ πρὸς μὲν ἐκεῖνο ἀπεικασθέντος, ὄντος δὲ εἰκόνος, εἰκότας ἀνὰ λόγον τε ἐκείνων ὄντας· ὅ, τιπερ πρὸς γένεσιν οὐσία, τοῦτο πρὸς πίστιν ἀληθεία.
82 Plato, Republic, vi. p. 511. τῶν ὑποθέσεων ἀνωτέρω ἐκβαίνειν .… τὸ ἕτερον τμῆμα τοῦ νοητοῦ, οὖ αὐτὸς ὁ λόγος ἄπτεται τῇ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι δυνάμει, τὰς ὑποθέσεις ποιούμενος οὐκ ἀρχὰς ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι ὑποθέσεις, οἷον ἐπιβάσεις τε καὶ ὁρμάς, ἵνα μέχρι τοῦ ἀνυποθέτου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν ἰών, ἁψάμενος αὐτῆς, πάλιν αὖ ἐχόμενος τῶν ἐκείνης ἐχομένων, οὕτως ἐπὶ τελευτὴν καταβαίνῃ, αἰσθητῷ παντάπασιν οὐδενὶ προσχρώμενος, ἀλλ’ εἴδεσιν αὐτοῖς δι’ αὐτῶν εἰς αὐτά, καὶ τελευτᾷ εἰς εἴδη. Compare vii. p. 533.
Plato’s demonstration of the immortality of the soul rests upon the assumption of the Platonic ideas. Reasoning to prove this.
It is from the assumption of these Ideas as eternal Essences, that Plato undertakes to demonstrate the immortality of the soul. One Idea or Form will not admit, but peremptorily excludes, the approach of that other Form which is opposite to it. Greatness will not receive the form of littleness: nor will the greatness which is in any particular subject receive the form of littleness. If the form of littleness be brought to bear, greatness will not stay to receive it, but will either retire or be destroyed. The same is true likewise respecting that which essentially has the form: thus fire has essentially the form of heat, and snow has essentially the form of cold. Accordingly fire, as it will not receive the form of cold, so neither will it receive snow: and snow, as it will not receive the form of heat, so neither will it receive fire. If fire comes, snow will either retire or will be destroyed. The Triad has always the Form of Oddness, and will never receive that of Evenness: the Dyad has always the Form of Evenness, and will never receive that of Oddness — upon the approach of this latter it will either disappear or will be destroyed: moreover the Dyad, while refusing to receive the Form of Oddness, will refuse also to receive that of the Triad, which always embodies that Form — although three is not in direct contrariety with two. If then we are asked, What is that, the presence of which makes a body hot? we need not confine ourselves to the answer — It is the Form of Heat — which, though correct, gives no new information: but we may farther say — It is Fire, which involves the Form of Heat. If we are asked, What is that, the presence of which makes a number odd, we shall not say — It is Oddness: but we shall say — It is the Triad or the Pentad — both of which involve Oddness.
The soul always brings life, and is essentially living. It cannot receive death: in other words, it is immortal.
In like manner, the question being asked, What is that, which, being in the body, will give it life? we must answer — It is the soul. The soul, when it lays hold of any body, always arrives bringing with it life. Now death is the contrary of life. Accordingly the soul, which always brings with it life, will never receive the contrary of life. In other words, it is deathless or immortal.83
83 Plato, Phædon, p. 105 C-E. Ἀποκρίνου δή, ᾧ ἂν τί ἐγγένηται σώματι, ζῶν ἔσται; Ὧι ἂν ψυχή, ἔφη. Οὐκοῦν ἀεὶ τοῦτο οὕτως ἔχει; Πῶς γὰρ οὐχί; ἦ δ’ ὅς. Ἡ ψυχὴ ἄρα ὅ, τι ἂν αὐτὴ κατάσχῃ, ἀεὶ ἥκει ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο φέρουσα ζωήν; Ἥκει μέντοι, ἔφη. Πότερον δ’ ἔστι τι ζωῇ ἐναντίον, ἢ οὐδέν; Ἔστιν, ἔφη. Τί; Θάνατος. οὐκοῦν ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ ἐναντίον ᾧ αὐτὴ ἐπιφέρει ἀεὶ οὐ μή ποτε δέξηται, ὡς ἐκ τῶν πρόσθεν ὡμολόγηται; Καὶ μάλα σφόδρα, ἔφη ὁ Κέβης.… Ὃ δ’ ἂν θάνατον μὴ δέχηται, τί καλοῦμεν; Ἀθάνατον, ἔφη. Ἀθάνατον ἄρα ἡ ψυχή; Ἀθάνατον.
Nemesius, the Christian bishop of Emesa, declares that the proofs given by Plato of the immortality of the soul are knotty and difficult to understand, such as even adepts in philosophical study can hardly follow. His own belief in it he rests upon the inspiration of the Christian Scriptures (Nemesius de Nat. Homin. c. 2. p. 55, ed. 1565).
The proof of immortality includes pre-existence as well as post-existence — animals as well as man — also the metempsychosis or translation of the soul from one body to another.
Such is the ground upon which Sokrates rests his belief in the immortality of the soul. The doctrine reposes, in Plato’s view, upon the assumption of eternal, self-existent, unchangeable, Ideas or Forms:84 upon the congeniality of nature, and inherent correlation, between these Ideas and the Soul: upon the fact, that the soul knows these Ideas, which knowledge must have been acquired in a prior state of existence: and upon the essential participation of the soul in the Idea of life, so that it cannot be conceived as without life, or as dead.85 The immortality of the soul is conceived as necessary and entire, including not merely post-existence, but also pre-existence. In fact the reference to an anterior time is more essential to Plato’s theory than that to a posterior time; because it is employed to explain the cognitions of the mind, and the identity of learning with reminiscence: while Simmias, who even at the close is not without reserve on the subject of the post-existence, proclaims an emphatic adhesion on that of the pre-existence.86 The proof, moreover, being founded in great part on the Idea of Life, embraces every thing living, and is common to animals87 (if not to plants) as well as to men: and the metempsychosis — or transition of souls not merely from one human body to another, but also from the human to the animal body, and vice versâ — is a portion of the Platonic creed.
84 Plato, Phædon, pp. 76 D-E, 100 B-C. It is remarkable that in the Republic also, Sokrates undertakes to demonstrate the immortality of the soul: and that in doing so he does not make any reference or allusion to the arguments used in the Phædon, but produces another argument totally distinct and novel: an argument which Meiners remarks truly to be quite peculiar to Plato, Republic, x. pp. 609 E, 611 C; Meiners, Geschichte der Wissenschaften, vol. ii. p. 780.
85 Zeller, Philosophie der Griech. Part ii. p. 267.
“Die Seele ist ihrem Begriffe nach dasjenige, zu dessen Wesen es gehört zu leben — sie kann also in keinem Augenblicke als nicht lebend gedacht werden: In diesem ontologischen Beweis für die Unsterblichkeit, laufen nicht bloss alle die einzelnen Beweise des Phædon zusammen, sondern derselbe wird auch schon im Phaedrus vorgetragen,” &c. Compare Phædrus, p. 245.
Hegel, in his Geschichte der Philosophie (Part ii. pp. 186-187-189, ed. 2), maintains that Plato did not conceive the soul as a separate thing or reality — that he did not mean to affirm, in the literal sense of the words, its separate existence either before or after the present life — that he did not descend to so crude a conception (zu dieser Rohheit herabzusinken) as to represent to himself the soul as a thing, or to enquire into its duration or continuance after the manner of a thing — that Plato understood the soul to exist essentially as the Universal Notion or Idea, the comprehensive aggregate of all other Ideas, in which sense he affirmed it to be immortal — that the descriptions which Plato gives of its condition, either before life or after death, are to be treated only as poetical metaphors. There is ingenuity in this view of Hegel, and many separate expressions of Plato receive light from it: but it appears to me to refine away too much. Plato had in his own mind and belief both the soul as a particular thing — and the soul as an universal. His language implies sometimes the one sometimes the other.
86 Plato, Phædon, pp. 92, 107 B.
87 See what Sokrates says about the swans, Phædon, p. 85 A-B.
After finishing his proof that the soul is immortal, Sokrates enters into a description, what will become of it after the death of the body. He describes a Νεκυία.
Having completed his demonstration of the immortality of the soul, Sokrates proceeds to give a sketch of the condition and treatment which it experiences after death. The Νεκυία here following is analogous, in general doctrinal scope, to those others which we read in the Republic and in the Gorgias: but all of them are different in particular incidents, illustrative circumstances, and scenery. The sentiment of belief in Plato’s mind attaches itself to general doctrines, which appear to him to possess an evidence independent of particulars. When he applies these doctrines to particulars, he makes little distinction between such as are true, or problematical, or fictitious: he varies his mythes at pleasure, provided that they serve the purpose of illustrating his general view. The mythe which we read in the Phædon includes a description of the Earth which to us appears altogether imaginative and poetical: yet it is hardly more so than several other current theories, proposed by various philosophers antecedent and contemporary, respecting Earth and Sea. Aristotle criticises the views expressed in the Phædon, as he criticises those of Demokritus and Empedokles.88 Each soul of a deceased person is conducted by his Genius to the proper place, and there receives sentence of condemnation to suffering, greater or less according to his conduct in life, in the deep chasm called Tartarus, and in the rivers of mud and fire, Styx, Kokytus, Pyriphlegethon.89 To those who have passed their lives in learning, and who have detached themselves as much as they possibly could from all pleasures and all pursuits connected with the body — in order to pursue wisdom and virtue — a full reward is given. They are emancipated from the obligation of entering another body, and are allowed to live ever afterwards disembodied in the pure regions of Ideas.90
88 Plato, Phædon, pp. 107-111. Olympiodorus pronounces the mythe to be a good imitation of the truth, Republ. x. 620 seq.; Gorgias, p. 520; Aristotle, Meteorol. ii. pp. 355-356. Compare also 356, b. 10, 357, a. 25, where he states and canvasses the doctrines of Demokritus and Empedokles; also 352, a. 35, about the ἀρχαῖοι θεόλογοι. He is rather more severe upon these others than upon Plato. He too considers, like Plato, that the amount of evidence which you ought to require for your belief depends upon the nature of the subject; and that there are various subjects on which you ought to believe on slighter evidence: see Metaphysic. A. 995, a. 2-16: Ethic. Nikom. i. 1, 1094, b. 12-14.
89 Plato, Phædon, pp. 111-112. Compare Eusebius, Præp. Ev. xiii. 13, and Arnobius adv. Gentes, ii. 14. Arnobius blames Plato for inconsistency in saying that the soul is immortal in its own nature, and yet that it suffers pain after death — “Rem inenodabilem suscipit (Plato) ut cum animas dicat immortales, perpetuas, et ex corporali soliditate privatas, puniri eas dicat tamen et doloris afficiat sensu. Quis autem hominum non videt quod sit immortale, quod simplex, nullum posse dolorem admittere; quod autem sentiat dolorem, immortalitatem habere non posse?”
90 Plato, Phædon, p. 114 C-E.
τοῦτων δὲ αὐτῶν οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι ἄνευ τε σωμάτων ζῶσι τὸ παράπαν εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον, &c.
Sokrates expects that his soul is going to the islands of the blest. Reply to Kriton about burying his body.
Such, or something like it, Sokrates confidently expects will be the fate awaiting himself.91 When asked by Kriton, among other questions, how he desired to be buried, he replies with a smile — “You may bury me as you choose, if you can only catch me. But you will not understand me when I tell you, that I, Sokrates, who am now speaking, shall not remain with you after having drunk the poison, but shall depart to some of the enjoyments of the blest. You must not talk about burying or burning Sokrates, as if I were suffering some terrible operation. Such language is inauspicious and depressing to our minds. Keep up your courage, and talk only of burying the body of Sokrates: conduct the burial as you think best and most decent.”92