1 Napoléon, qui de temps en temps, au milieu de sa fortune et de sa puissance, songeait à Robespierre et à sa triste fin — interrogeait un jour son archi-chancelier Cambacérès sur le neuf Thermidor. “C’est un procès jugé et non plaidé,” répondait Cambacérès, avec la finesse d’un jurisconsulte courtisan. — (Hippolyte Carnot — Notice sur Barère, p. 109; Paris, 1842.)

5 Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 11, 38.

3 F. A. Wolf, Vorrede, Plato, Sympos. p. vi.

4 A striking passage from Bentham illustrates very well both the Sokratic and the Platonic point of view. (Principles of Morals and Legislation, vol. ii. ch. xvi. p. 57, ed. 1823.)

8 The passage is a remarkable one, as marking both the effect produced on a Latin scholar by Hebrew studies, and the neglect into which even the greatest writers of classical antiquity had then fallen (about 400 A.D.).

6 Since the publication of the first edition of this work, there have appeared valuable commentaries on the philosophy of the late Sir William Hamilton, by Mr. John Stuart Mill, and Mr. Stirling and others. They have exposed inconsistencies, both grave and numerous, in some parts of Sir William Hamilton’s writings as compared with others. But no one has dreamt of drawing an inference from this fact, that one or other of the inconsistent trains of reasoning must be spurious, falsely ascribed to Sir William Hamilton.

2 Professor Ferrier, in his instructive volume, ‘The Institutes of Metaphysic,’ has some valuable remarks on the scope and purpose of Philosophy. I transcribe some of them, in abridgment.

7 Juvenal iii. 62:—

the universal, the all-comprehensive (τὸ περιέχον), the governing, the divine, the name or reason of Zeus, fire, the current of opposites, strife or war, destiny, justice, equitable measure, Time or the Succeeding,” &c. The most emphatic way in which this theory could be presented was, as embodied, in the coincidence or co-affirmation of contraries. Many of the dicta cited and preserved out of Herakleitus are of this paradoxical tenor.

Logical position of the Megaric philosophers erroneously described by historians of philosophy. Necessity of a complete collection of difficulties.

defends a theory the same as that of Aristippus, and defends it by an elaborate argument which silences the objections of the Sophist Protagoras; who at first will not admit the unqualified identity of the pleasurable, judiciously estimated and selected, with the good. The general and comprehensive manner in which Plato conceives and expounds the theory, is probably one evidence of his superior philosophical aptitude as compared with Aristippus and his other contemporaries. He enunciates, side by side, and with equal distinctness, the two conditions requisite for his theory of life. 1. The calculating or measuring art. 2. A description of the items to which alone such measurement must be applied — pleasures and pains. — These two together make the full theory. In other dialogues Plato insists equally upon the necessity of knowledge or calculating prudence: but then he is not equally distinct in specifying the items to which such prudence or calculation is to be applied. On the other hand, it is quite possible that Aristippus, in laying out the same theory, may have dwelt with peculiar emphasis upon the other element in the theory: i.e. that while expressly insisting upon pleasures and pains, as the only data to be compared, he may have tacitly assumed the comparing or calculating intelligence, as if it were understood by itself, and did not require to be formally proclaimed.

His doctrines respecting the human soul and human knowledge. All wisdom resided in the Universal Wisdom — individual Reason is worthless.

Last doctrine of Plato nearly the same as that of Eukleides.

Advice to Hieron by Simonides — that he should govern well, and thus make himself beloved by his subjects.

phrases, among which Fire stood prominent.

Pythagorean list of fundamental Contraries — Ten opposing pairs.

Theory of Anaxagoras compared with that of Empedokles.

reason tells us that they must be there. This physiological divination is interesting from its general approximation towards the results of modern analysis.

Diodôrus Kronus — his doctrine about τὸ δυνατόν.

Xenophon could not have chosen a Grecian despot to illustrate his theory of the happiness of governing willing subjects.

Long life, varied travels, and numerous compositions of Demokritus.

Doctrine of Herakleitus — perpetual process of generation and destruction — everything flows, nothing stands — transition of the elements into each other, backwards and forwards.

Constant friendship of Antisthenes with Sokrates — Xenophontic Symposion.

Ischomachus, hero of the Œkonomikus — ideal of an active citizen, cultivator, husband, house-master, &c.

Antisthenes took up Ethics principally, but with negative Logic intermingled.

Empedokles — his doctrine of the four elements, and two moving or restraining forces.

Zeno of Kitium in Cyprus.

The precepts and principles laid down by Sokrates were carried into fullest execution by the Cynics.

Cyropædia — blending of Spartan and Persian customs — Xenophon’s experience of Cyrus the Younger.

Mistake of supposing Zeno’s reductiones ad absurdum of an opponents doctrines to be generalisations of data gathered from experience.

self-existent, without beginning or end,

made known to us are Pleistanus, Menedêmus, Asklepiades. The second of the three acquired some reputation.

Potential as distinguished from the Actual — What it is.

Logical views of Antisthenes and Diogenes — they opposed the Platonic Ideas.

The early theorists were studied along with Plato and Aristotle, in the third and second centuries B.C.

Air was the primordial, universal element.

Influence exercised by Sokrates over his companions.

quiescent mass. The movement impressed was that of rotation, which first began on a small scale, then gradually extended itself around, becoming more efficacious as it extended, and still continuing to extend itself around more and more. Through the prodigious velocity of this rotation, a separation was effected of those things which had been hitherto undistinguishably huddled together.

Doctrines of Antisthenes about predication — he admits no other predication but identical.

Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus passed to the Stoics and Epikureans.

These early theorists are not known from their own writings, which have been lost. Importance of the information of Aristotle about them.

Parmenides recognises no truth, but more or less probability, in phenomenal explanations. — His physical and astronomical conjectures.

Fire, compressed the interior elements, squeezed the water out of the earth like perspiration from the living body, and thus formed the sea. The same rotation caused the earth to remain unmoved, by counterbalancing and resisting its downward pressure or gravity.

Date of Xenophon — probable year of his birth.

Consequences of their assumption of Entia Plura Discontinua. Reductiones ad absurdum.

we shall find them not inferior in ingenuity, and certainly more intelligible in their purpose. Zeno furnishes no positive support to the Parmenidean doctrine, but he makes out a good negative case against the counter-doctrine.

Hieron — Persons of the dialogue — Simonides and Hieron.

Pythagoras — his life and career — Pythagorean brotherhood, great political influence which it acquired among the Greco-Italian cities — incurred great enmity and was violently put down.

the one and only source of intelligence open to all waking men, the greater number of men could neither discern it for themselves, nor understand it without difficulty even when pointed out to them. Though awake, they were not less unconscious or forgetful of the process going on around them, than if they had been asleep.

Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus — Ethical, not transcendental.

Menedêmus disallowed all negative predication.

Conclusion of Diodôrus — defended by Hobbes — Explanation given by Hobbes.

Difficulty of understanding how the same predicate could belong to more than one subject.

Life and dicta of Aristippus — His type of character.

Doctrine of Relativity affirmed by the Kyrenaics, as well as by Protagoras.

prompting each of them to theorise in his own way on the best plan of life.

and animals only, but plants and other substances besides, perceived and knew in the same way. Everything possessed a certain measure of knowledge, though less in degree, than man, who was a more compound structure.

New character of Grecian philosophy — antithesis of affirmative and negative — proof and disproof.

Empedoklean predestined cycle of things — complete empire of Love — Sphærus — Empire of Enmity — disengagement or separation of the elements — astronomy and meteorology.

magnitude. Having magnitude, each thing has parts which also have magnitude: these parts are, by the hypothesis, essentially discontinuous, but this implies that they are kept apart from each other by other intervening parts — and these intervening parts must be again kept apart by others. Each body will thus contain in itself an infinite number of parts, each having magnitude. In other words, it will be infinitely great.

maintained that we could have no knowledge of anything but human sensations, affections, feelings, &c. (πάθη): that respecting the extrinsic, extra-sensational, absolute, objects or causes from whence these feelings proceeded, we could know nothing at all. Partly for this reason, they abstained from all attention to the study of nature — to astronomy and physics: partly also because they did not see any bearing of these subjects upon good and evil, or upon the conduct of life. They turned their attention mainly to ethics, partly also to logic as subsidiary to ethical reasoning.

ing the entire Kosmos or universe.

explain the variety of phenomena he makes reference to other physical agencies, as the case seems to require.

Motion is always present, past, and future.

Difference in the manner of stating the theory by the two.

Demokritean theory — Atoms — Plena and Vacua — Ens and Non-Ens.

Parmenidean ontology stands completely apart from phenomenology.

Differences of taste — how explained.

Difficulties which a Grecian philosopher had to overcome — prevalent view of Nature, established, impressive, and misleading.

followed the profession of a Sophist, receiving fees for his teaching: and his attachment to philosophy (both as contrasted with ignorance and as contrasted with other studies not philosophy) was proclaimed in the most emphatic language. It was better (he said) to be a beggar, than an uneducated man:

Written Sokratic Dialogues — their general character.

of lines.

His personal history — He consults Sokrates — takes the opinion of the Delphian oracle.

Aristippus acted conformably to the advice of Sokrates.

The Megarics shared the negative impulse with Sokrates and Plato.

the soul of a deceased friend or brother.

causes of irregularity, the co-operation or conflict of which gave the total manifestations of the actual universe. The principle of irregularity, or the Indeterminate, is sometimes described under the name of Matter,

Zeno of Elea — Melissus.

Sun and stars — not solid bodies but meteoric aggregations dissipated and renewed — Eclipses — ἐκπύρωσις, or destructions of the Kosmos by fire.

Scepticism of Xenophanes — complaint of philosophy as unsatisfactory.

They appoint all officers, and try judicially the cases shown up by the superintendents, or other accusers, of all youths or mature men who have failed in the requirements of the public discipline. The gravest derelictions they punish with death: where this is not called for, they put the offender out of his class, so that he remains degraded all his life.

Language held by Aristippus — his scheme of life.

looking at facts. All the theorists laboured under the common defect of a scanty and inaccurate experience: all of them were prompted by a vague but powerful emotion of curiosity to connect together the past and present of Nature by some threads intelligible and satisfactory to their own minds; each of them followed out some analogy of his own, such as seemed to carry with it a self-justifying plausibility; and each could find some phenomena which countenanced his own peculiar view. As far as we can judge, Leukippus and Demokritus greatly surpassed the others, partly in the pains which they took to elaborate their theory, partly in the number of facts which they brought into consistency with it. The loss of the voluminous writings of Demokritus is deeply to be regretted.

versy, with Plato; whose opinions he impugned in an express dialogue entitled Sathon. Plato on his side attacked the opinions of Antisthenes, and spoke contemptuously of his intelligence, yet without formally naming him. At least there are some criticisms in the Platonic dialogues (especially in the Sophistês, p. 251) which the commentators pronounce, on strong grounds, to be aimed at Antisthenes: who is also unfavourably criticised by Aristotle. We know but little of the points which Antisthenes took up against Plato and still less of the reasons which he urged in support of them. Both he and Diogenes, however, are said to have declared express war against the Platonic theory of self-existent Ideas. The functions of general Concepts and general propositions, together with the importance of defining general terms, had been forcibly insisted on in the colloquies of Sokrates; and his disciple Plato built upon this foundation the memorable hypothesis of an aggregate of eternal, substantive realities, called Ideas or Forms, existing separate from the objects of sense, yet affording a certain participation in themselves to those objects: not discernible by sense, but only by the Reason or understanding. These bold creations of the Platonic fancy were repudiated by Antisthenes and Diogenes: who are both said to have declared “We see Man, and we see Horse; but Manness and Horseness we do not see”. Whereunto Plato replied “You possess that eye by which Horse is seen: but you have not yet acquired that eye by which Horseness is seen”.

respecting ethics, he laid down affirmative propositions,

like manner, teach the arts both of dialectic attack and of dialectic defence.

All properties of objects, except weight and hardness, were phenomenal and relative to the observer. Sensation could give no knowledge of the real and absolute.

Anaximenes — adopted Air as ἀρχή — rise of substances out of it, by condensation and rarefaction.

Physiology of Empedokles — Procreation — Respiration — movement of the blood.

noticed the numerous shells found inland and on mountain tops, together with the prints of various fish which he had observed in the quarries of Syracuse, in the island of Paros, and elsewhere. From these facts he inferred that the earth had once been covered with water, and even that it would again be so covered at some future time, to the destruction of animal and human life.

Xenophon does not solve his own problem — The governing aptitude and popularity of Cyrus come from nature, not from education.

Megarics did not deny the distinctive character of the architect, as compared with the non-architect: but they defined more accurately in what it consisted, by restoring the omitted conditions. They went a step farther: they pointed out that whenever the architect finds himself in concert with these accompanying conditions (his own volition being one of the conditions) he goes to work — and the building is produced. As the house is not built, unless he wills to build, and has tools and materials, &c. — so conversely, whenever he has the will to build and has tools and materials, &c., the house is actually built. The effect is not produced, except when the full assemblage of antecedent conditions come together: but as soon as they do come together, the effect is assuredly produced. The accomplishments of the architect, though an essential item, are yet only one item among several, of the conditions necessary to building the house. He has no power to build, except when those other conditions are assumed along with him: in other words, he has no such power except when he actually does build.

consequences he derived from it, or whether any, we do not know. But Plato combined, with this transcendental Unum = Bonum, a transcendental indeterminate plurality: from which combination he considered his Ideas or Ideal Numbers to be derivatives.

Real character of the Megaric sophisms, not calculated to deceive but to guard against deception.

Probable experience had by Xenophon of the feelings at Olympia against Dionysius.

Questions put to Hieron; view taken by Simonides. Answer of Hieron.

witnesses. Such are the allegations against Æschines, contained in the fragment of a lost speech of Lysias, and made in open court by a real plaintiff. How much of them could be fairly proved, we cannot say: but it seems plain at least that Æschines must have been a trader as well as a philosopher. All these writers on philosophy must have had their root and dealings in real life, of which we know scarce anything.

or less of obloquy; but no one among the philosophers acquired marked supremacy over the rest. There is no established philosophical orthodoxy, but a collection of Dissenters — ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλων γλῶσσα μεμιγμένη — small sects, each with its own following, each springing from a special individual as authority, each knowing itself to be only one among many.

Illustration afforded of the views of Sokrates respecting Good and Evil.

Causes of error constant — the Megarics were sentinals against them.

Combinations of atoms — generating different qualities in the compounds.

Diodorus to have been inconsistent in admitting past motion while he denied present motion.

Parmenides and Pythagoras — more nearly akin to Plato and Aristotle.

Nominalism of Stilpon. His reasons against accidental predication.

Megaric succession of philosophers. Eleian or Eritrean succession.

Herakleitus — his obscure style, impressive metaphors, confident and contemptuous dogmatism.

Belief in such agency continued among the general public, even after the various sects of philosophy had arisen.

Araspes (who treats such precaution as exaggerated timidity, and fully trusts his own self-possession), when appointed to the duty of guarding her, as absorbed against his will in a passion which makes him forget all reason and duty — Aristippus has sufficient self-mastery to visit the most seductive Hetæræ without being drawn into ruinous extravagance or humiliating subjugation. We may doubt whether he ever felt, even for Lais, a more passionate sentiment than Plato in his Epigram expresses towards the Kolophonian Hetæra Archeanassa.

Kosmos and to man. The nature of number was imperative and lawgiving, affording the only solution of all that was perplexing or unknown; without number all would be indeterminate and unknowable.”

On the other hand, the dialogues are much commended by competent judges; and Theopompus even affirmed that much in the Platonic dialogues had been borrowed from those of Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Bryson.

everything in the nature of a permanent and perpetual substratum: he laid down nothing as permanent and perpetual except the process of change — the alternate sequence of generation and destruction, without beginning or end — generation and destruction being in fact coincident or identical, two sides of the same process, since the generation of one particular state was the destruction of its antecedent contrary. All reality consisted in the succession and transition, the coming and going, of these finite and particular states: what he conceived as the infinite and universal, was the continuous process of transition from one finite state to the next — the perpetual work of destruction and generation combined, which terminated one finite state in order to make room for a new and contrary state.

Evidence of the good effect of this discipline — Hard and dry condition of the body.

Negative attribute common to all the early theorists — little or no dialectic.

General result and purpose of the Zenonian Dialectic. Nothing is knowable except the relative.

Text upon which Xenophon insists — capital difference between command over subordinates willing, and subordinates unwilling.

Movement of rotation in the mass initiated by Nous on a small scale, but gradually extending itself. Like particles congregate together — distinguishable aggregates are formed.

conceived as one who wishes to delude his hearers by proving both sides of a contradictory proposition. Zeno’s contradictory conclusions are elicited with the express purpose of disproving the premisses from which they are derived. For these premisses Zeno himself is not to be held responsible, since he borrows them from his opponents: a circumstance which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the Zenonian arguments as paralogisms, because they assume the Continua, Space, and Time, to be discontinuous or divided into many distinct parts.

Nothing is really generated or destroyed, but only in appearance to us, or relatively to our apprehension.

to condemn him with asperity.

standard — according to his knowledge and mental resource, inductive and deductive — will be his appreciation of what may be or may not be — as of what may have been or may not have been during the past. But such appreciation, being relative to each individual mind, is liable to vary indefinitely, and does not admit of being embodied in one general definition.

First protest of Nominalism against Realism.

here taken by Antisthenes (or by his followers) is both real and useful: Plato does not contest it: while Aristotle distinctly acknowledges it, only that among the simple items he ranks both Percepta and Concepta.

manifold sagacity, in the performer. Horace, who compares the two and gives the preference to Aristippus, remarks that Diogenes, though professing to want nothing, was nevertheless as much dependent upon the bounty of those who supplied his wallet with provisions, as Aristippus upon the favour of princes: and that Diogenes had only one fixed mode of proceeding, while Aristippus could master and turn to account a great diversity of persons and situations — could endure hardship with patience and dignity, when it was inevitable, and enjoy the opportunities of pleasure when they occurred. “To Aristippus alone it is given to wear both fine garments and rags” is a remark ascribed to Plato.

customary worship and festivals, Xenophanes repudiated divination altogether, and condemned the extravagant respect shown to victors in Olympic contests,

Primordial atoms differed only in magnitude, figure, position, and arrangement — they had no qualities, but their movements and combinations generated qualities.

means is, that a man by such intemperance ruins his prospects of future happiness, and his best means of being useful both to himself and others. Whether Aristippus first learnt from Sokrates the relative theory of the Good and the Beautiful, or had already embraced it before, we cannot say. Some of his questions, as reported in Xenophon, would lead us to suspect that it took him by surprise: just as we find, in the Protagoras of Plato that a theory substantially the same, though in different words, is proposed by the Platonic Sokrates to the Sophist Protagoras: who at first repudiates it, but is compelled ultimately to admit it by the elaborate dialectic of Sokrates.

Parmenides, we arrive at Empedokles (about 500-430 B. C.) and his memorable doctrine of the Four Elements. This philosopher, a Sicilian of Agrigentum, and a distinguished as well as popular-minded citizen, expounded his views in poems, of which Lucretius

Doctrines of Antisthenes exclusively ethical and ascetic. He despised music, literature, and physics.

No separate force required to set the atoms in motion — they moved by an inherent force of their own. Like atoms naturally tend towards like. Rotatory motion, the capital fact of the Kosmos.

actually done: that an architect, for example, had no power to build a house, except when he actually did build one. Aristotle controverts this opinion at some length; contending that there exists a sort of power or cause which is in itself irregular and indeterminate, sometimes turning to the affirmative, sometimes to the negative, to do or not to do;

Music of the Spheres.

race as having been brought into existence by the power of the sun,

in some other place. But Melissus, Zeno, and other previous philosophers, had shown sufficient cause against each of these alternatives separately taken. Each of the alternative essential predicates had been separately disproved; therefore the subject, Ens, could not exist under either of them, or could not exist at all.

Analogous difficulties in the Platonic Parmenidês.

volumes of them, under a variety of distinct titles (some of them probably not in the form of dialogues) being recorded by Diogenes.

abstractions or mythical personifications — Empedokles showed how the Kosmos was constructed. He supposed both forces to be perpetually operative, but not always with equal efficacy: sometimes the one was predominant, sometimes the other, sometimes there was equilibrium between them. Things accordingly pass through a perpetual and ever-renewed cycle. The complete preponderance of Love brings alternately all the elements into close and compact unity, Enmity being for the time eliminated. Presently the action of the latter recommences, and a period ensues in which Love and Enmity are simultaneously operative; until at length Enmity becomes the temporary master, and all union is for the time dissolved. But this condition of things does not last. Love again becomes active, so that partial and increasing combination of the elements is produced, and another period commences — the simultaneous action of the two forces, which ends in renewed empire of Love, compact union of the elements, and temporary exclusion of Enmity.

Empedokles declared that justice absolutely forbade the killing of anything that had life. His belief in the metempsychosis. Sufferings of life are an expiation for wrong done during an antecedent life. Pretensions to magic power.

Diogenes, successor of Antisthenes — His Cynical perfection — striking effect which he produced.

Attachment of Aristippus to ethics and philosophy — contempt for other studies.

Aristippus into the Epikurean: the two most widely extended ethical sects in the subsequent Pagan world. — The Cynic sect, as it stood before it embraced the enlarged physical, kosmical, and social theories of Zeno and his contemporaries, reducing to a minimum all the desires and appetites — cultivating insensibility to the pains of life, and even disdainful insensibility to its pleasures — required extraordinary force of will and obstinate resolution, but little beyond. Where there was no selection or discrimination, the most ordinary prudence sufficed. It was otherwise with the scheme of Aristippus and the Kyrenaics: which, if it tasked less severely the powers of endurance, demanded a far higher measure of intelligent prudence. Selection of that which might safely be enjoyed, and determination of the limit within which enjoyment must be confined, were constantly indispensable. Prudence, knowledge, the art of mensuration or calculation, were essential to Aristippus, and ought to be put in the foreground when his theory is stated.

Xenophontic Sokrates talking to Aristippus — Kallikes in Platonic Gorgias.

good family, and is calculated to teach obedience, not to communicate aptitude for command; while the master of tactics, whose lessons he receives apart, is expressly declared to have known little about the duties of a commander.

We know nothing really and truly about an object, either what it is or what it is not: our opinions depend upon influences from without, upon the position of our body, upon the contact and resistances of external objects. There are two phases of knowledge, the obscure and the genuine. To the obscure belong all our senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The genuine is distinct from these. When the obscure phase fails, when we can no longer see, nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch — from minuteness and subtlety of particles — then the genuine phase, or reason and intelligence, comes into operation.”

heavens became apparently oblique.

This text affords subjects for the Hieron and Cyropædia — Name of Sokrates not suitable.

of pleasure, will entail a preponderance of pain. He does not dispute the general theory.

neither could any present motion be found. Plato in the Parmenidês

Their logical theory — nothing knowable except the phenomenal, our own sensations and feelings — no knowledge of the absolute.

The Greek Cynics — an order of ascetic or mendicant friars.

to the real, absolute, or ultra-phenomenal, which Parmenides maintained to be Ens Unum Continuum, while his opponents affirmed it to be essentially multiple and discontinuous. Upon the hypothesis of Parmenides, the Real and Absolute, being a continuous One, was obviously inconsistent with the movement and variety of the phenomenal world: Parmenides himself recognised the contradiction of the two, and his opponents made it a ground for deriding his doctrine.

or handled separately. Empedokles rarely assigned any specific ratio in which he supposed the four elements to enter into each distinct compound, except in the case of flesh and blood, which were formed of all the four in equal portions; and of bones, which he affirmed to be composed of one-fourth earth, one-fourth water, and the other half fire. He insisted merely on the general fact of such combinations, as explaining what passed for generation of new substances without pointing out any reason to determine one ratio of combination rather than another, and without ascribing to each compound a distinct ratio of its own. This omission in his system is much animadverted on by Aristotle.

Doctrine of Eukleides about Bonum.

either in motion or at rest.

Chaos common to both Empedokles and Anaxagoras: moving agency, different in one from the other theory.

Absolute and relative — the first unknowable.

Hegesias — Low estimation of life — renunciation of pleasure — coincidence with the Cynics.

By Universal Reason he did not mean the Reason of most men as it is, but as it ought to be.

which were necessary to confer power over others, or even security against oppression by others.

Anaximander — laid down as ἀρχή the Infinite or indeterminate — generation of the elements out of it, by evolution of latent fundamental contraries — astronomical and geological doctrines.

Distinction to be made between a general theory — and the particular application of it made by the theorist to his own tastes and circumstances.

Definition given by Sokrates of Justice — Insufficient to satisfy the exigencies of the Sokratic Elenchus.

Theory of Anaxagoras — denied generation and destruction — recognises only mixture and severance of pre-existing kinds of matter.

Change in the political condition of Greece during the life of Plato.

character, I shall be compelled to touch briefly upon the various philosophical theories which were propounded anterior to Sokrates — as well as to repeat some matters already brought to view in the sixteenth, sixty-seventh, and sixty-eighth chapters of my History of Greece.

against him by the Athenians was revoked after the battle of Leuktra, when Athens came into alliance with the Lacedæmonians against Thebes. Some of Xenophon’s later works indicate that he must have availed himself of this revocation to visit Athens: but whether he permanently resided there is uncertain. He had brought over with him from Asia a wife named Philesia, by whom he had two sons, Gryllus and Diodorus.

Vision caused by the outflow of effluvia or images from objects. Hearing.

Conversations between Sokrates and Aristippus about the Good and Beautiful.

mind, in respect to logical theory, in and before the year 300 B.C.

having no essential reference to the happiness or security of the agent or of any one else) which they enforce — and an idea of Vice or Evil Absolute (i.e. having no essential reference to suffering or peril, or disappointment, either of the agent or of any one else) which they denounce and discommend and as thereby refuting the Sophists, who are said to have enforced Virtue and denounced Vice only relatively — i.e. in consequence of the bearing of one and the other upon the security and happiness of the agent or of others. Whether there be any one doctrine or style of preaching which can be fairly ascribed to the Sophists as a class, I will not again discuss here: but I believe that the most eminent among them, Protagoras and Prodikus, held the language here ascribed to them. But it is a mistake to suppose that upon this point Sokrates was their opponent. The Xenophontic Sokrates (a portrait more resembling reality than the Platonic) always holds this same language: the Platonic Sokrates not always, yet often. In the dialogue between Sokrates and Aristippus, as well as in the apologue of Prodikus, we see that the devotion of the season of youth to indulgence and inactive gratification of appetite, is blamed as productive of ruinous consequences — as entailing loss of future pleasures, together with a state of weakness which leaves no protection against future suffering; while great care is taken to show, that though laborious exercise is demanded during youth, such labour will be fully requited by the increased pleasures and happiness of after life. The pleasure of being praised, and the pleasure of seeing good deeds performed by one’s self, are especially insisted on. On this point both Sokrates and Prodikus concur.

Pythagorean Kosmos and Astronomy — geometrical and harmonic laws guiding the movements of the cosmical bodies.

house for the purpose of exhortation. His persistence in this practice became so obtrusive that he obtained the title of “the Door-Opener”.

Harsh manner in which historians of philosophy censure the negative vein.

Kyrenaic theorists after Aristippus.

Plato and Aristotle blame Anaxagoras for deserting his own theory.

unsatisfactory, but absurd, ridiculous, and impious. It was the task of a poet like Hesiod to clothe this general polytheistic sentiment in suitable details: to describe the various Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, and other quasi-human agents, with their characteristic attributes, with illustrative adventures, and with sufficient relations of sympathy and subordination among each other, to connect them in men’s imaginations as members of the same brotherhood. Okeanus, Gæa, Uranus, Helios, Selênê, — Zeus, Poseidon, Hades — Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Aphroditê — these and many other divine personal agents, were invoked as the producing and sustaining forces in nature, the past history of which was contained in their filiations or contests. Anterior to all of them, the primordial matter or person, was Chaos.

Ethical theory of Aristippus and the Kyrenaic philosophers.

but this very circumstance imparted to it an air of poetical impressiveness and oracular profundity.

Nous, or mind, postulated by Anaxagoras — how understood by later writers — how intended by Anaxagoras himself.

His censures upon the received Theogony and religious rites.

Admiration excited by the asceticism of the Cynics — Asceticism extreme in the East — Comparison of the Indian Gymnosophists with Diogenes.

puts into the mouth of Hieron. A predecessor of Dionysius as despot of Syracuse

Remarks of Aristotle upon the same.

Nothing permanent except the law of process and implication of contraries — the transmutative force. Fixity of particulars is an illusion for most part, so far as it exists, it is a sin against the order of Nature.

animals which saw better by day than by night, a great force of external light being required to help out the deficiency of light within: the former class of animals saw better by night, because, when there was little light without, the watery ducts were less completely obstructed — or left more free to receive the influx of black colour suited to them.

Question between Aristotle and Diodôrus depends upon whether universal regularity of sequence be admitted or denied.

at Athens (between 320-300 B.C., but his exact date can hardly be settled), was equal, if not superior, to that of any contemporary philosopher. He was visited by listeners from all parts of Greece, and he drew away pupils from the most renowned teachers of the day; from Theophrastus as well as the others.

Zeno and Gorgias — contrasted with the earlier Grecian philosophers.

Zeno did not deny motion as a fact, phenomenal and relative.

they were still farther exaggerated. Epiktetus, a warm admirer of both, considers them as following up the mission from Zeus which Sokrates (in the Platonic Apology) sets forth as his authority, to make men independent of the evils of life by purifying and disciplining the appreciation of good and evil in the mind of each individual.

than what the city allows: the measure for him is, not his own inclination, but the law. You must therefore be cautious of staying here, lest you should bring back with you to Persia habits of despotism, and of grasping at more than any one else, contracted from your grandfather: for if you come back in this spirit, you will assuredly be flogged to death. Never fear, mother (answered Cyrus): my grandfather teaches every one round him to claim less than his due — not more than his due: and he will teach me the same.

Controversy of the Megarics with Aristotle about Power. Arguments of Aristotle.

which modified the tone of their speculations without being powerful enough to repress them.

position countenanced by the numerous tales, respecting appearances of the Gods both to dreaming and to waking men, current among the poets and in the familiar talk of Greece.

as a body not only of truth but of reasoned truth, holds the champion’s belt, subject to the challenge not only of competing affirmants, but of all deniers and doubters. And this is the more indispensable, because of the vast problems which these affirmative philosophers undertake to solve: problems especially vast during the age of Plato and Aristotle. The question has to be determined, not only which of two proposed solutions is the best, but whether either of them is tenable, and even whether any solution at all is attainable by the human faculties: whether there exist positive evidence adequate to sustain any conclusion, accompanied with adequate replies to the objections against it. The burthen of proof lies upon the affirmant: and the proof produced must be open to the scrutiny of every dissentient.

Eubulides — his logical problems or puzzles — difficulty of solving them — many solutions attempted.

always consistent with himself) are not only real existences distinct from particulars, but absorb to themselves all the reality of particulars. The real universe in the Platonic theory was composed of Ideas or Forms such as Manness or Horseness

learn farther respecting the doctrines of Anaximander, that he proposed physical explanations of thunder, lightning, and other meteorological phenomena:

the doctrine which we find in some of the Platonic dialogues. In the Republic, the Idea of Good appears as one of these, though it is declared to be the foremost in rank and the most ascendant in efficacy.

Negative method in philosophy essential to the controul of the affirmative.

left empty, and the air from without entered: when the outward tide of blood returned, the air which had thus entered was expelled.

He recognises a region of opinion, phenomenal and relative, apart from Ens.

in a different manner.

character, faithful to his word and generous in his friendships — inspiring strong attachment in those around him, yet vigorous in administration and in punishing criminals — not only courting the Greeks as useful for his ambitious projects, but appreciating sincerely the superiority of Hellenic character and freedom over Oriental servitude.

forced their way through all the body, produced large interior vacant spaces, and thereby generated great heat: for heat was always proportional to the amount of vacuum within.

These arguments not valid against the Megarici.

Preponderance of the negative vein in the Platonic age.

by Sokrates in the Platonic Gorgias. Nay, if we follow the argument addressed by the Xenophontic Sokrates to Aristippus, we perceive that it is in substance similar to that which the Platonic dialogue Gorgias puts in the mouth of the rhetor Pôlus and the politician Kalliklês. The Xenophontic Sokrates distributes men into two classes — the rulers and the ruled: the former strong, well-armed, and well-trained, who enjoy life at the expense of the submission and suffering of the latter: the former committing injustice, the latter enduring injustice. He impresses upon Aristippus the misery of being confounded with the suffering many, and exhorts him to qualify himself by a laborious apprenticeship for enrolment among the ruling few. If we read the Platonic Gorgias, we shall see that this is the same strain in which Pôlus and Kalliklês address Sokrates, when they invite him to exchange philosophy for rhetoric, and to qualify himself for active political life. “Unless you acquire these accomplishments, you will be helpless and defenceless against injury and insult from others: while, if you acquire them, you will raise yourself to political influence, and will exercise power over others, thus obtaining the fullest measure of enjoyment which life affords: see the splendid position to which the Macedonian usurper Archelaus has recently exalted himself.

Early Greek mind, satisfied with the belief in polytheistic personal agents as the real producing causes of phenomena.

His arguments cited and criticised.

Demokritus proclaimed that no clear or certain knowledge was attainable: that the sensible objects, which men believed to be absolute realities, were only phenomenal and relative to us, — while the atoms and vacua, the true existences or things in themselves, could scarce ever be known as they were:

Theodôrus — Annikeris — Hegesias.

existences: he supposed them all to lie ready made, in portions of all sizes, whereof there was no greatest and no least.

Construction of the Kosmos from these elements and forces — action and counter action of love and enmity. The Kosmos alternately made and unmade.

which denial all the ancient physical philosophers concurred), but also the transformation of one form of matter into others, which had been affirmed by Thales and others. Both of them laid down as a basis the existence of matter in a variety of primordial forms. They maintained that what others called generation or transformation, was only a combination or separation of these pre-existing materials, in great diversity of ratios. Of such primordial forms of matter Empedokles recognised only four, the so-called Elements; each simple and radically distinct from the others, and capable of existing apart from them, though capable also of being combined with them. Anaxagoras recognised primordial forms of matter in indefinite number, with an infinite or indefinite stock of particles of each; but no one form of matter (except Nous) capable of being entirely severed from the remainder. In the constitution of every individual body in nature, particles of all the different forms were combined; but some one or a few forms were preponderant and manifest, all the others overlaid and latent. Herein consisted the difference between one body and another. The Homœomeric body was one in which a confluence of like particles had taken place so numerous and powerful, as to submerge all the coexistent particles of other sorts. The majority thus passed for the whole, the various minorities not being allowed to manifest themselves, yet not for that reason ceasing to exist: a type of human society as usually constituted, wherein some one vein of sentiment, ethical, æsthetical, religious, political, &c., acquires such omnipotence as to impose silence on dissentients, who are supposed not to exist because they cannot proclaim themselves without ruin.

reproaches were advanced against Plato and Aristotle by their contemporaries: and as far as we know, with quite as much foundation.

or sect of philosophers — Pleistanus, Anchipylus, Moschus. Of this sect Menedêmus,

Later Grecian Cynics — Monimus — Krates — Hipparchia.

Aristippus — life, character, and doctrine.

Names of those companions.

First condition of things — all the primordial varieties of matter were huddled together in confusion. Nous, or Reason, distinct from all of them, supervened and acted upon this confused mass, setting the constituent particles in movement.

call a catalytic agency in originating movement among a stationary and stagnant mass of Homœomeries, which, as soon as they are liberated from imprisonment, follow inherent tendencies of their own, not receiving any farther impulse or direction from Noûs.

Menedêmus and the Eretriacs.

Eukleides of Megara — he blended Parmenides with Sokrates.

deductions (at great length, occupying the last half of the dialogue) — four pairs of counter-demonstrations or Antinomies — in which contradictory conclusions appear each to be alike proved. He enunciates the final result as follows:—“Whether Unum exists, or does not exist, Unum itself and Cætera, both exist and do not exist, both appear and do not appear, all things and in all ways — both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other”.

Platonic Parmenides — its extreme negative character.

Death of Xenophon at Corinth — Story of the Eleian Exegetæ.

Kosmology and meteorology.

moreover, not only turned the subject-matter of discussion from physics to ethics, but also brought into conscious review the method of philosophising: which was afterwards still farther considered and illustrated by Plato. General and abstract terms and their meaning, stood out as the capital problems of philosophical research, and as the governing agents of the human mind during the process: in Plato and Aristotle, and the Dialectics of their age, we find the meaning or concept corresponding to these terms invested with an objective character, and represented as a cause or beginning; by which, or out of which, real concrete things were produced. Logical, metaphysical, ethical, entities, whose existence consists in being named and reasoned about, are presented to us (by Plato) as the real antecedents and producers of the sensible Kosmos and its contents, or (by Aristotle) as coeternal with the Kosmos, but as its underlying constituents — the ἀρχαὶ, primordia or ultimata — into which it was the purpose and duty of the philosopher to resolve sensible things. The men of words and debate, the dialecticians or metaphysical speculators of the period since Zeno and Sokrates, who took little notice of the facts of Nature, stand contrasted in the language of Aristotle with the antecedent physical philosophers who meddled less with debate and more with facts. The contrast is taken in his mind between Plato and Demokritus.

Air possessed numerous and diverse properties; was eminently modifiable.

Xenophon — his character — essentially a man of action and not a theorist — the Sokratic element in him an accessory.

of matter) were together, in one mass or mixture. Infinitely numerous and infinite in diversity of magnitude, they were so packed and confounded together that no one could be distinguished from the rest: no definite figure, or colour, or other property, could manifest itself. Nothing was distinguishable except the infinite mass of Air and Æther (Fire), which surrounded the mixed mass and kept it together.

varieties of matter, as manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests, but manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances. The defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was, that possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either ascribed to these physical agents powers and properties not real, or exaggerated prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial substance chosen, though bearing a familiar name, became little better than a fiction. The Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers, ascribing to them properties altogether fanciful and imaginary.

Greece. Xenophon and his Cyreians were still a portion of the army of Agesilaus, and accompanied him in his march into Bœotia; where they took part in his desperate battle and bloody victory at Koroneia.

Views of Xenophon about public and official training of all citizens.

Views of the Ionic philosophers — compared with the more recent abstractions of Plato and Aristotle.

Remarks on the conversation — Theory of Good.

syllable as the compound made up of two or more letters which are its simple constituent elements.

available for good as well as for evil. By a proper employment of it, he may not only avoid being hated, but may even make himself beloved, beyond the measure attainable by any private citizen. Even kind words, and petty courtesies, are welcomed far more eagerly when they come from a powerful man than from an equal: moreover a showy and brilliant exterior seldom fails to fascinate the spectator.

Details of (so-called) Persian education — Severe discipline — Distribution of four ages.

the Cyropædia, Œkonomikus, Symposion, Hieron, De Vectigalibus, &c.

Different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body.

the beginning to the end of its course consists of a multitude of successive instants. During each of these instants the arrow is in a given place of equal dimension with itself. But that which is during any instant in a given place, is at rest. Accordingly during each successive instant of its flight, the arrow is at rest. Throughout its whole flight it is both in motion and at rest. This argument is a deduction from the doctrine of discontinuous time, as the preceding is a deduction from that of discontinuous space.

probably Diogenes neither took credit himself, nor received credit from his contemporaries. Diogenes seems to have really possessed — that which his teacher Antisthenes postulated as indispensable — the Sokratic physical strength and vigour. His ethical creed, obtained from Antisthenes, was adopted by many successors, and (in the main) by Zeno and the Stoics in the ensuing century. But the remarkable feature in Diogenes which attracts to him the admiration of Epiktêtus, is — that he set the example of acting out his creed, consistently and resolutely, in his manner of life:

His conjectures on physics and astronomy.

this rotation was then lateral, like that of a dome or roof; it was moreover equable and unchanging with reference to every part of the plane of the earth’s upper surface, and distributed light and heat equally to every part. But after a certain time the Earth tilted over of its own accord to the south, thus lowering its southern half, raising the northern half, and causing the celestial rotation to appear oblique.

spherical atoms constituting heat or fire, he nevertheless seems to have held that these particles might be in excess as well as in deficiency, and that they required, as a condition of sound mind, to be diluted or attempered with others. The soundest mind, however, did not work by itself or spontaneously, but was put in action by atoms or effluvia from without: this was true of the intellectual mind, not less than of the sensational mind. There was an objective something without, corresponding to and generating every different thought — just as there was an objective something corresponding to every different sensation. But first, the object of sensation was an atomic compound having some appreciable bulk, while that of thought might be separate atoms or vacua so minute as to be invisible and intangible. Next, the object of sensation did not reveal itself as it was in its own nature, but merely produced changes in the percipient, and different changes in different percipients (except as to heavy and light, hard and soft, which were not simply modifications of our sensibility, but were also primary qualities inherent in the objects themselves

latent) than the four Empedoklean elements, Air, Fire, Earth, &c.; which were compounds wherein many of the numerous ingredients present were equally effective, so that the manifestations were more confused and complicated. In this way the four Empedoklean elements formed a vast seed-magazine, out of which many distinct developments might take place, of ingredients all pre-existing within it. Air and Fire appeared to generate many new products, while flesh and bone did not.

appear equally plausible to their successors; a reproach which bears upon many subsequent philosophers also. The contemporary public, to whom they addressed themselves, knew no other way of conceiving Nature than under this religious and poetical view, as an aggregate of manifestations by divine personal agents, upon whose volition — sometimes signified beforehand by obscure warnings intelligible to the privileged interpreters, but often inscrutable — the turn of events depended. Thales and the other Ionic philosophers were the first who became dissatisfied with this point of view, and sought for some “causes and beginnings” more regular, knowable, and predictable. They fixed upon the common, familiar, widely-extended, material substances, water, air, fire, &c.; and they could hardly fix upon any others. Their attempt to find a scientific basis was unsuccessful; but the memorable fact consisted in their looking for one.

forethought, so as to attain this object, and at the same time to keep up the maximum of bodily health and vigour, especially among the horsemen of the city as an accomplished rider

The Monas — ἀρχή, or principle of Number — geometrical conception of number — symbolical attributes of the first ten numbers, especially of the Dekad.

Formation of the Earth, of Gods, men, animals, and plants.

likely to be esteemed higher than Plato himself.

Gorgias the Leontine — did not admit the Absolute, even as conceived by Parmenides.

Eleatic philosophy — Xenophanes.

Aristippus adhered to the doctrine of Sokrates.

Sense of vision.

Variety of sects and theories — multiplicity of individual authorities is the characteristic of Greek philosophy.

Probable circumstances generating these reflections in Xenophon’s mind.

as much or more — while the scent of the unguents pleases those who are near him more than himself.

Idola or images were thrown off from objects, which determined the tone of thoughts, feelings, dreams, divinations, &c.

His geology, meteorology, physiology.

occur, is positively true, or the assertion that it will never occur, is positively true: the assertion that it may or may not occur some time or other, represents only our ignorance, which of the two is true. That which will never at any time occur, is impossible.

taste, smell, heat, cold, &c., of the bodies around us: they were relative, implying correlative percipients. Moreover they were not merely relative, but perpetually fluctuating; since the compounds were frequently changing either in arrangement or in diversity of atoms, and every such atomic change, even to a small extent, caused it to work differently upon our organs.

and independent of any sentient subject — we neither know nor can affirm anything. Both these predicates (One — Many) are relative and phenomenal, grounded on the facts and comparisons of our own senses and consciousness, and serving only to describe, to record, and to classify, those facts. Discrete quantity or number, or succession of distinct unities — continuous quantity, or motion and extension — are two conceptions derived from comparison, abstracted and generalised from separate particular phenomena of our consciousness; the continuous, from our movements and the consciousness of persistent energy involved therein — the discontinuous, from our movements, intermitted and renewed, as well as from our impressions of sense. We compare one discrete quantity with another, or one continual quantity with another, and we thus ascertain many important truths: but we select our unit, or our standard of motion and extension, as we please, or according to convenience, subject only to the necessity of adapting our ulterior calculations consistently to this unit, when once selected. The same object may thus be considered sometimes as one, sometimes as many; both being relative, and depending upon our point of view. Motion, Space, Time, may be considered either as continuous or as discontinuous: we may reason upon them either as one or the other, but we must not confound the two points of view with each other. When, however, we are called upon to travel out of the Relative, and to decide between Parmenides and his opponents — whether the Absolute be One or Multitudinous — we have only to abstain from affirming either, or (in other words) to confess our ignorance. We know nothing of an absolute, continuous, self-existent One, or of an absolute, discontinuous Many.

His doctrine of Pankosmism, or Pantheism — The whole Kosmos is Ens Unum or God — Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Non-Ens inadmissible.

most favourable circumstances. For conferring pleasure, or for securing continuance of pleasure — wealth, high birth, freedom, glory, were of no greater avail than their contraries poverty, low birth, slavery, ignominy. There was nothing which was, by nature or universally, either pleasurable or painful. Novelty, rarity, satiety, rendered one thing pleasurable, another painful, to different persons and at different times. The wise man would show his wisdom, not in the fruitless struggle for pleasures, but in the avoidance or mitigation of pains: which he would accomplish more successfully by rendering himself indifferent to the causes of pleasure. He would act always for his own account, and would value himself higher than other persons: but he would at the same time reflect that the mistakes of these others were involuntary, and he would give them indulgent counsel, instead of hating them. He would not trust his senses as affording any real knowledge: but he would be satisfied to act upon the probable appearances of sense, or upon phenomenal knowledge.

Exemplary obedience of Cyrus to the public discipline — He had learnt justice well — His award about the two coats — Lesson inculcated upon him by the Justice-Master.

Sokrates — the most persevering and acute Eristic of his age.

The doctrines of Anaxagoras were regarded as offensive and impious.

Two, Three, Four = Ten (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) was the most perfect number of all.

Diogenes, meeting some Sicilian guests at his house and treading upon his best carpet, exclaimed “I am treading on Plato’s empty vanity and conceit,” Plato rejoined “Yes, with a different vanity of your own”. The impression produced by Diogenes in conversation with others, was very powerfully felt both by young and old. Phokion, as well as Stilpon, were among his hearers.

Leukippus and Demokritus — Atomic theory.

Ethical theory of Aristippus is identical with that of the Platonic Sokrates in the Protagoras.

Complaint of Empedokles on the impossibility of finding out truth.

all parts: they were painful when there was little air, and when the blood was torpid and thick.

with which they so largely perverted what are now regarded as the clearest and most rigorous processes of the human intellect. The important theorem which forms the forty-seventh Proposition of Euclid’s first book, is affirmed to have been discovered by Pythagoras himself: but how much progress was made by him and his followers in the legitimate province of arithmetic and geometry, as well as in the applications of these sciences to harmonics,

Xenophon’s conception of the Sokratic problems — He does not recognise the Sokratic order of solution of those problems.

— while the tyrannicide is everywhere honoured and recompensed: that there is no safety for the despot even in his own family, many having been killed by their nearest relatives:

Researches of Demokritus on zoology and animal generation.

by Diogenes and others, not only come from later authorities, but give us hardly any facts; though they ascribe to him a great many sayings and repartees, adapted to a peculiar type of character. That type of character, together with an imperfect notion of his doctrines, is all that we can make out. Though Aristippus did not follow the recommendation of Sokrates, to labour and qualify himself for a ruler, yet both the advice of Sokrates, to reflect and prepare himself for the anxieties and perils of the future — and the spectacle of self-sufficing independence which the character of Sokrates afforded — were probably highly useful to him. Such advice being adverse to the natural tendencies of his mind, impressed upon him forcibly those points of the case which he was most likely to forget: and contributed to form in him that habit of self-command which is a marked feature in his character. He wished (such are the words ascribed to him by Xenophon) to pass through life as easily and agreeably as possible. Ease comes before pleasure: but his plan of life was to obtain as much pleasure as he could, consistent with ease, or without difficulty and danger. He actually realised, as far as our means of knowledge extend, that middle path of life which Sokrates declared to be impracticable.

Remarks of Plato on this doctrine.

Water — intermediate between Fire (Air) and Earth.

Doctrines and smart sayings of Diogenes — Contempt of pleasure — training and labour required — indifference to literature and geometry.

Relations between the companions of Sokrates — Their proceedings after the death of Sokrates.

acquire no lasting benefit either in mind or body. He will have a soft lot at first, but his future will be hard and dreary.

It cannot be present as a whole in each: nor can it be divided, and thus present partly in one, partly in another. How therefore can it be present at all in any of them? In other words, how can the One be Many, and how can the Many be One? Of this difficulty (as of many others) Plato presents no solution, either in the Parmenidês or anywhere else.

His various works — Memorabilia, Œkonomikus, &c.

Comparison of the Xenophontic Sokrates with the Platonic Sokrates.

in proper number and distribution throughout the body; but by their subtle nature they were constantly tending to escape, being squeezed or thrust out at all apertures by the pressure of air on all the external parts. Such tendency was counteracted by the process of respiration, whereby mental or vital particles, being abundantly distributed throughout the air, were inhaled along with air, and formed an inward current which either prevented the escape, or compensated the loss, of those which were tending outwards. When breathing ceased, such inward current being no longer kept up, the vital particles in the interior were speedily forced out, and death ensued.

arrogance among the companions of Sokrates: and that Aristippus gently rebuked him by reminding him how very different had been the language of Sokrates himself. Complaints too were made by contemporaries, about Plato’s jealous, censorious, spiteful, temper. The critical and disparaging tone of his dialogues, notwithstanding the admiration which they inspire, accounts for the existence of these complaints: and anecdotes are recounted, though not verified by any sufficient evidence, of ill-natured dealing on his part towards other philosophers who were poorer than himself.

Each of them gave, as Parmenides had done, certain affirmative opinions, or at least probable conjectures, for the purpose of explaining it.

brother Gelon the former despot.

Universality of Demokritus — his ethical views.

Explanation of different sensations and perceptions. Colours.

Relation between the theory of Demokritus and that of Parmenides.

Thales, the first Greek who propounded the hypothesis of physical agency in place of personal. Water, the primordial substance, or ἀρχή.

of men or of other animals — the universal kindred thus recognised between men and other animals, and the prohibition which he founded thereupon against the use of animals for food or sacrifice — are among his most remarkable doctrines: said to have been borrowed (together with various ceremonial observances) from the Egyptians.

Sensation, obscure knowledge relative to the sentient; Thought, genuine knowledge — absolute, or object per se.

himself and for the philosopher generally:

Distinction ascribed to Antisthenes between simple and complex objects. Simple objects undefinable.

Choice of Hêraklês.

and advocated, in the generation not only after Antisthenes but after Aristotle — we may see by the case of Stilpon: who maintained (as Antisthenes had done) that none but identical propositions, wherein the predicate was a repetition of the subject, were admissible: from whence it followed (as Aristotle observed) that there could be no propositions either false or contradictory. Plutarch,

His reasonings against the Absolute, either as Ens or Entia.

We may suppose him to have been then about thirty years of age; and thus to have been born about 430 B.C. — two or three years earlier than Plato. Respecting his early life, we have no facts before us: but we may confidently affirm (as I have already observed about

Doctrine of the Pythagoreans — Number the Essence of Things.

Each thing must exist in its own place — Grain of millet not sonorous.

Good is relative to human beings and wants, in the view of Sokrates.

Ens, even if granted to be knowable, is still incommunicable to others.

Advantage derived from this variety of constructive imagination among the Greeks.

Reason alone gave true and real knowledge, but very little of it was attainable.

bodies of men, in like manner: and all things which men use, are considered both good and beautiful, in consideration of their serving their ends well. — Then (says Aristippus) a basket for carrying dung is beautiful? — To be sure (replied Sokrates), and a golden shield is ugly; if the former be well made for doing its work, and the latter badly. — Do you then assert (asked Aristippus) that the same things are beautiful and ugly? — Assuredly (replied Sokrates); and the same things are both good and evil. That which is good for hunger, is often bad for a fever: that which is good for a fever, is often bad for hunger. What is beautiful for running is often ugly for wrestling — and vice versâ. All things are good and beautiful, in relation to the ends which they serve well: all things are evil and ugly, in relation to the ends which they serve badly.”

Thought or Intelligence — was produced by influx of atoms from without.

Doctrine of effluvia and pores — explanation of perceptions — Intercommunication of the elements with the sentient subject — like acting upon like.

friends, who were in the habit of attending him when he talked in the market-place or the palæstra. Some tried to copy his wonderful knack of colloquial cross-examination: how far they did so with success or reputation we do not know: but Xenophon says that several of them would only discourse with those who paid them a fee, and that they thus sold for considerable sums what were only small fragments obtained gratuitously from the rich table of their master.

His residence at Skillus near Olympia.

Senses of hearing, smell, taste.

spaces of vacuum in one part, and closer approach of its atoms in other parts: moreover these atoms were in themselves larger, hence there was a greater force of cohesion between them on one particular side, rendering the whole mass harder and more unyielding than the lead.

particular impressions; but no man could obtain or communicate satisfaction about the whole.

Zenonian Dialectic — Platonic Parmenides.

Variety of metaphors employed by Herakleitus, signifying the same general doctrine.

when he visited the spot five centuries afterwards, that Xenophon had been condemned in the judicial Council of Olympia as wrongful occupant of the property at Skillus, through Lacedæmonian violence; but that the Eleians had granted him indulgence, and had allowed him to remain.

Astronomy and physics of Anaxagoras.

Reasonings of Diodôrus — respecting Hypothetical Propositions — respecting Motion. His difficulties about the Now of time.

For the real world, as described by Demokritus, differed entirely from the sameness and barrenness of the Parmenidean Ens, and presented sufficient movement and variety to supply a basis of explanatory hypothesis, accommodated to more or less of the varieties in the phenomenal world. In respect of quality, indeed, all the atoms were alike, not less than all the vacua: such likeness was (according to Demokritus) the condition of their being able to act upon each other, or to combine as phenomenal aggregates.

Stilpon of Megara — His great celebrity.

His service and command with the Ten Thousand Greeks; afterwards under Agesilaus and the Spartans. — He is banished from Athens.

touch, smell, and hearing; but he entered at some length into those of sight and taste.

on the equal right of the next comer, and by suspending the negative agency of the universal. Hence arises an antithesis or hostility between the universal law or process on one side, and the persistence of particular states on the other. The universal law or process is generative and destructive, positive and negative, both in one: but the particular realities in which it manifests itself are all positive, each succeeding to its antecedent, and each striving to maintain itself against the negativity or destructive interference of the universal process. Each particular reality represented rest and fixity: each held ground as long as it could against the pressure of the cosmical force, essentially moving, destroying, and renovating. Herakleitus condemns such pretensions of particular states to separate stability, inasmuch as it keeps back the legitimate action of the universal force, in the work of destruction and renovation.

Discourse of Sokrates with Aristippus.

Antithesis between Nature — and Law or Convention — insisted on by the Indian Gymnosophists.

Parmenidean phenomenology — relative and variable.

senses to be sadly obscure and insufficient as means of knowledge. Apparently, however, he did not discard their testimony, nor assume any other means of knowledge independent of it, but supposed a concomitant and controlling effect of intelligence as indispensable to compare and judge between the facts of sense when they appeared contradictory.

utmost density, stone.

All these theories were found in circulation by Sokrates, Zeno, Plato, and the dialecticians. Importance of the scrutiny of negative Dialectic.

Homœomeries — small particles of diverse kinds of matter, all mixed together.

was but one primordial element — and that element was air. He laid it down as indisputable that all the different objects in this Kosmos must be at the bottom one and the same thing: unless this were the fact, they would not act upon each other, nor mix together, nor do good and harm to each other, as we see that they do. Plants would not grow out of the earth, nor would animals live and grow by nutrition, unless there existed as a basis this universal sameness of nature. No one thing therefore has a peculiar nature of its own: there is in all the same nature, but very changeable and diversified.

and that the lawless is violent”. Now if we consider this as preceptorial — as an admonition to the youthful Cyrus how he ought to decide judicial cases — it is perfectly reasonable: “Let your decisions be conformable to the law or custom of the country”. But if we consider it as a portion of philosophy or reasoned truth — as a definition or rational explanation of Justice, advanced by a respondent who is bound to defend it against the Sokratic cross-examination — we shall find it altogether insufficient. Xenophon himself tells us here, that Law or Custom is one thing among the Medes, and the reverse among the Persians: accordingly an action which is just in the one place will be unjust in the other. It is by objections of this kind that Sokrates, both in Plato and Xenophon, refutes explanations propounded by his respondents.

did affirm it, and even tried to explain it: he explained the phenomenal facts from phenomenal assumptions, apart from and independent of the absolute. While thus breaking down the bridge between the phenomenal on one side and the absolute on the other, he nevertheless recognised each in a sphere of its own.

Prudence — good, by reason of the pleasure which it ensured, and of the pains which it was necessary to avoid. Just and honourable, by law or custom — not by nature.

Misery of governing unwilling subjects declared by Hieron.

Illustrations by which Herakleitus symbolized his perpetual force, destroying and generating.

No Sokratic school — each of the companions took a line of his own.

his own personal experience, had witnessed violent political changes running extensively through the cities of the Grecian world: first, at the close of the Peloponnesian war — next, after the battle of Knidus — again, under Lacedæmonian supremacy, after the peace of Antalkidas, and the subsequent seizure of the citadel of Thebes — lastly, after the Thebans had regained their freedom and humbled the Lacedæmonians by the battle of Leuktra. To Xenophon — partly actor, partly spectator — these political revolutions were matters of anxious interest; especially as he ardently sympathised with Agesilaus, a political partisan interested in most of them, either as conservative or revolutionary.

Parmenides continues the doctrine of Xenophanes — Ens Parmenideum, self-existent, eternal, unchangeable, extended, — Non-Ens, an unmeaning phrase.

He copied the manner of life of Sokrates, in plainness and rigour.

Self-mastery and independence — the great aspiration of Aristippus.

Aristippus taught as a Sophist. His reputation thus acquired procured for him the attentions of Dionysius and others.

ing point, the same as had been adopted by the Ionic philosophers — the data of sense, or certain agencies selected among them, and vaguely applied to explain the rest. Here he felt that he relinquished the full conviction, inseparable from his intellectual consciousness, with which he announced his few absolute truths respecting Ens and Non-Ens, and that he entered upon a process of mingled observation and conjecture, where there was great room for diversity of views between man and man.

His account of mind — he identified it with heat or fire diffused throughout animals, plants, and nature generally. Mental particles intermingled throughout all the frame with corporeal particles.

that we could know nothing except in so far as we were affected by it, and as it was or might be in correlation with ourselves: that as to causes not relative to ourselves, or to our own capacities and affections, we could know nothing about them.

Physiology of Diogenes — his description of the veins in the human body.

Sophisms propounded by Eubulides. 1. Mentiens. 2. The Veiled Man. 3. Sorites. 4. Cornutus.

declaring the essence of the thing named, and differing from every other word: you cannot therefore truly predicate any one word of any other, because the reason or meaning of the two is different: there can be no true propositions except identical propositions, in which the predicate is the same with the subject — “man is man, good is good”. “Man is good” was an inadmissible proposition: affirming different things to be the same, or one thing to be many.

Æschines- — oration of Lysias against him.

Aristippus compared with Antisthenes and Diogenes — Points of agreement and disagreement between them.

Admiration of Epiktêtus for Diogenes, especially for his consistency in acting out his own ethical creed.

make a heap. When this want of precision, pervading many words in the language, was first brought to notice in a suitable special case, it would naturally appear a striking novelty. Lastly, the sophism called Κερατίνης or Cornutus, is one of great plausibility, which would probably impose upon most persons, if the question were asked for the first time without any forewarning. It serves to administer a lesson, nowise unprofitable or superfluous, that before you answer a question, you should fully weigh its import and its collateral bearings.

one month:

Sophism of Diodorus — Ὁ Κυριεύων.

Family of Xenophon — his son Gryllus killed at Mantinea.

Abundance of speculative genius and invention — a memorable fact in the Hellenic mind.

Portrait of Cyrus the Great — his education — Preface to the Cyropædia.

Views of historians of philosophy respecting Zeno.

the Good and the Beautiful were the same, being relative only to human wants or satisfaction — and that nothing was either good or beautiful, except in so far as it tended to confer relief, security, or enjoyment — this lesson too Aristippus laid to heart, and applied in a way suitable to his own peculiar dispositions and capacities.

The same doctrine asserted by Stilpon, after the time of Aristotle.

If the process of theorising be admissible, it must include negative as well as affirmative.

All atoms essentially separate from each other.

Suggested partly by the phenomena of animal nutrition.

Diversified conversations of Sokrates, according to the character of the hearer.

Diogenes of Apollonia recognises one primordial element.

Open speech and licence of censure assumed by Menedêmus.

of contraries. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, light and dark, come into one or come round into each other: everything twists round into its contrary: everything both is and is not.

obviously false: and the more obviously false it is, the better suited for its tutelary purpose. Aristotle recognises, as indispensable in philosophical enquiry, the preliminary wrestling into which he conducts his reader, by means of a long string of unsolved difficulties or puzzles — (ἀπόριαι). He declares distinctly and forcibly, that whoever attempts to lay out a positive theory, without having before his mind a full list of the difficulties with which he is to grapple, is like one who searches without knowing what he is looking for; without being competent to decide whether what he hits upon as a solution be really a solution or not.

The Pythagoreans continue as a recluse sect, without political power.

Xenophon different from Plato and the other Sokratic brethren.

Zeno’s Dialectic — he refuted the opponents of Parmenides, by showing that their assumptions led to contradictions and absurdities.

Nothing (except Νοῦς) can be entirely pure or unmixed, but other things may be comparatively pure. Flesh, Bone, &c. are purer than Air or Earth.

The doctrine compared to that of Plato — changes in Plato.

movements, and comparisons. As such, but as such only, did Zeno acknowledge it. What he denied was, motion as a fact belonging to the Absolute, or as deducible from the Absolute. He did not deny the Absolute or Thing in itself, as an existing object, but he struck out variety, divisibility, and motion, from the list of its predicates. He admitted only the Parmenidean Ens, one, continuous, unchanged, and immovable, with none but negative predicates, and severed from the relative world of experience and sensation.

Ens, incogitable and unknowable.

depends upon calculating knowledge or prudence, the art or science of measuring.

to substitute scientific theories in place of the personal agency of the Gods, were repugnant to the religious feelings of the Greeks, has been already remarked.

same author, as well as those of Aristippus and Bryson, when he accused Plato of having borrowed from them largely.

polity places the citizen even from infancy under official tuition, and aims at forming his first habits and character, as well as at upholding them when formed, so that instead of having any disposition of his own to commit such acts, he shall contract a repugnance to them. He is kept under perpetual training, drill, and active official employment throughout life, but the supervision is most unremitting during boyhood and youth.

Zenonian arguments in regard to motion.

Herakleitus at the opposite pole from Parmenides.

Athenians at Ægospotami, came the terrible apprehension at Athens, then the long blockade and famine of the city (wherein many died of hunger); next the tyranny of the Thirty, who among their other oppressions made war upon all free speech, and silenced even the voice of Sokrates: then the gallant combat of Thrasybulus followed by the intervention of the Lacedæmonians — contingencies full of uncertainty and terror, but ending in the restoration of the democracy. After such restoration, there followed all the anxieties, perils, of reaction, new enactments and provisions, required for the revived democracy, during the four years between the expulsion of the Thirty and the death of Sokrates.

But what Diogenes affirms is, that Thrasyllus and all the critics whose opinion he esteemed, concurred in rejecting them. We may surely presume that this unanimity among the critics, both as to all that they accepted and all that they rejected, arose from common acquiescence in the authority of the Alexandrine library.

Schleiermacher’s hypothesis includes a preconceived scheme, and a peremptory order of interdependence among the dialogues.

Proceedings of Demetrius in beginning to collect the library.

His birth, parentage, and early education.

it in his comments (contained in the dialogue Theætêtus) on the doctrine of Protagoras: he rejects it also in the constructive dialogues, Republic and Leges, where he constitutes himself despotic legislator, prescribing a standard of orthodox opinion; he proclaims it in the Gorgias, and implies it very generally throughout the negative dialogues.

Dialogues of Exposition — present affirmative result. Dialogues of Search are wanting in that attribute.

Edward Munk — adopts a different principle of arrangement, founded upon the different period which each dialogue exhibits of the life, philosophical growth, and old age, of Sokrates — his arrangement, founded on this principle. He distinguishes the chronological order of composition from the place allotted to each dialogue in the systematic plan.

Opinions of Schleiermacher, tending to show this.

Hermann’s view more tenable than Schleiermacher’s.

publication in his own name and with his own responsibility attached to the writing, on grave matters of philosophy — we cannot be surprised that, among the numerous lectures which he must have delivered to his pupils and auditors in the Academy, none were ever published. Probably he may himself have destroyed them, as he exhorts Dionysius to destroy the Epistle which we now read as second, after reading it over frequently. And we may doubt whether he was not displeased with Aristotle and Hestiæus

in the Platonic Apology, complains of the comic poet Aristophanes for misrepresenting him. Had the Platonic Phædrus been then in circulation, or any other Platonic dialogues, he might with equally good reason have warned the Dikasts against judging of him, a real citizen on trial, from the titular Sokrates whom even disciples did not scruple to employ as spokesman for their own transcendental doctrine, and their own controversial sarcasms.

the earliest of those schools of philosophy, which continued for centuries forward to guide and stimulate the speculative minds of Greece and Rome.

studied immediately after its predecessors and immediately before its successors — and yet that he should have taken no pains to impress this one peremptory arrangement on the minds of readers, and that Schleiermacher should be the first to detect it — all this appears to me as improbable as any of the mystic interpretations of Iamblichus or Proklus. Like other improbabilities, it may be proved by evidence, if evidence can be produced: but here nothing of the kind is producible. We are called upon to grant the general hypothesis without proof, and to follow Schleiermacher in applying it to the separate dialogues.

Purpose of Plato in this pleading — to present the dispositions of Sokrates in a light different from that which the Apology had presented — unqualified submission instead of defiance.

Pleading supposed to be addressed by the Laws of Athens to Sokrates, demanding from him implicit obedience.

sermons, and religious fulminations, proclaimed by a dictatorial authority.

No canonical or exclusive order of the Platonic dialogues, when arranged by Aristophanes.

pendence of individual reason against established authority, and the title of negative reason as one of the litigants in the process of philosophising, are first brought distinctly to view in the career of Sokrates.

greatly surpassing his predecessors. Without altering the Platonic Canon, he took a new view of the general purposes of Plato, and especially he brought forward the dialogue Phædrus into a prominence which had never before belonged to it, as an index or key-note (ἐνδόσιμον) to the whole Platonic series. Shortly after Tennemann, came Schleiermacher, who introduced a theory of his own, ingenious as well as original, which has given a new turn to all the subsequent Platonic criticism.

drawn from the proceedings or Zeus.

refinements, were disposed to seek out, wherever they could find it, a more literal interpretation of the Platonic text, correctly presented and improved. The next great edition of the works of Plato was published by Serranus and Stephens, in the latter portion of the sixteenth century.

Kallimachus — predecessor of Aristophanes — his published Tables of authors whose works were in the library.

All Plato’s dialogues were composed during the fifty-one years after the death of Sokrates.

have escaped the capital sentence. Here is now a third opportunity of rescue, which if he declines, it will turn this grave and painful affair into mockery, as if he and his friends were impotent simpletons.

Result called Knowledge, which Plato aspires to. Power of going through a Sokratic cross examination; not attainable except through the Platonic process and method.

His order of arrangement. He admits only fourteen dialogues as genuine, rejecting all the rest.

him), far from recognising the infallibility of established King Nomos, were bold enough

Impression made by the Platonic Apology on Zeno the Stoic.

Large expenses incurred by the Ptolemies for procuring good MSS.

To be loved by the Gods is not the essence of the Holy — they love it because it is holy. In what then does its essence consist? Perplexity of Euthyphron.

Reasons, founded on the early life, character, and position of Plato.

Other libraries and literary centres, besides Alexandria, in which spurious Platonic works might get footing.

his death;

Poetical vein predominant in some compositions, but not in all.

effect which Schleiermacher demands. If we follow them as stated in his Introductions (prefixed to the successive Platonic dialogues), we find a number of approximations and comparisons, often just and ingenious, but always inconclusive for his point: proving, at the very best, what Plato’s intention may possibly have been — yet subject to be countervailed by other “internal reasons” equally specious, tending to different conclusions. And the various opponents of Schleiermacher prove just as much and no more, each on behalf of his own mode of arrangement, by the like constructive evidence — appeal to “internal reasons”. But the insufficient character of these “internal reasons” is more fatal to Schleiermacher than to any of his opponents: because his fundamental hypothesis — while it is the most ambitious of all and would be the most important, if it could be proved — is at the same time burdened with the strongest antecedent improbability, and requires the amplest proof to make it at all admissible.

B.C., when Sokrates was tried and condemned, Plato seems to have remained in friendly relation and society with him: a relation perhaps interrupted during the severe political struggles between 405 B.C. and 403 B.C., but revived and strengthened after the restoration of the democracy in the last-mentioned year.

— a popular and a scientific: but it cannot be true (as the same learned author

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.

Negative procedure supposed to be represented by the Sophists and the Megarici; discouraged and censured by historians of philosophy.

Plato as a teacher — pupils numerous and wealthy, from different cities.

neither know the order in which the dialogues were composed, — nor the date when Plato first began to compose, — nor the primitive philosophical mind which his earliest dialogues represented, — nor the order of those subsequent modifications which his views underwent. We are informed, indeed, that Plato went from Athens to visit Megara, Kyrênê, Egypt, Italy; but the extent or kind of influence which he experienced in each, we do not know at all.

and to abstain from practical politics; unless fortune should present to him some exceptional case, of a city prepared to welcome and obey a renovator upon exalted principles.

manner of lecturing or teaching, they go to attest, first, his opinion that direct written exposition was useless for conveying real instruction to the reader — next, his reluctance to publish any such exposition under his own name, and carrying with it his responsibility. When asked for exposition, he writes intentionally with mystery, so that ordinary persons cannot understand.

Even if it be Plato’s own composition, it comes naturally first in the review of his dialogues.

Plato would never publish his philosophical opinions in his own name; but he may have published them in the dialogues under the name of others.

Plato both sceptical and dogmatical.

Historical facts as to their preservation.

He declares that the judgment of the general public is not worthy of trust: he appeals to the judgment of the one Expert, who is wise on the matter in debate.

Visionary anticipations of Xenophon, financial and commercial.

is plainly and sufficiently enunciated in the words addressed by Sokrates to Theætêtus — “Answer without being daunted: for if we prosecute our search, one of two alternatives is certain — either we shall find what we are looking for, or we shall get clear of the persuasion that we know what in reality we do not yet know. Now a recompense like this will leave no room for dissatisfaction.”

philosophy could not be set forth in writing so as to be intelligible to ordinary persons: that they could only be apprehended by a few privileged recipients, through an illumination kindled in the mind by multiplied debates and much mental effort: that such illumination was always preceded by a painful feeling of want, usually long-continued, sometimes lasting for nearly thirty years, and exchanged at length for relief at some unexpected moment.

under the precise circumstances in which many others, generally patriotic, might be disposed to recede from it — where he is condemned (unjustly, in his own persuasion) to suffer death — yet has the opportunity to escape. He is thus presented as a citizen not merely of ordinary loyalty but of extraordinary patriotism. Moreover his remarkable constancy of residence at Athens is produced as evidence, showing that the city was eminently acceptable to him, and that he had no cause of complaint against it.

No intentional sequence or interdependence of the dialogues can be made out.

The Kriton is rhetorical, not dialectical. Difference between Rhetoric and Dialectic.

Unsafe grounds upon which those theories proceed.

He disclaims the function of a teacher — he cannot teach, for he is not wiser than others. He differs from others by being conscious of his own ignorance.

Standard by which Plato tested the efficacy of the expository process. — Power of sustaining a Sokratic cross-examination.

where no such special officers exist, we find Plato himself describing forcibly (in the speech assigned to Protagoras)

Schleiermacher — new theory about the purposes of Plato. One philosophical scheme, conceived by Plato from the beginning — essential order and interdependence of the dialogues, as contributing to the full execution of this scheme. Some dialogues not constituent items in the series, but lying alongside of it. Order of arrangement.

Sokrates himself. As things appear to me, so they are to me: as they appear to you, so they are to you. My reason and conscience is the measure for me: yours for you. It is for you to see whether yours agrees with mine.

Relation of teacher and learner. Appeal to authority is suppressed.

Plato never published any of the lectures which he delivered at the Academy.

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.

Views of Ueberweg — attempt to reconcile Schleiermacher and Hermann — admits the preconceived purpose for the later dialogues, composed after the foundation of the school, but not for the earlier.

could myself do this better than any one, and I should consider it the proudest deed in my life, as well as a signal benefit to mankind, to bring forward an exposition of Nature luminous to all.

Aversion of the Athenian public to the negative procedure of Sokrates. Mistake of supposing that that negative procedure belongs peculiarly to the Sophists and the Megarici.

Sokrates admits that few will agree with him, and that most persons hold the opposite opinion: but he affirms that the point is cardinal.

Demetrius Poliorkêtês. By these political events Demetrius Phalereus was driven into exile: a portion of which exile was spent at Thebes, but a much larger portion of it at Alexandria, where he acquired the full confidence of Ptolemy Soter, and retained it until the death of that prince in 285 B.C. While active in politics, and possessing rhetorical talent, elegant without being forcible — Demetrius Phalereus was yet more active in literature and philosophy. He employed his influence, during the time of his political power, to befriend and protect both Xenokrates the chief of the Platonic school, and Theophrastus the chief of the Aristotelian. In his literary and philosophical views he followed Theophrastus and the Peripatetic sect, and was himself among their most voluminous writers. The latter portion of his life was spent at Alexandria, in the service of Ptolemy Soter; after whose death, however, he soon incurred the displeasure of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and died, intentionally or accidentally, from the bite of an asp.

attributes belonging in common to considerable groups of dialogues. It is in this respect preferable to the fanciful dramatic partnership of trilogies and tetralogies, as well as to the mystical interpretation and arrangement suggested by the Neo-platonists. The Dialogues of Exposition — in which one who knows (or professes to know) some truth, announces and developes it to those who do not know it — are contrasted with those of Search or Investigation, in which the element of knowledge and affirmative communication is wanting. All the interlocutors are at once ignorant and eager to know; all of them are jointly engaged in searching for the unknown, though one among them stands prominent both in suggesting where to look and in testing all that is found, whether it be really the thing looked for. Among the expository dialogues, the most marked specimens are Timæus and Epinomis, in neither of which is there any searching or testing debate at all. Republic, Phædon, Philêbus, exhibit exposition preceded or accompanied by a search. Of the dialogues of pure investigation, the most elaborate specimen is the Theætêtus: Menon, Lachês, Charmidês, Lysis, Euthyphron, &c., are of the like description, yet less worked out. There are also several others. In the Menon, indeed,

To those topics, on which each community possesses established dogmas, laws, customs, sentiments, consecrated and traditional, peculiar to itself. The local creed, which is never formally proclaimed or taught, but is enforced unconsciously by every one upon every one else. Omnipotence of King Nomos.

The Dialogues must be reviewed as distinct compositions by the same author, illustrating each other, but without assignable inter-dependence.

He refuses to furnish any written, authoritative exposition of his own philosophical doctrine.

told) either of his forehead or of his shoulders. Endowed with a robust physical frame, and exercised in gymnastics, not merely in one of the palæstræ of Athens (which he describes graphically in the Charmides) but also under an Argeian trainer, he attained such force and skill as to contend (if we may credit Dikæarchus) for the prize of wrestling among boys at the Isthmian festival.

Vocation of Sokrates and Plato for the negative procedure: absolute necessity of it as a condition of reasoned truth. Parmenidês of Plato.

The harangue insists upon topics common to Sokrates with other citizens, overlooking the specialties of his character.

Large and rapid accumulation of the Alexandrine Library.

Scanty information about Plato’s life.

Declaration from the Delphian oracle respecting the wisdom of Sokrates, interpreted by him as a mission to cross-examine the citizens generally — The oracle is proved to be true.

of the past — Agamemnon, Odysseus, Sisyphus; thus discriminating which of them are really wise, and which of them are only unconscious pretenders. He is convinced that no evil can ever happen to the good man; that the protection, of the Gods can never be wanting to him, whether alive or dead.

third Ptolemy spent, for the mere purpose of securing better and more authoritative MSS. of works which the Alexandrine library already possessed.

Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the right of satisfaction for his own individual reason.

Other critics, besides Aristophanes, proposed different arrangements of the Platonic dialogues.

and returned in a thousand different ways. The principles of classification, with the breaking down of an extensive genus into species and sub-species, form the special subject of illustration in two of the most elaborate Platonic dialogues, and are often partially applied in the rest. To see the One in the Many, and the Many in the One, is represented as the great aim and characteristic attribute of the real philosopher. The testing of general terms, and of abstractions already embodied in familiar language, by interrogations applying them to many concrete and particular cases — is one manifestation of the Sokratic cross-examining process, which Plato multiplies and diversifies without limit. It is in his writings and in the conversation of Sokrates, that general terms and propositions first become the subject of conscious attention and analysis, and Plato was well aware that he was here opening the new road towards formal logic, unknown to his predecessors, unfamiliar even to his contemporaries. This process is indeed often overlaid in his writings by exuberant poetical imagery and by transcendental hypothesis: but the important fact is, that it was constantly present to his own mind and is impressed upon the notice of his readers.

contrast with Rhetoric, which aims at the determination of some particular case or debated course of conduct, judicial or political, and which is intended to end in some immediate practical verdict or vote. Dialectic, in Plato’s sense, comprises the whole process of philosophy. His Dialogues of Search correspond to Aristotle’s Dialectic, being machinery for generating arguments and for ensuring that every argument shall be subjected to the interrogation of an opponent: his Dialogues of Exposition, wherein some definite result is enunciated and proved (sufficiently or not), correspond to what Aristotle calls Demonstration.

Plato has done more than any one else to make the process of enquiry interesting to others, as it was to himself.

Assumptions of Schleiermacher respecting the Phædrus inadmissible.

composed after the Phædrus follow out, to a certain extent, these methodical views. In the Phædrus, the Platonic Sokrates delivers the opinion that writing is unavailing as a means of imparting philosophy: that the only way in which philosophy can be imparted is, through oral colloquy adapted by the teacher to the mental necessities, and varying stages of progress, of each individual learner: and that writing can only serve, after such oral instruction has been imparted, to revive it if forgotten, in the memory both of the teacher and of the learner who has been orally taught. For the dialogues composed after the opening of the school, and after the Phædrus, Ueberweg recognises the influence of a preconceived method and of a constant bearing on the oral teaching of the school: for those anterior to that date, he admits no such influence: he refers them (with Hermann) to successive enlargements, suggestions, inspirations, either arising in Plato’s own mind, or communicated from without. Ueberweg does not indeed altogether exclude the influence of this non-methodical cause, even for the later dialogues: he allows its operation to a certain extent, in conjunction with the methodical: what he excludes is, the influence of any methodical or preconceived scheme for the earlier dialogues.

Canon established by Thrasyllus. Presumption in its favour.

His opinions as to authenticity and chronology of the dialogues, He rejects Hippias Major, Erastæ, Theagês, Kleitophon, Parmenidês: he is inclined to reject Euthyphron and Menexenus.

families; and we may be sure that they requited their master by some valuable present, though no fee may have been formally demanded from them. Some conditions (though we do not know what) were doubtless required for admission. Moreover the example of Eudoxus shows that in some cases even ardent and promising pupils were practically repelled. At any rate, the teaching of Plato formed a marked contrast with that extreme and indiscriminate publicity which characterised the conversation of Sokrates, who passed his days in the market-place or in the public porticoes or palæstræ; while Plato both dwelt and discoursed in a quiet residence and garden a little way out of Athens. The title of Athens to be considered the training-city of Hellas (as Perikles had called her fifty years before), was fully sustained by the Athenian writers and teachers between 390-347; especially by Plato and Isokrates, the most celebrated and largely frequented. So many foreign pupils came to Isokrates that he affirms most of his pecuniary gains to have been derived from non-Athenians. Several of his pupils stayed with him three or four years. The like is doubtless true about the pupils of Plato.

Intentional obscurity of his Epistles in reference to philosophical doctrine.

Contrast of different points of view instructive — but no solution has been obtained.

inclined to reject Euthyphron. He scarcely recognises Menexenus, in spite of the direct attestation of Aristotle, which attestation he tries (in my judgment very unsuccessfully) to invalidate.

to rival it: there was also an active literary and philosophising class, in various Grecian cities, of which Athens was the foremost, but in which Rhodes, Kyrênê, and several cities in Asia Minor, Kilikia, and Syria, were included: ultimately the cultivated classes at Rome, and the Western Hellenic city of Massalia, became comprised in the number. Among this widespread literary public, there were persons who neither knew nor examined the Platonic school or the Alexandrine library, nor investigated what title either of them had to furnish a certificate authenticating the genuine works of Plato. It is not certain that even the great library at Pergamus, begun nearly half a century after that of Alexandria, had any such initiatory agent as Demetrius Phalereus, able as well as willing to go to the fountain-head of Platonism at Athens: nor could the kings of Pergamus claim aid from Alexandria, with which they were in hostile rivalry, and from which they were even forbidden (so we hear) to purchase papyrus. Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that spurious Platonic writings, though they obtained no recognition in the Alexandrine library, might obtain more or less recognition elsewhere, and pass under the name of Plato. To a certain extent, such was the case. There existed some spurious dialogues at the time when Thrasyllus afterwards formed his arrangement.

Persian present reality — is described by Xenophon as thoroughly depraved, in striking contrast to the establishment of Cyrus.

Incorrectness of such assumption — the Sokratic Elenchus does not furnish a solution, but works upon the mind of the respondent, stimulating him to seek for a solution of his own.

Generous and amiable qualities of Cyrus, Abradates and Pantheia.

Sokrates acts as the Expert himself: he finds authority in his own reason and conscience.

Susemihl — coincides to a great degree with K. F. Hermann his order of arrangement.

The Apology is the real defence delivered by Sokrates before the Dikasts, reported by Plato, without intentional transformation.

They reject several dialogues.

Application of Negative scrutiny to ethical and social topics by Sokrates.

admit of affirmative solutions. Whoever expects that such consummate masters of the negative process as Sokrates and Plato, when they come to deliver affirmative dogmas of their own, will be kept under restraint by their own previous Elenchus, and will take care that their dogmas shall not be vulnerable by the same weapons as they had employed against others — will be disappointed. They do not employ any negative test against themselves. When Sokrates preaches in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, or the Athenian Stranger in the Platonic Leges, they jump over, or suppose to be already solved, the difficulties under the pressure of which other disputants had been previously discredited: they assume all the undefinable common-places to be clearly understood, and all the inconsistent generalities to be brought into harmony. Thus it is that the negative cross-examination, and the affirmative dogmatism, are (both in Sokrates and in Plato) two unconnected operations of thought: the one does not lead to, or involve, or verify, the other.

Sokrates, like him, did the same each in his own way: but their compositions have not survived.

Bearing of this dialogue on the relative position of Sokrates and the Athenian public.

The Kriton makes powerful appeal to the emotions, but overlooks the ratiocinative difficulties, or supposes them to be solved.

Scheme of government devised by Cyrus when his conquests are completed — Oriental despotism, wisely arranged.

minority of ἰδιογνώμονες,

Sokrates within the circle of procedure which the Apology claims for him. These dialogues exemplify in detail the aggressive operations, announced therein by Sokrates in general terms as his missionary life-purpose, against contemporaries of note, very different from each other — against aspiring youths, statesmen, generals, Rhetors, Sophists, orthodox pietists, poets, rhapsodes, &c. Sokrates cross-examines them all, and convicts them of humiliating ignorance: but he does not furnish, nor does he profess to be able to furnish, any solution of his own difficulties. Many of the persons cross-examined bear historical names: but I think it necessary to warn the reader, that all of them speak both language and sentiments provided for them by Plato, and not their own.

Assumption by modern critics, that Sokrates is a positive teacher, employing indirect methods for the inculcation of theories of his own.

Xenophon exhorts his countrymen to maintain peace.

Answer of Sokrates to the appeal made by Kriton.

Apart from any result, Plato has an interest in the process of search and debate per se. Protracted enquiry is a valuable privilege, not a tiresome obligation.

formal public teaching of Plato, constituting as it does so great an epoch in philosophy, commenced. But I see no ground for believing, as many authors assume, that he was absent from Athens during the entire interval between 399-386 B.C. I regard such long-continued absence as extremely improbable. Plato had not been sentenced to banishment, nor was he under any compulsion to stay away from his native city. He was not born “of an oak-tree or a rock” (to use an Homeric phrase, strikingly applied by Sokrates in his Apology to the Dikasts

They were delivered to miscellaneous auditors. They coincide mainly with what Aristotle states about the Platonic Ideas.

Megara, and influenced by the philosophical intercourse which he there enjoyed, and characterised by the composition of Theætêtus, Kratylus, Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês.

Incongruity and repugnance of the two classifications.

He retires from Athens after the death of Sokrates — his travels.

Neither Schleiermacher, nor any other critic, has as yet produced any tolerable proof for an internal theory of the Platonic dialogues.

deny it, there can be no common measure or reasoning. Reciprocal contempt is the sentiment with which, by necessity, each contemplates the other’s resolutions.

The Canon of Thrasyllus continued to be generally acknowledged, by the Neo-Platonists, as well as by Ficinus and the succeeding critics after the revival of learning.

Philosophical principle — Dialogues of Search — Dialogues of Exposition.

In the modern world the search for truth is put out of sight. Every writer or talker professes to have already found it, and to proclaim it to others.

training and discipline as himself: nor can they be restrained, even by the impressive appeal which he makes to them on his death-bed, from violent dissension among themselves, and misgovernment of every kind.

Situation supposed in the dialogue — interlocutors.

Order of the Dialogues, chosen for bringing them under separate review. Apology will come first; Timæus, Kritias, Leges, Epinomis last.

(under another name) false persuasion of knowledge: and because he can do so, he is presumed to possess positive knowledge on the points to which the exposure refers. But this presumption is altogether unfounded: he possesses no such positive knowledge. Wisdom is not to be found in any man, even among the most distinguished: Sokrates is as ignorant as others; and his only point of superiority is, that he is fully conscious of his own ignorance, while others, far from having the like consciousness, confidently believe themselves to be in possession of wisdom and truth.

Results as to the trustworthiness of the Thrasyllean Canon.

whoever he may be, who is wise on these matters.

Scholars of Plato — Aristotle.

Subject of the dialogue — interlocutors.

Plato’s works in the Alexandrine library, before the time of Aristophanes.

earliest, followed by Hippias I, Hippias II., Alkibiadês I., Lysis, Charmidês, Lachês, Protagoras. These constitute what Steinhart calls the ethico-Sokratical series of Plato’s compositions, having the common attributes — That they do not step materially beyond the philosophical range of Sokrates himself — That there is a preponderance of the mimic and plastic element — That they end, to all appearance, with unsolved doubts and unanswered questions.

Small number of certainties, or even reasonable presumptions, as to date or order of the dialogues.

many ways: but it would not have been improved in the hands of Xenophon — any more than the administrative and judiciary department of Athens would have become better under the severe regimen of Plato.

Steinhart — agrees in rejecting Schleiermacher’s fundamental postulate — his arrangement of the dialogues — considers the Phædrus as late in order — rejects several.

The real Plato was not merely a writer of dialogues, but also lecturer and president of a school. In this last important function he is scarcely at all known to us. Notes of his lectures taken by Aristotle.

element are found both combined, embraces Philêbus, Symposion, Republic, Timæus, Kritias. These fourteen dialogues, in Ast’s view, constitute the whole of the genuine Platonic works. All the rest he pronounces to be spurious. He rejects Leges, Epinomis, Menon, Euthydêmus, Lachês, Charmidês, Lysis, Alkibiades I. and II., Hippias I. and II., Ion, Erastæ, Theages, Kleitophon, Apologia, Kriton, Minos, Epistolæ — together with all the other dialogues which were rejected in antiquity by Thrasyllus. Lastly, Ast considers the Protagoras to have been composed in 408 B.C., when Plato was not more than 21 years of age — the Phædrus in 407 B.C. — the Gorgias in 404 B.C.

coincides to a certain extent with that which some other expositors have adopted. It begins with those dialogues which delineate Sokrates, and which confine themselves to the subjects and points of view belonging to him, known as he is upon the independent testimony of Xenophon. First of all will come the Platonic Apology, containing the explicit negative programme of Sokrates, enunciated by himself a month before his death, when Plato was 28 years of age.

Peripatetic school library, its removal from Athens to Skêpsis — its ultimate restitution in a damaged state to Athens, then to Rome.

Peripatetic school at the Lykeum — its composition and arrangement.

False persuasion of knowledge — had reference to topics social, political, ethical.

The Dialogues of Search present an end in themselves. Mistake of supposing that Plato had in his mind an ulterior affirmative end, not declared.

First general answer given by Euthyphron — that which is pleasing to the Gods is holy. Comments of Sokrates thereon.

day: the founders of the two schools existing in Athens, upon the model of which the Alexandrine Museum was to be constituted.

Security provided by the school for distinguishing what were Plato’s genuine writings.

does not belong to the works of other eminent contemporary authors, Aristippus, Antisthenes, Isokrates, Lysias, Demosthenes, Euripides, Aristophanes. After the decease of these last-mentioned authors, who can say what became of their MSS.? Where was any certain permanent custody provided for them? Isokrates had many pupils during his life, but left no school or μουσεῖον after his death. If any one composed a discourse, and tried to circulate it as the composition of Isokrates, among the bundles of judicial orations which were sold by the booksellers

Dramatic principle of classification — was inherited by Thrasyllus from Aristophanes.

Inconvenience to the Peripatetic school from the loss of its library.

Importance of this foundation. Preservation of Plato’s manuscripts. School library.

Platonic Canon — Ancient and modern discussions.

Thrasyllus did not follow an internal sentiment of his own in rejecting dialogues as spurious.

that we have among his works unfinished fragments and abandoned sketches, published without order, and perhaps only after his death.

moreover, Sokrates acts only a subordinate part, while the Eleatic stranger, who did not appear in the Theætêtus, is here put forward as the prominent questioner or expositor. So too, the Politikus offers itself as a third of the same triplet: with this difference, that while the Eleatic stranger continues as the questioner, a new respondent appears in the person of Sokrates Junior. The Politikus is not a resumption of the same subject as the Sophistês, but a second application of the same method (the method of logical division and subdivision) to a different subject. Plato speaks also as if he contemplated a third application of the same method — the Philosophus: which, so far as we know, was never realised. Again, the Timæus presents itself as a sequel to the Republic, and the Kritias as a sequel to the Timæus: a fourth, the Hermokrates, being apparently announced, as about to follow — but not having been composed.

Arrangement of them into Trilogies, by Aristophanes.

ascribed to Sokrates in the Memorabilia. In the details of Cyrus’s biography which follow, the stamp of Sokratic influence is less marked, yet seldom altogether wanting. The conversation of Sokrates had taught Xenophon how to make the most of his own large experience and observation. His biography of Cyrus represents a string of successive situations, calling forth and displaying the aptitude of the hero for command. The epical invention with which these situations are imagined — the variety of characters introduced, Araspes, Abradates, Pantheia, Chrysantas, Hystaspes, Gadatas, Gobryas, Tigranes, &c. — the dramatic propriety with which each of these persons is animated as speaker, and made to teach a lesson bearing on the predetermined conclusion — all these are highly honourable to the Xenophontic genius, but all of them likewise bespeak the Companion of Sokrates. Xenophon dwells, with evident pleasure, on the details connected with the rationale of military proceedings: the wants and liabilities of soldiers, the advantages or disadvantages of different weapons or different modes of marshalling, the duties of the general as compared with those of the soldier, &c. Cyrus is not merely always ready with his orders, but also competent as a speaker to explain the propriety of what he orders.

View taken by Sokrates about death. Other men profess to know what it is, and think it a great misfortune: he does not know.

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.

False persuasion of wisdom is universal — the God alone is wise.

dialectic debate which gives free play and efficacious prominence to the negative arm. The like disapprobation is felt even by most of the historians of philosophy; who nevertheless, having an interest in the philosophising process, might be supposed to perceive that nothing worthy of being called reasoned truth can exist, without full and equal scope to negative as well as to affirmative.

He does not know where competent teachers can be found. He is perpetually seeking for them, but in vain.

Euthyphron alludes to the punishment of Uranus by his son Kronus and of Kronus by his son Zeus.

Schleiermacher and Ast both consider Phædrus and Protagoras as early compositions — Socher puts Protagoras into the second period, Phædrus into the third.

Serranus — his six Syzygies — left the aggregate Canon unchanged, Tennemann — importance assigned to the Phædrus.

No written exposition can keep clear of these chances of error.

&c. But these hearers were altogether astonished at what they really heard: for Plato omitting the topics expected, descanted only upon arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and told them that The Good was identical with The One (as contrasted with the Infinite or Indeterminate which was Evil).

merely as a talker, but as a personal agent: but this is not true of the other dialogues which Munk places in his third group.

their constituent items; but the first tetralogy was probably intended to recommend the rest, and to justify the system.

into three classes:

tion of the character of Sokrates appears in the main to be preferred by modern critics. Of course (they imagine) an able man who cross-questions others on the definitions of Law, Justice, Democracy, &c., has already meditated on the subject, and framed for himself unimpeachable definitions of these terms. Sokrates (they suppose) is a positive teacher and theorist, employing a method, which, though indirect and circuitous, is nevertheless calculated deliberately beforehand for the purpose of introducing and inculcating premeditated doctrines of his own. Pursuant to this hypothesis, it is presumed that the positive theory of Sokrates is to be found in his negative cross-examinations, — not indeed set down clearly in any one sentence, so that he who runs may read — yet disseminated in separate syllables or letters, which may be distinguished, picked out, and put together into propositions, by an acute detective examiner. And the same presumption is usually applied to the Sokrates of the Platonic dialogues: that is, to Plato employing Sokrates as spokesman. Interpreters sift with microscopic accuracy the negative dialogues of Plato, in hopes of detecting the ultimate elements of that positive solution which he is supposed to have lodged therein, and which, when found, may be put together so as to clear up all the antecedent difficulties.

Socher agrees with Ast in denying preconceived scheme — his arrangement of the dialogues, differing from both Ast and Schleiermacher — he rejects as spurious Parmenidês, Sophistês, Politikus, Kritias, with many others.

ignorant — this is the main idea which Plato inherited from Sokrates, and worked out in more than one half of his dialogues. It is under this general head that the subdivisions of Thrasyllus fall — the Obstetric, the Testing or Verifying, the Refutative. The process is one in which both the two concurrent minds are active, but each with an inherent activity peculiar to itself. The questioner does not follow a predetermined course of his own, but proceeds altogether on the answer given to him. He himself furnishes only an indispensable stimulus to the parturition of something with which the respondent is already pregnant, and applies testing questions to that which he hears, until the respondent is himself satisfied that the answer will not hold. Throughout all this, there is a constant appeal to the free, self-determining judgment of the respondent’s own mind, combined with a stimulus exciting the intellectual productiveness of that mind to the uttermost.

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 Athenæus

Still Sokrates is represented as adopting the resolution to obey, from his own conviction; by a reason which weighs with him, but which would not weigh with others.

Visit of Plato to the younger Dionysius at Syracuse, 367 B.C. Second visit to the same — mortifying failure.

He was chief agent in the first establishment of the Alexandrine Library.

Success, misconduct, and death of Dion.

the social medium by which, he is surrounded. The historical circumstances of Athens from Plato’s nineteenth year to his twenty-sixth (409-403 B.C.) were something totally different from what they afterwards became. They were so grave and absorbing, that had he been ever so much inclined to philosophy, he would have been compelled against his will to undertake active and heavy duty as a citizen. Within those years (as I have observed in a preceding

Sokrates considered the negative procedure to be valuable by itself, and separately. His theory of the natural state of the human mind; not ignorance, but false persuasion of knowledge.

Philosophy, as now understood, includes authoritative teaching, positive results, direct proofs.

He becomes disgusted with politics.

Principles laid down by Sokrates for determining the question with Kriton. Is the proceeding recommended just or unjust? Never in any case to act unjustly.

Early relations of Plato with Sokrates.

Preponderance of the searching and testing dialogues over the expository and dogmatical.

Expedition of Dion against Dionysius — sympathies of Plato and the Academy.

from a few scraps of information. But Plato was not merely a composer of dialogues. He was lecturer, and chief of a school, besides. The presidency of that school, commencing about 386 B.C., and continued by him with great celebrity for the last half (nearly forty years) of his life, was his most important function. Among his contemporaries he must have exercised greater influence through his school than through his writings.

Euthyphron recounts that he is prosecuting an indictment for murder against his own father — Displeasure of his friends at the proceeding.

they are liable to exception, if those circumstances undergo important change. There are always objections, real as well as apparent, which require to be rebutted or elucidated. To such changeful and complicated states of fact, the Platonic dialectic was adapted: furnishing abundant premisses and comparisons, bringing into notice many distinct points of view, each of which must be looked at and appreciated, before any tenable principle can be arrived at. Not only Platonic method and result, but also Platonic topics, are thus well suited to each other. The general terms of ethics were familiar but undefined: the tentative definitions suggested, followed up by objections available against each, included a large and instructive survey of ethical phenomena in all their bearings.

his Memorabilia recognises this impression as prevalent among his countrymen against Sokrates, and provides what he thinks a suitable answer to it. Plato also has his way of answering it; and such I imagine to be the dramatic purpose of the Kriton.

Reasons founded on the personality of Sokrates, and his relations with Plato.

Dialogues of Search — sub-classes among them recognised by Thrasyllus — Gymnastic and Agonistic, &c.

with Plato’s writings (if indeed such a fact requires proof), we know, not only from his epigram upon the Ambrakiot Kleombrotus (whom he affirms to have killed himself after reading the Phædon), but also from a curious intimation that he formally impugned Plato’s competence to judge or appreciate poets — alluding to the severe criticisms which we read in the Platonic Republic.

multitude of books required. Lastly, the tables also show how large a compass the Alexandrine Museum and library had attained at the time when Kallimachus put together his compilation: that is, either in the reign of Ptolemy II. Philadelphia (285-247 B.C.), or in the earlier portion of the reign of Ptolemy III., called Euergetes (247-222 B.C.). Nevertheless, large as the library then was, it continued to increase. A few years afterwards, Aristophanes published a work commenting upon the tables of Kallimachus, with additions and enlargements: of which work the title alone remains.

Rise of Dialectic — Effect of the Drama and the Dikastery.

For him, as well as for Plato, the search after truth counted as the main business of life.

read not merely by disciples and admirers (as the Stoic and Epikurean treatises were), but by those who dissented from him as well as by those who agreed with him.

Variety and abundance visible in Plato’s writings.

Demetrius Phalereus — his history and character.

speculations and principles of teaching of his own, on the subject of rhetoric, found himself at variance with Isokrates and the Isokratean school. Aristotle attacked Isokrates and his mode of dealing with the subject: upon which Kephisodôrus (one of the disciples of Isokrates) retaliated by attacking Plato and the Platonic Ideas, considering Aristotle as one of Plato’s scholars and adherents.

value. And in entering upon the consideration of these dialogues, we cannot take a better point of departure than the Apology of Sokrates, wherein the speaker, alike honest and decided in his convictions, at the close of a long cross-examining career, re-asserts expressly his devoted allegiance to the negative process, and disclaims with equal emphasis all power over the affirmative.

His permanent establishment at Athens — 386 B.C.

proving an intended Trilogy are only found in the second and third of the series.

K. F. Hermann — Stallbaum — both of them consider the Phædrus as a late dialogue — both of them deny preconceived order and system — their arrangements of the dialogues — they admit new and varying philosophical points of view.

General character of the Apology — Sentiments entertained towards Sokrates at Athens.

Sequel of the dialogue — Euthyphron gives a particular example as the reply to a general question.

but by putting questions on the familiar terms in which it was confidently enunciated, and by making its defenders contradict themselves and feel the shame of their own contradictions. The persons who held it were shown to be incapable of defending it, when tested by an acute cross-examiner; and their supposed knowledge, gathered up insensibly from the tradition around them, deserved the language which Bacon applies to the science of his day, conducting indirectly to the necessity of that remedial course which Bacon recommends. “Nemo adhuc tantâ mentis constantiâ et rigore inventus est, ut decreverit et sibi proposuerit, theorias et notiones communes penitus abolere, et intellectum abrasum et æquum ad particularia rursus applicare. Itaque ratio illa quam habemus, ex multâ fide et multo etiam casu, necnon ex puerilibus quas primo hausimus notionibus, farrago quædam est et congeries.”

commenced his operations at Alexandria, and when there were only the two Μουσεῖα at Athens to serve as precedents. Demetrius, who combined an organising head and political experience, with an erudition not inferior to Varro, regard being had to the stock of learning accessible — was eminently qualified for the task. It procured for him great importance with Ptolemy, and compensated him for that loss of political ascendancy at Athens, which unfavourable fortune had brought about.

does not occur to him to follow the Platonic scheme of taking another mind into partnership, and entering upon that distribution of active intellectual work which we read in the Theætêtus. There are cases in which two chemists have carried on joint researches, under many failures and disappointments, perhaps at last without success. If a record were preserved of their parley during the investigation, the grounds for testing and rejecting one conjecture, and for selecting what should be tried after it — this would be in many points a parallel to the Platonic process.

would not be properly conceived. And even if the bearing were properly conceived, men would find it easier then, and do find it easier now, to make answer by giving one particular example than to go over many examples, and elicit what is common to all.

Discourse of Xenophon on Athenian finance and the condition of Athens. His admiration of active commerce and variety of pursuits.

thorough reform of the government at Syracuse. This ill-starred visit, with its momentous sequel, has been described in my ‘History of Greece’. It not only failed completely, but made matters worse rather than better: Dionysius became violently alienated from Dion, and sent him into exile. Though turning a deaf ear to Plato’s recommendations, he nevertheless liked his conversation, treated him with great respect, detained him for some time at Syracuse, and was prevailed upon, only by the philosopher’s earnest entreaties, to send him home. Yet in spite of such uncomfortable experience Plato was induced, after a certain interval, again to leave Athens and pay a second visit to Dionysius, mainly in hopes of procuring the restoration of Dion. In this hope too he was disappointed, and was glad to return, after a longer stay than he wished, to Athens.

The harangue is not a corollary from this Sokratic reason, but represents feelings common among Athenian citizens.

Ten spurious dialogues, rejected by all other critics as well as by Thrasyllus — evidence that these critics followed the common authority of the Alexandrine library.

anarchy and despotism, and partially recovered by Dionysius, became more unhappy than ever.

tically denies the accusation of general disbelief in the Gods, advanced by Melêtus: and he affirms generally (though less distinctly) that the Gods in whom he believed, were just the same as those in whom the whole city believed. Especially does he repudiate the idea, that he could be so absurd as to doubt the divinity of Helios and Selênê, in which all the world believed;

dialogue only with a view to untie them in another; and that the doubts which he propounds are already fully solved in his own mind, only that he defers the announcement of the solution until the embarrassed hearer has struggled to find it for himself.

Plato’s works — in the library at the time of Kallimachus.

Authority of the Alexandrine library — editions of Plato published, with the Alexandrine critical marks.

Impossibility of teaching by written exposition assumed by Plato; the assumption intelligible in his day.

written so as to convey only indirect hints, illustrations, applications of these great principles, together with refutation of various errors opposed to them: that Plato did not think it safe or prudent to make any full, direct, or systematic revelation to the general public.

Declaration of Sokrates in the Apology; his constant mission to make war against the false persuasion of knowledge.

Reliance of Sokrates on his own individual reason, whether agreeing or disagreeing with others.

1. Sokratic or Indirect Dialogues. — Protagoras, Charmidês, Lachês, Gorgias, Ion, Hippias I., Kratylus, Euthydêmus, Symposion.

Euthyphron expresses full confidence that this step of his is both required and warranted by piety or holiness. Sokrates asks him — What is Holiness?

Period of political ambition.

each dovetailed and fitted into its special place among the whole. The universe is admitted to have breaks: so that the hypothesis does not possess the only merit which can belong to gratuitous hypothesis — that of introducing, if granted, complete symmetry throughout the phenomena.

Indictment by Melêtus against Sokrates — Antipathy of the Athenians towards those who spread heretical opinions.

Sokrates intimates his own hesitation in believing these stories of discord among the Gods. Euthyphron declares his full belief in them, as well as in many similar narratives, not in so much circulation.

First formation of the library — intended as a copy of the Platonic and Aristotelian Μουσεῖα at Athens.

The distribution coincides mainly with that of Aristotle — Dialectic, Demonstrative.

Dramatic moral set forth by Aristophanes against Sokrates and the freethinkers, is here retorted by Plato against the orthodox champion.

Groups into which the dialogues admit of being thrown.

The Thrasyllean Canon is more worthy of trust than the modern critical theories by which it has been condemned.

Procedure of Sokrates after this comparison has been declared — he does not name who the trustworthy Expert is.

Difference of the latest compositions of Xenophon and Plato, from their point of view in the earlier.

Conditions favourable, for preserving the genuine works of Plato.

common attribute — much debate, with absence of affirmative result.

Reasons for this opinion. Labour of the composition — does not consist with youth of the author.

Favour of Ptolemy Soter towards the philosophers at Athens.

General purpose of the Kriton.

will suffice. He who is a quick learner and retentive, but not cognate or congenial with just or honourable things — he who, though cognate and congenial, is stupid in learning or forgetful — will never effectually learn the truth about virtue or wickedness.

of which something may be urged, yet we look in vain for any solution at once sufficient as to proof and defensible against objectors.

The questioner has no predetermined course, but follows the lead given by the respondent in his answers.

drill: still less does he speak like Plato — to whom (as we see both by the Republic and the Leges) such artistic and poetical exhibitions were abominations calling for censorial repression — and in whose eyes gold, silver, commerce, abundant influx of strangers, &c., were dangerous enemies of all civic virtue.

Now on this point I dissent from them: and since the decision turns upon “internal grounds,” each must judge for himself. The Protagoras appears to me one of the most finished and elaborate of all the dialogues: in complication of scenic arrangements, dramatic vivacity, and in the amount of theory worked out, it is surpassed by none — hardly even by the Republic.

From thenceforward, he turned away from practice and threw himself into speculation.

Plato’s youth — service as a citizen and soldier.

positive analogy. That Just and Honourable are, to the mind, what health and strength are to the body:—Unjust and Base, what distemper and weakness are to the body. And he follows this up by saying, that the general public are incompetent to determine what is just or honourable — as they are incompetent to decide what is wholesome or unwholesome. Respecting both one and the other, you must consult some one among the professional Experts, who alone are competent to advise.

Early appearance of a few free-judging individuals, or free-thinkers in Greece.

Harangue of Sokrates delivered in the name of the Laws, would have been applauded by all the democratical patriots of Athens.

Dramatic principle — Tetralogies.

built, upon so inconvenient a fiction, one tetralogy (the first), really plausible and impressive.

Plato does not provide solutions for the difficulties which he has raised. The affirmative and negative veins are in him completely distinct. His dogmas are enunciations à priori of some impressive sentiment.

dialogues under the name of Sokrates, during the lifetime of Sokrates.

new museum was first begun, the founders entertained any idea of the vast magnitude to which it ultimately attained.

Purpose and principle of this distribution.

Classification of Thrasyllus in its details. He applies his own principles erroneously.

Aristophanes, librarian at the Alexandrine library.

Opposition of feeling between Sokrates and the Dikasts.

exercises are inseparable from the process of searching for truth, and unless a man has strength to go through them, no truth, or at least no reasoned truth, can be found and maintained.

The same charges which the historians of philosophy bring against the Sophists were brought by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates. They represent the standing dislike of free inquiry, usual with an orthodox public.

Advantage of a large number of Metics. How these may be encouraged.

He commences his teaching at the Academy.

Munk’s theory is the most ambitious, and the most gratuitous, next to Schleiermacher’s.

Preponderance of the searching and testing dialogues over the expository and dogmatical.

in Plato.

The lectures De Bono may perhaps have been more transcendental than Plato’s other lectures.

philosophy is not fitted on to his negative philosophy, but grows out of other mental impulses, distinct and apart. Plato (as Aristotle tells us

Aversion towards Sokrates aggravated by his extreme publicity of speech. His declaration, that false persuasion of knowledge is universal; must be understood as a basis in appreciating Plato’s Dialogues of Search.

of Aristotle was postponed until the first century before the Christian era — the Ciceronian age, immediately preceding Strabo.

Schleiermacher terms an Appendix, containing one or more dialogues, each a composition by itself, and lying not in the series, but alongside of it (Nebenwerke). The Appendix to the first file includes Apologia, Kriton, Ion, Hippias II., Hipparchus, Minos, Alkibiadês II. The Appendix to the second file consists of Theagês, Erastæ, Alkibiadês I., Menexenus, Hippias I., Kleitophon. That of the third file consists of the Leges. The Appendix is not supposed to imply any common positive character in the dialogues which it includes, but simply the negative attribute of not belonging to the main philosophical column, besides a greater harmony with the file to which it is attached than with the other two files. Some dialogues assigned to the Appendixes are considered by Schleiermacher as spurious; some however he treats as compositions on special occasions, or adjuncts to the regular series. To this latter category belong the Apologia, Kriton, and Leges. Schleiermacher considers the Charmidês to have been composed during the time of the Anarchy, B.C. 404: the Phædrus (earliest of all), in Olymp. 93 (B.C. 406), two years before:

which he had earned by long previous studies in the place, as well as by attested experience in the work of criticism and arrangement. He began his studious career at Alexandria at an early age: and he received instruction, as a boy from Zenodotus, as a young man from Kallimachus — both of whom were, in succession, librarians of the Alexandrine library.

Hypothesis — that Plato had solved all his own difficulties for himself; but that he communicated the solution only to a few select auditors in oral lectures — Untenable.

case had been one of health or sickness. He would have said “I appeal to Hippokrates, Akumenus, &c., as professional Experts on medicine: they have given proof of competence by special study, successful practice, writing, teaching, &c.: they pronounce so and so”. He would not have considered himself competent to form a judgment or announce a decision of his own.

opinions of Plato — and others in like manner. A special price was paid for manuscripts of Plato with these illustrative appendages:

Value and importance of this process — stimulating active individual minds to theorise each for itself.

Emphatic declaration of the authority of individual reason and conscience, for the individual himself.

Sokrates really delivered this answer to Hippias, as a general definition of Justice — we may learn from it how much greater was his negative acuteness in overthrowing the definitions of others, than his affirmative perspicacity in discovering unexceptionable definitions of his own. This is the deficiency admitted by himself in the Platonic Apology — lamented by friends like Kleitophon — arraigned by opponents like Hippias and Thrasymachus. Xenophon, whose intellect was practical rather than speculative, appears not to be aware of it. He does not feel the depth and difficulty of the Sokratic problems, even while he himself enunciates them. He does not appreciate all the conditions of a good definition, capable of being maintained against that formidable cross-examination (recounted by himself) whereby Sokrates humbled the youth Euthydêmus: still less does he enter into the spirit of that Sokratic order of precedence (declared in the negative Platonic dialogues), in the study of philosophical questions:—First define Justice, and find a definition of it such as you can maintain against a cross-examining adversary before you proceed either to affirm or deny any predicates concerning it. The practical advice and reflexions of Xenophon are, for the most part, judicious and penetrating. But he falls very short when he comes to deal with philosophical theory:—with reasoned truth, and with the Sokratic Elenchus as a test for discriminating such truth from the false, the doubtful, or the not-proven.

Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the cross-examining mission imposed upon him by the God.

ignorance: the wisest of men would be he who had the like consciousness; but as yet I have looked for such a man in vain.”

Platonic process adapted to Platonic topics — man and society.

He had devoted his life to the execution of this mission, and he intended to persevere in spite of obloquy or danger.

Catalogue of Platonic works, prepared by Aristophanes, is trustworthy.

admission with most minds.

Certainty that the works of Plato and Aristotle were among the earliest acquisitions made by him for the library.

Little known about Plato’s personal history.

pupil — that is, during the last eighteen years of Plato’s life. Aristotle and other hearers took notes of these lectures: Aristotle even composed an express work now lost (De Bono or De Philosophiâ), reporting with comments of his own these oral doctrines of Plato, together with the analogous doctrines of the Pythagoreans. We learn that Plato gave continuous lectures, dealing with the highest and most transcendental concepts (with the constituent elements or factors of the Platonic Ideas or Ideal Numbers: the first of these factors being The One — the second, The Indeterminate Dyad, or The Great and Little, the essentially indefinite), and that they were mystic and enigmatical, difficult to understand.

Fixed residence and school at Athens — founded by Plato and transmitted to successors.

of his teaching at the Academy, when about 41 or 42 years old (B.C. 386). In this second period were composed Ion, Euthydêmus, Hippias I, Protagoras, Theætêtus, Gorgias, Philêbus — in the order here set forth. During the third period of Plato’s life, continuing until he was 65 or more, he composed Phædrus, Menexenus, Symposion, Republic, Timæus. To the fourth and last period, that of extreme old age, belongs the composition of the Leges.

Museum, Diogenes Laertius does not tell us; nor, unfortunately, does he set forth the full list of those which Aristophanes, recognising as Platonic, distributed either in triplets or in units. Diogenes mentions only the principle of distribution adopted, and a select portion of the compositions distributed. But as far as his positive information goes, I hold it to be perfectly worthy of trust. I consider that all the compositions recognised by Aristophanes as works of Plato are unquestionably such; and that his testimony greatly strengthens our assurance for the received catalogue, in many of those items which have been most contested by critics, upon supposed internal grounds. Aristophanes authenticates, among others, not merely the Leges, but also the Epinomis, the Minos, and the Epistolæ.

could, in order to uphold the reputation of their master. If any one composed a dialogue and circulated it under the name of Plato, the school was a known place, and its occupants were at hand to give information to all who enquired about the authenticity of the composition. The original MSS. of Plato (either in his own handwriting or in that of his secretary, if he employed one

eight years, being succeeded after his death first by Xenokrates (for twenty-five years), afterwards by Polemon, Krantor, Krates, Arkesilaus, and others in uninterrupted series; that the school always continued to be frequented, though enjoying greater or less celebrity according to the reputation of the Scholarch.

The Platonic Dialogues of Search disclaim authority and teaching — assume truth to be unknown to all alike — follow a process devious as well as fruitless.

Extent of efficacious influence claimed by Sokrates for himself — exemplified by Plato throughout the Dialogues of Search — Xenophon and Plato enlarge it.

against him to have been unjust, but he renounces all use of that plea, because the sentence has been legally pronounced by the judicial authority of the city, and because he has entered into a covenant with the city. He entertains the firm conviction that no one ought to act unjustly, or to do evil to others, in any case; not even in the case in which they have done injustice or evil to him. “This (says Sokrates) is my conviction, and the principle of my reasoning. Few persons do accept it, or ever will: yet between those who do accept it, and those who do not — there can be no common counsel: by necessity of the case, each looks upon the other, and upon the reasonings of the other, with contempt.”

Other Platonic critics — great dissensions about scheme and order of the dialogues.

Incompetence of the general public or ἰδιῶται — appeal to the professional Expert.

Theory of Ast — he denies the reality of any preconceived scheme — considers the dialogues as distinct philosophical dramas.

Proposal to raise by voluntary contributions a large sum to be employed as capital by the city. Distribution of three oboli per head per day to all the citizens.

that Hermann has amended his position by abandoning Schleiermacher’s gratuitous hypothesis, of a preconceived Platonic system with a canonical order of the dialogues adapted to that system — and by admitting only a chronological order of composition, each dialogue being generated by the state of Plato’s mind at the time when it was composed. This, taken generally, is indisputable. If we perfectly knew Plato’s biography and the circumstances around him, we should be able to determine which dialogues were first, second, and third, &c., and what circumstances or mental dispositions occasioned the successive composition of those which followed. But can we do this with our present scanty information? I think not. Hermann, while abandoning the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, has still accepted the large conditions of the problem first drawn up by Schleiermacher, and has undertaken to decide the real order of the dialogues, together with the special occasion and the phase of Platonic development corresponding to each. Herein, I think, he has failed.

When did Plato begin to compose? Not till after the death of Sokrates.

belief — false persuasion of knowledge. The only way of dissipating such false persuasion was, the effective stimulus of the negative test, or cross-examining Elenchus; whereby a state of non-belief, or painful consciousness of ignorance, was substituted in its place. Such second state was indeed not the best attainable. It ought to be preliminary to a third, acquired by the struggles of the mind to escape from such painful consciousness; and to rise, under the continued stimulus of the tutelary Elenchus, to improved affirmative and defensible beliefs. But even if this third state were never reached, Sokrates declared the second state to be a material amendment on the first, which he deprecated as alike pernicious and disgraceful.

proof of the thesis in hand. Above all, an affirmative result is indispensable.

Thrasyllus followed the Alexandrine library and Aristophanes, as to genuine Platonic works.

Plato’s Epistles — in them only he speaks in his own person.

Trilogies indicated by Plato himself.

exposition of a tutor, would have appeared to Plato not only useless but inconvenient, as restraining the full liberty of adaptive interrogation necessary to be exercised, different in the case of each different pupil.

Death of Plato, aged 80, 347 B.C.

Such mistake frequent in dialectic discussion.

as irreligious.

Biography of Cyrus — constant military success earned by suitable qualities — Variety of characters and situations.

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.

agency of Cyrus are always in the foreground, working with unerring success and determining every thing. He is moreover recommended to our sympathies, not merely by the energy and judgment of a leader, but also by the amiable qualities of a generous man — by the remarkable combination of self-command with indulgence towards others — by considerate lenity towards subdued enemies like Krœsus and the Armenian prince — even by solicitude shown that the miseries of war should fall altogether on the fighting men, and that the cultivators of the land should be left unmolested by both parties.

Relations of Plato with Dionysius II. and the friends of the deceased Dion. Pretensions of Dionysius to understand and expound Plato’s doctrines.

Unfinished fragments and preparatory sketches, preserved and published after Plato’s death.

really know each his own special trade; but then, on account of this knowledge, they believed themselves to be wise on other great matters also. So also the poets were great in their own compositions; but on being questioned respecting these very compositions, they were unable to give any rational or consistent explanations: so that they plainly appeared to have written beautiful verses, not from any wisdom of their own, but through inspiration from the Gods, or spontaneous promptings of nature. The result was, that these men were all proved to possess no more real wisdom than Sokrates: but he was aware of his own deficiency; while they were fully convinced of their own wisdom, and could not be made sensible of the contrary. In this way Sokrates justified the certificate of superiority vouchsafed to him by the oracle. He, like all other persons, was destitute of wisdom; but he was the only one who knew, or could be made to feel, his own real mental condition. With others, and most of all with the most conspicuous men, the false persuasion of their own wisdom was universal and inexpugnable.

The other dialogues they place one by one, without any regular grouping.”

Recognised poverty among the citizens. Plan for improvement.

to assume our own sense of worth as a test of what is really Plato’s composition, it is impossible to deny, that if these dialogues are not worthy of the author of Republic and Protagoras, they are at least worthy of the author of the Leges, Epinomis, Hipparchus, Minos, &c. Accordingly, if the internal sentiment of Thrasyllus did not lead him to reject these last four, neither would it lead him to reject the Eryxias, Sisyphus, and Halkyon. I conclude therefore that if he, and all the other critics whom Diogenes esteemed, agreed in rejecting the ten dialogues as spurious — their verdict depended not upon any internal sentiment, but upon the authority of the Alexandrine library.

to waste so much logical subtlety, poetical metaphor, and fable, in support of such a conclusion. Probably he was also guided, in part, by one singularity in the Phædon: it is the only dialogue wherein Plato mentions himself in the third person.

Xenophon has good experience of military and equestrian proceedings — No experience of finance and commerce.

The search for truth by various interlocutors was a recognised process in the Sokratic age. Acute negative Dialectic of Sokrates.

Plato’s lectures De Bono obscure and transcendental. Effect which they produced on the auditors.

without service rendered, or the pretence of service. He strains yet farther the dangerous principle of the Theôrikon, without the same excuse as can be shown for the Theôrikon itself on religious grounds.

the recognition of Aristophanes, and passed from him to Thrasyllus — Leges, Epinomis, Minos, Epistolæ, Sophistês, Politikus. Exactly on those points on which the authority of Thrasyllus requires to be fortified against modern objectors, it receives all the support which coincidence with Aristophanes can impart. When we know that Thrasyllus adhered to Aristophanes on so many disputable points of the catalogue, we may infer pretty certainly that he adhered to him in the remainder. In regard to the question, Which were Plato’s genuine works? it was perfectly natural that Thrasyllus should accept the recognition of the greatest library then existing: a library, the written records of which could be traced back to Demetrius Phalereus. He followed this external authority: he did not take each dialogue to pieces, to try whether it conformed to a certain internal standard — a “platonisches Gefühl” — of his own.

the fallacious arguments which appear to prove the theorem, but do not really prove it:

Small minority of exceptional individual minds, who do not yield to the established orthodoxy, but insist on exercising their own judgment.

are dramatic (Ast affirms), not merely in their external form, but in their internal character: each is in truth a philosophical drama.

Form of dialogue — universal to this extent, that Plato never speaks in his own name.

Advantage to the Platonic school from having preserved its MSS.

merely as a mental discipline, but as an artistic piece of workmanship, whereby the taste and imagination are charmed. The dialogue was to him what the tragedy was to Sophokles, and the rhetorical discourse to Isokrates. He went on “combing and curling it” (to use the phrase of Dionysius) for as many years as Isokrates bestowed on the composition of the Panegyrical Oration. He handles the dialectic drama so as to exhibit some one among the many diverse ethical points of view, and to show what it involves as well as what it excludes in the way of consequence. We shall not find the ethical point of view always the same: there are material inconsistencies and differences in this respect between one dialogue and another.

The classification, as it would stand, if his principles were applied correctly.

successor of Aristotle, presided over the school for thirty-five years; and his course, during part of that time at least, was prodigiously frequented by students.

The age assigned to Sokrates in any dialogue is a circumstance of little moment.

matter often with the best minds near him, the clouds will clear away of themselves, and the moment of illumination will supervene.

Characteristic of the oral lectures — that they were delivered in Plato’s own name. In what other respects they departed from the dialogues, we cannot say.

No one common characteristic pervading all Plato’s works.

Kriton and Euthyphron come immediately after Apology. The intermediate dialogues present no convincing grounds for any determinate order.

He illustrates his doctrine by the successive stages of geometrical teaching. Difficulty to avoid the creeping in of error at each of these stages.

The problem incapable of solution. Extent and novelty of the theory propounded by Schleiermacher — slenderness of his proofs.

opposite conclusion. It appears to me that Plato composed no Sokratic dialogues during the lifetime of Sokrates.

Panætius, the Stoic — considered the Phædon to be spurious — earliest known example of a Platonic dialogue disallowed upon internal grounds.

Letters of Plato to Dionysius II. about philosophy. His anxiety to confine philosophy to discussion among select and prepared minds.

Distribution made by Thrasyllus defective, but still useful — Dialogues of Search, Dialogues of Exposition.

Principle of arrangement adopted by Hermann is reasonable — successive changes in Plato’s point of view: but we cannot explain either the order or the causes of these changes.

Process of generalisation always kept in view and illustrated throughout the Platonic Dialogues of Search — general terms and propositions made subjects of conscious analysis.

Classification of Platonic works by the rhetor Thrasyllus — dramatic — philosophical.

time; either by external testimony (mentioned in Aristotle or others), or by internal evidences of style, handling, and thoughts:

He was especially revolted by their treatment of Sokrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing his habitual colloquy with young men,

Positive dates of all the dialogues — unknown.

inflicting on any one else. If you deprive the reader of one affirmative solution, you are required to furnish him with another which you are prepared to guarantee as the true one. “Le Roi est mort — Vive le Roi”: the throne must never be vacant. It is plain that under such a restricted application, the full force of the negative case is never brought out. The pleadings are left in the hands of counsel, each of whom takes up only such fragments of the negative case as suit the interests of his client, and suppresses or slurs over all such other fragments of it as make against his client. But to every theory (especially on the topics discussed by Sokrates and Plato) there are more or less of objections applicable — even the best theory being true only on the balance. And if the purpose be to ensure a complete body of reasoned truth, all these objections ought to be faithfully exhibited, by one who stands forward as their express advocate, without being previously retained for any separate or inconsistent purpose.

Formidable efficacy of established public beliefs, generated without any ostensible author.

Plato’s early life — active by necessity, and to some extent ambitious.

especially from the fund thus employed as capital under the management of the Senate, the largest returns are expected. Amidst the general abundance which will ensue, the religious festivals will be celebrated with increased splendour — the temples will be repaired, the docks and walls will be put in complete order — the priests, the Senate, the magistrates, the horsemen, will receive the full stipends which the old custom of Athens destined for them.

so prominently manifest

The Holy — it has an essential characteristic — what is this? — not the fact that it is loved by the Gods — this is true, but is not its constituent essence.

This will not stand — the Gods gain nothing — they receive from men marks of honour and gratitude — they are pleased therewith — the Holy, therefore, must be that which is pleasing to the Gods.

Objections of Theopompus to the Platonic procedure.

Sokratic spirit of the dialogue — confessed ignorance applying the Elenchus to false persuasion of knowledge.

character, though not equal in force — was felt by the greater number of different minds. Subjectively and emotionally, there was no difference between one man and another, except as to degree. But it was Sokrates who first called attention to the fact as a matter for philosophical recognition and criticism, — that such subjective and emotional unanimity does not exclude the widest objective and intellectual dissension.

cordant, and variable types, each under the sanction of King Nomos. The procedure of Sokrates in the Euthyphron would not have been approved by the Xenophontic Sokrates. It is in the spirit of Plato, and is an instance of that disposition which he manifests yet more strongly in the Republic and elsewhere, to look for his supreme authority in philosophical theory and not in the constituted societies around him: thus to innovate in matters religious as well as political — a reproach to him among his own contemporaries, an honour to him among various subsequent Christian writers. Plato, not conforming to any one of the modes of religious belief actually prevalent in his contemporary world, postulates a canon, suitable to the exigencies of his own mind, of that which the Gods ought to love and must love. In this respect, as in others, he is in marked contrast with Herodotus — a large observer of mankind, very pious in his own way, curious in comparing the actual practices consecrated among different nations, but not pretending to supersede them by any canon of his own.

Sokrates suggests a new answer. The Holy is one branch or variety of the Just. It is that branch which concerns ministration by men to the Gods.

ingenious, it is against my own will;

The questions always difficult, often impossible to answer. Sokrates is unable to answer them, though he exposes the bad answers of others.

Subjective unanimity coincident with objective dissent.

This is the same explanation which was before declared insufficient. A fresh explanation is required from Euthyphron. He breaks off the dialogue.

Cross-examination brought to bear upon this mental condition by Sokrates — position of Sokrates and Plato in regard to it.

Ministration to the Gods? How? To what purpose?

and protest, as in the Philêbus and Republic), the affirmative Sokrates will be found only to stand his ground because no negative Sokrates is allowed to attack him. I insist upon this the rather, because the Platonic commentators usually present the dialogues in a different light, as if such modesty on the part of Sokrates was altogether simulated: as if he was himself,

Objective view of Ethics, distinguished by Sokrates from the subjective.

Views of the Xenophontic Sokrates respecting the Holy — different from those of the Platonic Sokrates — he disallows any common absolute general type of the Holy — he recognises an indefinite variety of types, discordant and relative.

The Euthyphron represents Plato’s way of replying to the charge of impiety, preferred by Melêtus against Sokrates — comparison with Xenophon’s way of replying.

the Good and the Just? Or do you suppose that we cannot follow out what each of them is, and that we pronounce the words as empty and unmeaning sounds?”

not of the essence of holiness, and could not serve as an explanation of holiness: though it might be truly affirmed thereof as an accompanying predicate. Let us therefore try again to discover what holiness is. I rely upon you to help me, and I am sure that you must know, since under a confident persuasion that you know, you are indicting your own father for homicide.

said of generals: but the summary and main purpose of all that generals do is — to assure victory in war. So too we may say about the husbandman: but the summary of his many proceedings is, to raise corn from the earth. State to me, in like manner, the summary of that which the Gods perform through our agency.

The Holy a branch of the Just — not tenable as a definition, but useful as bringing to view the subordination of logical terms.

Holiness — rectitude in sacrifice and prayer — right traffic between men and the Gods.

11 Simplikius ad Aristotel. Physic. fol. 6 a. apud Preller, Histor. Philos. Græco-Rom. § 57, ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταὐτὰ γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ τίσιν καὶ δίκην ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν. Simplikius remarks upon the poetical character of this phraseology, ποιητικωτέροις ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων.

29 Philolaus, ed. Boeckh, p. 139. seqq.

25 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 985, b. 27. Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς, ἐνδόκουν θεωρεῖν ὁμοιώματα πολλὰ τοῖς οὖσι καὶ γιγνομένοις, μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν πυρὶ καὶ γῇ καὶ ὕδατι, &c. Cf. N. 3, p. 1090, a. 21.

4 Xenophon, Memor. iv. 7, 5; i. 1, 11-15. Plato, Apolog. p. 26 E.

27 Physic. iii. 4, p. 203, a. 6. Οὐ γὰρ χωριστὸν ποιοῦσι (the Pythagoreans) τὸν ἀριθμόν, &c. Metaphys. M. 6, p. 1080, b. 19: τὰς μονάδας ὑπολαμβάνουσιν ἔχειν μέγεθος. M. 8, p. 1083, b. 17: ἐκεῖνοι (the Pythagoreans) τὸν ἀριθμὸν τὰ ὄντα λέγουσιν· τὰ γοῦν θεωρήματα προσάπτουσι τοῖς σώμασιν ὡς ἐξ ἐκείνων ὄντων τῶν ἀριθμῶν.

20 Aristotel. De Cœlo, ii. 13; Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. iii. 10, p. 895.

28 An analogous application of this principle (Number as the fundamental substance and universal primary agent) may be seen in an eminent physical philosopher of the nineteenth century, Oken’s Elements of Physio-Philosophy, translated by Tulk. Aphorism 57:—“While numbers in a mathematical sense are positions and negations of nothing, in the philosophical sense they are positions and negations of the Eternal. Every thing which is real, posited, finite, has become this, out of numbers; or more strictly speaking, every Real is absolutely nothing else than a number. This must be the sense entertained of numbers in the Pythagorean doctrine — namely, that every thing, or the whole universe, had arisen from numbers. This is not to be taken in a merely quantitative sense, as it has hitherto been erroneously; but in an intrinsic sense, as implying that all things are numbers themselves, or the acts of the Eternal. The essence in numbers is nought else than the Eternal. The Eternal only is or exists, and nothing else is when a number exists. There is therefore nothing real but the Eternal itself; for every Real, or every thing that is, is only a number and only exists by virtue of a number.”

16 Strabo, i. p. 7. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 1) states that Anaximander affirmed the figure of the earth to be spherical; and Dr. Whewell, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, follows his statement. But Schleiermacher (Ueber Anaximandros, vol. ii. p. 204 of his Sämmtliche Werke) and Gruppe (Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, p. 38) contest this assertion, and prefer that of Plutarch (ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, Placit. Philos. iii. 10), which I have adopted in the text. It is to be remembered that Diogenes himself, in another place (ix. 3, 21), affirms Parmenides to have been the first who propounded the spherical figure of the earth. See the facts upon this subject collected and discussed in the instructive dissertation of L. Oettinger, Die Vorstellungen der Griechen und Römer ueber die Erde als Himmelskörper, p. 38; Freiburg, 1850.

6 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 3, p. 983, b. 21. De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 294, a. 29. Θαλῆς, ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας, &c. Seneca, Natural. Quæst. vi. 6.

9 See Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, vol. i. p. 157, seq., ed. 2nd.

17 Origen. Philosophumen. c. 7; Simplikius in Aristot. Physic. f. 32; Brandis, Handb. d. Gesch. d. Gr.-R. Phil. p. 144.

5 Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23. Οὐ γὰρ ἠνειχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον.

26 Aristotel. Metaph. A. 9, p. 990, a. 16. Διὸ περὶ πυρὸς ἢ γῆς ἢ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν τοιούτων σωμάτων οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν εἰρήκασιν, &c. (the Pythagoreans); also N. 3.

7 See two passages in Aristotle De Animâ, i. 2, and i. 5.

24 Diogen. Laert. viii. 7-15-78-85.

3 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 8, p. 989, a. 10. Φησὶ δέ καὶ Ἡσίοδος τὴν γῆν πρώτην γενέσθαι τῶν σωμάτων· οὕτως ἀρχαίαν καὶ δημοτικὴν συμβέβηκεν εἶναι τὴν ὑπόληψιν.

10 Anaximander spoke of his ἄπειρον as ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀνώλεθρον (Aristotel. Physic. iii. 4, 7, p. 203, b. 15).

12 Origen. Philosophumen. p. 11, ed. Miller; Plutarch ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, xv. 23-46-47; Stobæus Eclog. i. p. 510. Anaximander supposed that eclipses of the sun and moon were caused by the occasional closing of these apertures (Euseb. xv. 50-61). The part of the sun visible to us was, in his opinion, not smaller than the earth, and of the purest fire (Diog. Laert. ii. 1).

19 Plutarch, Placit. Philosophor, i. 3, p. 878.

13 Aristotel. Meteorol. ii. 2, p. 355, a. 21, which is referred by Alexander of Aphrodisias to Anaximander; also De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 295, b. 12.

21 Origen. Philosophum. p. 12, ed. Miller: ὡσπερεὶ περὶ τὴν ἡμετέραν κεφαλὴν στρέφεται τὸ πιλίον.

2 Aristophanes, Nubes, 368, Ἀλλὰ τίς ὕει; Herodot. vii. 129.

23 Polybius, ii. 39; Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. 54, seq.

8 Cicero says (De Naturâ Deorum, i. 10), “Thales — aquam dixit esse initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem, quæ ex aquâ cuncta fingeret.” That the latter half of this Ciceronian statement, respecting the doctrines of Thales, is at least unfounded, and probably erroneous, is recognised by Preller, Brandis, and Zeller. Preller, Histor. Philos. Græc. ex Fontium Locis Contexta, sect. 15; Brandis, Handbuch der Gr.-R. Philos. sect. 31, p. 118; Zeller, Die Philos. der Griechen, vol. i., p. 151, ed. 2.

15 Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 3; Seneca, Quæst. Nat. ii. 18-19.

18 Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, p. 917; Plutarch, ap. Euseb. P. E. i. 8.

1 Diogen. Laert. ix. 1. Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· (οὐ φύει, ap. Proclum in Platon. Timæ. p. 31 F., p. 72, ed. Schneider), Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὐτίς τε Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον· τόν θ’ Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον εἶναι ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι, καὶ Ἀρχίλοχον ὁμοίως.

14 Plutarch, Placit. Philos. v. 19.

22 Herodot. ii. 81; Isokrates, Busirid. Encom. s. 28.

34 Aristotel. Ethica Magna, i. 1.

30 See the instructive explanations of Boeckh, in his work on the Fragments of Philolaus, p. 54 seq.

56 Xenophan. Fragm. p. 178, ed. Karsten; Achilles Tatius, Εἰσαγωγὴ in Arat. Phænom. p. 128, τὰ κάτω δ’ ἐς ἄπειρον ἱκάνει.

32 Aristotel. De Cœlo, i. 1, p. 268, a. 10. καθάπερ γάρ φασιν οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι, τὸ πᾶν καὶ τὰ πάντα τοῖς τρίσιν ὥρισται· τελευτὴ γὰρ καὶ μέσον καὶ ἀρχὴ τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἔχει τὸν τοῦ παντὸς, ταῦτα δὲ τὸν τῆς τριάδος. Διὸ παρὰ τῆς φύσεως εἰληφότες ὥσπερ νόμους ἐκείνης, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἁγιστείας χρώμεθα τῶν θεῶν τῷ ἀριθμῷ τούτῳ (i. e. three). It is remarkable that Aristotle here adopts and sanctions, in regard to the number Three, the mystic and fanciful attributes ascribed by the Pythagoreans.

60 Parm. Frag. v. 81.

48 Xenophanis Fragm. 5-6-7, p. 39 seq. ed. Karsten; Clemens Alexandr. Strom. v. p. 601; vii. p. 711.

42 Aristot. Metaphys. Γ. 2, p. 1004, b. 30. τὰ δ’ ὄντα καὶ τὴν οὐσιαν ὁμολογοῦσιν ἐξ ἐναντίων σχεδὸν ἅπαντες συγκεῖσθαι.

43 Aristot. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, a. 22. He goes on to say that Alkmæon, a semi-Pythagorean and a younger contemporary of Pythagoras himself, while agreeing in the general principle that “human affairs were generally in pairs,” (εἶναι δύο τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων), laid down pairs of fundamental contraries at random (τὰς ἐναντιότητας τὰς τυχούσας) — black and white, sweet and bitter, good and evil, great and little. All that you can extract from these philosophers is (continues Aristotle) the general axiom, that “contraries are the principia of existing things” — ὅτι τἀνάντια ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων.

39 Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Respecting this Pythagorean cosmical system, the elucidations of Boeckh are clear and valuable. Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, Berlin, 1852, p. 99-102; completing those which he had before given in his edition of the fragments of Philolaus.

36 Philolaus, ed. Boeckh, p. 91-95. τὸ πρᾶτον ἁρμοσθὲν, τὸ ἕν ἐν τῷ μέσῳ τῆς σφαίρας ἑστία καλεῖται — βωμόν τε καὶ συνοχὴν καὶ μέτρον φύσεως — πρῶτον εἶναι φύσει τὸ μέσον.

46 Concerning the Pythagorean doctrines on Harmonics, see Boeckh’s Philolaus, p. 60-84, with his copious and learned comments.

58 Parmenid. Fr. v. 29.

50 Xenophanis Fragment. 34-35, p. 85, ed. Karsten; Aristotel. Rhetoric. ii. 23; Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, b. 19.

45 Aristot. Metaph. A. 5, p. 985, b. 23. οἱ Πυθαγορεῖοι τῶν μαθημάτων ἀψάμενοι πρῶτοι ταῦτα προήγαγον, καὶ ἐντραφέντες ἐν αὐτοῖς τὰς τούτων ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ἀρχὰς ᾠήθησαν εἶναι πάντων.

49 Xenophan. Fragm. 19, p. 60, ed. Karsten; Cicero, Divinat. i. 3, 5.

62 Parm. Frag. v. 102.

44 Theophrast. Metaphys. 9. Probably the recognition of one dominant antithesis — Τὸ Ἕν — ἡ ἀόριστος Δυὰς — is the form given by Plato to the Pythagorean doctrine. Eudorus (in Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. fol. 39) seems to blend the two together.

61 Zeller (Die Philosophie der Griech., i. p. 403, ed. 2) maintains, in my opinion justly, that the Ens Parmenideum is conceived by its author as extended. Strümpell (Geschichte der theor. Phil. der Griech., s. 44) represents it as unextended: but this view seems not reconcilable with the remaining fragments.

54 Xenophan. Fragm. 14, p. 51, ed. Karsten.

53 Theophrastus ap. Simplikium in Aristotel. Physic. f. 6, Karsten, p. 106; Arist. Met. A. 5, p. 986, b. 21: Ξενοφάνης δὲ πρῶτος τούτων ἑνίσας, ὁ γὰρ Παρμενίδης τούτον λέγεται μαθητής, — εις τὸν ὅλον οὔρανον ἀποβλέψας τὸ ἓν εἶναί φησι τὸν θεόν.

38 The Pythagoreans supposed that eclipses of the moon took place, sometimes by the interposition of the earth, sometimes by that of the Antichthon, to intercept from the moon the light of the sun (Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. 27, p. 560. Heeren). Stobæus here cites the history (ἱστορίαν) of the Pythagorean philosophy by Aristotle, and the statement of Philippus of Opus, the friend of Plato.

51 Xenoph. Frag. 1-2, p. 35.

33 Strümpell, Geschichte der theoretischen Philosophie der Griechen, s. 78. Brandis, Handbuch der Gr.-Röm. Phil., sect. 80, p. 467 seq.

47 Karsten. Xenophanis Fragm., s. 4, p. 9, 10.

55 Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13.

57 Xenophanes Frag. p. 161 seq., ed. Karsten. Compare Lucretius, v. 458.

41 Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 9; Pliny, H.N. ii. 20.

52 Timon, fragment of the Silli ap. Sext. Empiric. Hypot. Pyrrh. i. 33, sect. 224.

59 Parm. Frag. v. 40, 52-56.

35 Aristot. Metaph. M. 6, p. 1080, b. 18. τὸν γὰρ ὅλον οὔρανον κατασκευάζουσιν ἐξ ἀριθμῶν. Compare p. 1075, b. 37, with the Scholia.

37 Philolaus, p. 94. Boeckh. περὶ δὲ τοῦτο δέκα σώματα θεῖα χορεύειν, &c. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13. Metaphys. A. 5.

40 Playfair observes (in his dissertation on the Progress of Natural Philosophy, p. 87) respecting Kepler — “Kepler was perhaps the first person who conceived that there must be always a law capable of being expressed by arithmetic or geometry, which connects such phenomena as have a physical dependence on each other”. But this seems to be exactly the fundamental conception of the Pythagoreans: or rather a part of their fundamental conception, for they also considered their numbers as active forces bringing such law into reality. To illustrate the determination of the Pythagoreans to make up the number of Ten celestial bodies, I transcribe another passage from Playfair (p. 98). Huygens, having discovered one satellite of Saturn, “believed that there were no more, and that the number of the planets was now complete. The planets, primary and secondary, thus made up twelve — the double of six, the first of the perfect numbers.”

31 Philolaus, Fr., p. 62, Boeckh. — Diogen. L. viii. 7, 85.

80 Cicero, Nat. Deor., iii. 14, 35.

79 Diogen. Laert. ix. 1-6. Theophrastus conceived that Herakleitus had left the work unfinished, from eccentricity of temperament (ὑπὸ μελαγχολίας). Of him, as of various others, it was imagined by some that his obscurity was intentional (Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 26, 74, De Finib. 2, 5). The words of Lucretius about Herakleitus are remarkable (i. 641):—

72 Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 5, p. 987, a. 1) represents Parmenides as assimilating one of his phenomenal principles (Heat) to Ens. and the other (Cold) to Non-Ens. There is nothing in the fragments of Parmenides to justify this supposed analogy. Heat as well as Cold belongs to Non-Ens, not to Ens, in the Parmenidean doctrine. Moreover Cold or Dense is just as much a positive principle as Hot or Rare, in the view of Parmenides; it is the female to the male (Parm. Fragm. v. 129; comp. Karsten, p. 270). Aristotle conceives Ontology as a substratum for Phenomenology; and his criticisms on Parmenides imply (erroneously in my judgment) that Parmenides did the same. The remarks which Brucker makes both on Aristotle’s criticism and on the Eleatic doctrine are in the main just, though the language is not very suitable.

85 Aristot. De Cœlo, iii. 1, p. 298, b. 30; Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 9. Φασί τινες κινεῖσθαι τῶν ὄντων οὐ τὰ μὲν τὰ δ’ οὔ, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ ἀεὶ, ἀλλὰ λανθάνειν τοῦτο τὴν ἡμετέραν αἴσθησιν — which words doubtless refer to Herakleitus. See Preller, Hist. Phil. Græc. Rom. s. 47.

73 Parmenides, ap. Simplik. ad Aristot. Physic. fol. 9 a.

86 Lassalle, Philosophie des Herakleitos, vol. i. pp. 54, 55. “Andrerseits bieten die sinnlichen Existenzen graduelle oder Mass-Unterschiede dar, je nachdem in ihnen das Moment des festen Seins über die Unruhe des Werdens vorwiegt oder nicht; und diese Graduation wird also zugleich den Leitfaden zur Classification der verschiedenen Existenz-formen bilden.”

69 Marbach (Lehrbuch der Gesch. der Philos., s. 71, not. 3) after pointing out the rude philosophical expression of the Parmenidean verses, has some just remarks upon the double aspect of philosophy as there proclaimed, and upon the recognition by Parmenides of that which he calls the “illegitimate” vein of enquiry along with the “legitimate.”

70 Parmen. Fr. v. 109.

67 Leibnitz says, Réponse à M. Foucher, p. 117, ed. Erdmann, “Comment seroit il possible qu’aucune chose existât, si l’être même, ipsum Esse, n’avoit l’existence? Mais bien au contraire ne pourrait on pas dire avec beaucoup plus de raison, qu’il n’y a que lui qui existe véritablement, les êtres particuliers n’ayant rien de permanent? Semper generantur, et nunquam sunt.”

78 Diogen. L. ix. 1. Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις τε Ξενοφάνεα καὶ Ἑκαταῖον, &c. Ib. viii. 1, 6. Πυθαγόρης Μνησάρχου ἱστορίην ἤσκησεν ἀνθρώπων μάλιστα πάντων, καὶ ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς συγγραφὰς ἐποίησεν ἑωϋτοῦ σοφίην, πολυμαθίην, κακοτεχνίην.

75 Diogen. Laert. ix. 21, viii. 48; Strabo, ii. p. 93 (on the authority of Poseidonius). Plutarch (Placit. Philos. iii. 11) and others ascribe to Parmenides the recognition not of five zones, but only of two. If it be true that Parmenides held this opinion about the figure of the earth, the fact is honourable to his acuteness; for Leukippus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Diogenes the Apolloniate, and Demokritus, all thought the earth to be a flat, round surface, like a dish or a drum: Plato speaks about it in so confused a manner that his opinion cannot be made out: and Aristotle was the first who both affirmed and proved it to be spherical. The opinion had been propounded by some philosophers earlier than Anaxagoras, who controverted it. See the dissertation of L. Oettinger. Die Vorstellungen der Griechen über die Erde als Himmelskörper, Freiburg, 1850, p. 42-46.

64 Aristotel. De Cœlo, iii. 1. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν ὅλως ἀνεῖλον γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν· οὐθὲν γὰρ οὔτε γίγνεσθαί φασιν οὔτε φθείρεσθαι τῶν ὄντων, ἀλλὰ μόνον δοκεῖν ἡμῖν· οἶον οἱ περὶ Μέλισσον καὶ Παρμενίδην, &c.

83 Plato, Kratylus, p. 402, and Theætet. p. 152, 153.

76 Diogen. Laert. ix. 22.

77 Parmen. Frag. v. 145; Theophrastus, De Sensu, Karsten. pp. 268, 270.

74 See especially the remarkable passage from Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. 23, p. 482, cited in Karsten, Frag. Parm. p. 241, and Cicero, De Natur. Deor, i. 11, s. 28, with the Commentary of Krische, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der alten Philosophie, viii. p. 98, seqq.

84 Plato, Sophist. p. 242 E. Διαφερόμενον γὰρ ἀεὶ ξυμφέρεται.

71 Parm. Frag. v. 132-142.

81 To some it appeared that Herakleitus hardly distinguished Fire from Air. Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 127-129, ix. 360.

63 Parm. Frag. v. 96.

82 Zeller’s account of the philosophy of Herakleitus in the second edition of his Philosophie der Griechen, vol. i. p. 450-496, is instructive. Marbach also is useful (Gesch. der Phil. s. 46-49); and his (Hegelian) exposition of Herakleitus is further developed by Ferdinand Lassalle (Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen, published 1858). This last work is very copious and elaborate, throwing great light upon a subject essentially obscure and difficult.

66 “To make parts, — or to part or divide, Space or Time, — is nothing else but to consider one and another within the same: so that if any man divide space or time, the diverse conceptions he has are more, by one, than the parts which he makes. For his first conception is of that which is to be divided — then, of some part of it — and again of some other part of it: and so forwards, as long as he goes in dividing. But it is to be noted, that here, by division, I do not mean the severing or pulling asunder of one space or time from another (for does any man think that one hemisphere may be separated from the other hemisphere, or the first hour from the second?), but diversity of consideration: so that division is not made by the operation of the hands, but of the mind.” — Hobbes, First Grounds of Philosophy, chap. vii. 5, vol. i. p. 96, ed. Molesworth.

68 Karsten observes that the Parmenidean region of opinion comprised not merely the data of sense, but also the comparisons, generalisations, and notions, derived from sense.

65 Parm. Frag. v. 77.

88 Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, c. 5, p. 396, b. 20. Ταὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτο ἦν καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῷ σκοτεινῷ λεγόμενον Ἡρακλειτῷ: “συνάψειας οὖλα καὶ οὐχὶ οὖλα, συμφερόμενον καὶ διαφερόμενον, συνᾷδον καὶ διᾷδον, καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἑ καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.” Heraclid. Allegor. ap. Schleiermacher (Herakleitos, p. 529), ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἰμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἰμέν: Plato, Sophist, p. 242, E., διαφερόμενον ἀεὶ ξυμφέρεται: Aristotle, Metaphys. iii. 7, p. 1012, b. 24, ἔοικε δ’ ὁ με Ἡρακλείτου λόγος, λέγων πάντα εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, ἅπαντα ἀληθῆ ποεῖν: Aristot. Topic. viii. 5, p. 155, b., οἷον ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν εἶναι ταὐτὸν, καθάπερ Ἡράκλειτός φησιν: also Aristot. Physic. i. 2, p. 185, b. Compare the various Herakleitean phrases cited in Pseudo-Origen. Refut. Hæres. Fragm. ix. 10; also Krische, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der alten Philosophie, vol. i. p. 370-468.

102 Plutarch, De Superstit. c. 3, p. 166, C. See also the passage in Clemens Alexandr. Strom. iv. 22, about the comparison of sleep to death by Herakleitus.

97 See Schleiermacher, Herakleitos, p. 522; Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. viii. 286.

104 The analogy and sympathy between the individual mind and the Kosmical process — between the knowing and the known — was reproduced in many forms among the ancient philosophers. It appears in the Platonic Timæus, c. 20, p. 47 C.

107 Many references to Herakleitus are found in the recently published books of the Refutatio Hæresium by Pseudo-Origen or Hippolytus — especially Book ix. p. 279-283, ed. Miller. To judge by various specimens there given, it would appear that his juxta-positions of contradictory predicates, with the same subject, would be recognised as paradoxes merely in appearance, and not in reality, if we had his own explanation. Thus he says (p. 282) “the pure and the corrupt, the drinkable and the undrinkable, are one and the same.” Which is explained as follows: “The sea is most pure and most corrupt: to fish, it is drinkable and nutritive; to men, it is undrinkable and destructive.” This explanation appears to have been given by Herakleitus himself, θάλασσα, φησὶν, &c.

95 See Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. s. 26-27, p. 182-258.

87 Aristot. De Cœlo, iii. 1, p. 298, b. 30. Οἱ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα γίνεσθαί τέ φασι καὶ ῥεῖν, εἶναι δὲ παγίως οὐδέν, ἓν δέ τι μόνον ὑπομένειν, ἐξ οὗ ταῦτα πάντα μετασχηματίζεσθαι πέφυκεν· ὅπερ ἐοίκασιν βούλεσθαι λέγειν ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος. See the explanation given of this passage by Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 21, 39, 40, founded on the comment of Simplikius. He explains it as an universal law or ideal force — die reine Idee des Werdens selbst (p. 24), and “eine unsinnliche Potenz” (p. 25). Yet, in i. p. 55 of his elaborate exposition, he does indeed say, about the theory of Herakleitus, “Hier sind zum erstenmale die sinnlichen Bestimmtheiten zu bloss verschiedenen und absolut in einander übergehenden Formen eines identischen, ihnen zu Grunde liegenden, Substrats herabgesetzt”. But this last expression appears to me to contradict the whole tenor and peculiarity of Lassalle’s own explanation of the Herakleitean theory. He insists almost in every page (compare ii. p. 156) that “das Allgemeine” of Herakleitus is “reines Werden; reiner, steter, erzeugender, Prozess”. This process cannot with any propriety be called a substratum, and Herakleitus admitted no other. In thus rejecting any substratum he stood alone. Lassalle has been careful in showing that Fire was not understood by Herakleitus as a substratum (as water by Thales), but as a symbol for the universal force or law. In the theory of Herakleitus no substratum was recognised — no τόδε τι or οὐσία — in the same way as Aristotle observes about τὸ ἄπειρον (Physic. iii. 6, a. 22-31) ὥστε τὸ ἄπειρον οὐ δεῖ λαμβάνειν ὡς τόδε τι, οἷον ἄνθρωπον ἢ οἰκίαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἡ ἡμέρα λέγεται καὶ ὁ ἀγων, οἷς τὸ εἶναι οὐχ’ ὡς οὐσία τις γέγονεν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ ἐν γενέσει ἣ φθορᾷ, εἰ καὶ πεπερασμένον, ἀλλ’ ἀεί γε ἕτερον καὶ ἕτερον.

89 Aristot. Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 30, εἰς τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἡ ἀλλοίωσις: also iii. 5, p. 205, a. 6, πάντα γὰρ μεταβάλλει ἐξ ἐναντίου εἰς ἐναντίον, οἷον ἐκ θερμοῦ εἰς ψυχρόν.

99 Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. vii. 132) here cites the first words of the treatise of Herakleitus (compare also Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 5). λόγου τοῦδε ἐόντος ἀξύνετοι γίγνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· — τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται.

101 Sext. Emp. ib. vii. 133 (the words of Herakleitus) διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ ξυνῷ· — τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν· ἡ δ’ ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἀλλ’ ἐξήγησις τοῦ τρόπου τῆς τοῦ πάντος διοικήσεως· διὸ καθ’ ὅ τι ἂν αὐτοῦ τῆς μνήμης κοινωνήσωμεν, ἀληθεύομεν, ἃ δὲ ἂν ἰδιάσωμεν, ψευδόμεθα.

100 Sext. Empiric. ib. vii. 126, a citation from Herakleitus.

93 Aristot. Meteorol. ii. e. p. 355, a. Plato, Republ. vi. p. 498, c. 11; Plutarch, De Exilio, c. 11, p. 604 A.; Plutarch. De Isid. et Osirid. c. 48, p. 370, E.; Diogen. L. ix. 10; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 17-22-24-28, p. 889-891; Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 594.

91 See a striking passage cited from Gregory of Nyssa by Lassalle (vol. i. p. 287), illustrating this characteristic of fire; the flame of a lamp appears to continue the same, but it is only a succession of flaming particles, each of which takes fire and is extinguished in the same instant: ὥσπερ τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς θρυαλλίδος πῦρ τῷ μὲν δοκεῖν ἀεὶ τὸ αὐτὸ φαίνεται — τὸ γὰρ συνεχὲς ἀεὶ τῆς κινήσεως ἀδιάσπαστον αὐτὸ καὶ ἡνωμένον πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δείκνυσι — τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ πάντοτε αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ διαδεχόμενον, οὐδέποτε τὸ αὐτὸ μένει — ἡ γὰρ ἐξελκυσθεῖσα διὰ τῆς θερμότητος ἰκμὰς ὁμοῦ τε ἐξεφλογώθη καὶ εἰς λιγνὺν ἐκκαυθεῖσα μεταποιήθη, &c.

92 Diogen. Laert. ix. 9; Clemens Alexand. Strom. v. 14, p. 599, vi. 2, p. 624. Πυρὸς τροπαὶ πρῶτον θάλασσα, θαλάττης δὲ τὸ μὲν ἥμισυ γῆ, τὸ δ’ ἥμισυ πρηστήρ. A full explanation of the curious expression πρηστήρ is given by Lassalle (Herakl. vol. ii. p. 87-90). See Brandis (Handbuch der Gr. Philos. sect, xliii. p. 164), and Plutarch (De Primo Frigido, c. 17, p. 952, F.).

103 Sextus Empiricus misinterprets the Herakleitean theory when he represents it (vii. 134) as laying down — τὰ κοινῇ φαινόμενα, πιστὰ, ὡς ἂν τῷ κοινῷ κρινόμενα λόγῳ, τὰ δὲ κατ’ ἰδίαν ἑκάστῳ, ψευδῆ. Herakleitus denounces mankind generally as in error. Origen. Philosophum. i. 4; Diog. Laert. ix. 1.

96 Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathem. vii. 130. ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα.

105 Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. p. 58; and the passage of Philo Judæus, cited by Schleiermacher, p. 437; as well as more fully by Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 265-267 (Quis rerum divinar. hæres, p. 503, Mangey): ἓν γὰρ τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν τῶν ἐναντίων, οὗ τμηθέντος γνώριμα τὰ ἐναντία. Οὐ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὅ φασιν Ἕλληνες τὸν μέγαν καὶ ἀοίδιμον παρ’ αὐτοῖς Ἡράκλειτον, κεφαλαῖον τῆς αὐτοῦ προστησάμενον φιλοσοφίας, αὐχεῖν ὡς εὑρέσει καινῇ; παλαιὸν γὰρ εὕρημα Μωύσεώς ἐστιν.

94 Aristot. or Pseudo-Aristot., De Mundo, ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.

106 The great principle of Herakleitus, which Aristotle states in order to reject (Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 10, φασί τινες κινεῖσθαι τῶν ὄντων οὐ τὰ μὲν τὰ δ’ οὐ, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ ἀεὶ· ἀλλὰ λανθάνειν τοῦτο τὴν ἡμετέραν αἴσθησιν) now stands averred in modern physical philosophy. Mr. Grove observes, in his instructive Treatise on the Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 22:

90 Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. i. p. 323.

98 The passage of Sextus Empiricus (adv. Mathem. vii. 127-134) is curious and instructive about Herakleitus.

108 Lucretius, i. 731.

118 Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 532-535, 2nd ed.: Karsten — De Emped. Philos. p. 424-431.

130 Emp. Fr. v. 313, Karst. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. viii. 286; also apud Diogen. L. viii. 77.

117 Plutarch, Placit. Phil. ii. 20, p. 890.

111 Zeller, Philos. der Griech., vol. i. p. 525-528, ed. 2nd.

123 Emp. Frag. v. 135, Kar.

135 Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 9, 10. The criticisms of Theophrastus upon this theory of Empedokles are extremely interesting, as illustrating the change in the Grecian physiological point of view during a century and a half, but I reserve them until I come to the Aristotelian age. I may remark, however, that Theophrastus, disputing the doctrine of sensory effluvia generally, disputes the existence of the olfactory effluvia not less than the rest (s. 20).

125 Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐξ ἀμεταβλήτων τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων ἡγεῖτο γίγνεσθαι τὴν τῶν συνθέτων σωμάτων φύσιν, οὕτως ἀναμεμιγμένων ἀλλήλοις τῶν πρώτων, ὡς εἴ τις λειώσας ἀκριβῶς καὶ χνοώδη ποιήσας ἰὸν καὶ χαλκῖτιν καὶ καδμείαν καὶ μίσυ μίξειεν, ὡς μηδὲν ἐξ αὐτοῦ μεταχειρίσασθαι χωρὶς ἑτέρου.

126 Emp. Fr. v. 275, seqq. Karst.

134 Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 9-21.

122 Emp. Frag. v. 132, 150, 233, 240, ed. Karst. Ver. 238:—

114 Emp. Fr. v. 66-70, Karsten:

115 Plutarch ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8, 10; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 6, p. 887; Aristot. Ethic. Nic. viii. 2.

121 Emp. Fr. v. 253, Kar. τοὺς μὲν πῦρ ἀνεπεμπ’ ἔθελον πρὸς ὅμοιον ἱκέσθαι, &c.

116 Emped. Fr. 185, Karsten. αἰθὴρ σφίγγων περὶ κύκλον ἅπαντα. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13, 14; iii. 2, 2. τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τῆς δίνης ἠρεμεῖν, &c. Empedokles called the sea ἵδρωτα τῆς γῆς. Emp. Fr. 451, Karsten; Aristot. Meteor. ii. 3.

128 Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 2, p. 647, Schneid.

113 Emped. Fr. v. 59, Karsten:

129 Emp. Frag. Karst. v. 267, seq.

133 Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 7, 8.

110 Emp. Fr. v. 55. Τέσσαρα τῶν πάντων ῥιζώματα.

132 Emp. Frag. v. 301-310, Karst. τό τ’ ἐν μήνιγξιν ἐεργμένον ὠγύγιον πῦρ, &c. Theophr. De Sensu, s. 7, 8; Aristot. De Sensu, c. 3; Aristot. De Gen. et Corrupt. i. 8.

119 Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 8; Schaubach, Anaxag. Fragm. p. 175. Compare the remarks of Gruppe (Ueber die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, p. 98) upon the obscure Welt-Gebäude of Empedokles.

124 Plato, Menon. p. 76 A.; Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 324, b. 30 seq.

112 Emp. Frag. v. 96, Karst., p. 98:

131 Emp. Frag. 316, Karst. αἷμα γὰρ ἀνθρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα. Comp. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 11.

120 Hippokrates — Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰητρικῆς — c. 20, p. 620, vol. i. ed. Littré. καθάπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἢ ἄλλοι οἳ περὶ φύσιος γεγράφασιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὅ τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, καὶ ὅπως ἐγενετο πρώτον, καὶ ὅπως ξυνεπάγη.

109 Empedokles, Frag. v. 77-83, ed. Karsten, p. 96:

127 Karsten, De Emp. Philosoph. p. 480.

141 Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. i. 4, 5; Diogen. Laert. ii. 10.

140 Emp. Fr. v. 34, ed. Karst., p. 88.

146 Lucretius, i. 876:

147 Anaxag. Frag. 1; Schaub. p. 65; Ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα. Καὶ γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον ἦν. Καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν εὔδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος. Πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν, ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα. Ταῦτα γὰρ μέγιστα ἔνεστιν ἐν τοῖς συμπᾶσι καὶ πλήθει καὶ μεγέθει.

156 See a remarkable passage in Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. i. 3.

136 Emp. Frag. v. 380-410, Karsten; Plutarch, De Esu Carnium, p. 997-8.

151 Anaxag. Fr. 8-19, Schaubach.

153 Aristotel. Physic. iii. 4, 5, p. 203, a. 23, ὁτιοῦν τῶν μορίων εἶναι μῖγμα ὁμοίως τῷ πάντι, &c. Anaxag. Fr. 16, p. 126, Schaub.

160 Aristoteles (or Pseudo-Aristot.) De Plantis, i. 1.

152 Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 101, Schaub. ὅτεῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἕν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν. Pseudo-Origen. Philosophumen. 8. κινήσεως δε μετέχειν τὰ πάντα ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ κινούμενα, συνελθεῖν τε τὰ ὅμοια, &c. Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. i. p. 188, a. 13 (p. 337, Schol. Brandis).

138 Emp. Fr. v. 390-425, Karst.

159 Aristot. Metaphys. A. p. 984, b. 17. He praises Anaxagoras for this, οἷον νήφων παρ’ εἰκῆ λέγοντας τοὺς πρότερον, &c.

145 Anaxag. Fr. 8; Schaub. p. 101; compare p. 113. ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ. Ἀλλ’ ὅτεῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν.

149 Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 100, Schaub. Τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παντὸς μοῖραν ἔχει, νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνος αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ ἐστιν. Εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ ἦν, ἀλλά τεῳ ἐμέμικτο ἄλλῳ, μετεῖχεν ἂν ἁπάντων χρημάτων εἴ ἐμέμικτο τεῳ.… Καὶ ἀνεκώλυεν αὐτὸν τὰ συμμεμιγμένα, ὥστε μηδενὸς χρήματος κρατεῖν ὁμοίως, ὡς καὶ μόνον ἐόντα ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ. Ἐστὶ γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον, καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει, καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον.

155 Anaxag. Fr. 14, p. 125, Schaub.

137 Emp. Frag. v. 5-18, Karst.; compare Herod. ii. 123; Plato, Phædrus, 55, p. 246 C.; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 26. Plutarch observes in another place on the large proportion of religious mysticism blended with the philosophy of Empedokles — Σωκράτης, φασμάτων καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἀναπλέω φιλοσοφίαν ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δεξάμενος, εὖ μάλα βεβακχευμένην, &c. (Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, p. 580, C.)

161 Anaxag. Fr. 8, and Schaubach’s Comm. p. 112-116.

163 Aristoph. Nub. 380, 828. αἰθέριος Δῖνος — Δῖνος βασιλεύει, τὸν Δί’ ἐξεληλακώς — the sting of which applies to Anaxagoras and his doctrines.

144 Lucretius, i. 830:

139 Diog. Laert. viii. 59.

142 Anaxagor. Fr. 22, p. 135, ed. Schaubach. τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομίζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες. Οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται, οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται· καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι.

150 Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 100, Sch. καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νοῦς ἐκράτησεν, ὥστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν. Καὶ πρῶτον ἀπὸ τοῦ σμικροῦ ἤρξατο περιχωρῆσαι, ἔπειτεν πλεῖον περιχωρέει, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον. Καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. Also Fr. 18, p. 129; Fr. 21, p. 134, Schau.

162 Plato, Phædo, c. 107, 108, p. 98; Plato, De Legg. xii. p. 967 B; Aristot. Metaphys. A. 4, p. 985, b. 18; Plato, Timæus, 34 A. 88 E.

157 This is a just comparison of Theophrastus. See the passage from his φυσικὴ ἱστορία, referred to by Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. i. p. 187, a. 21 (p. 335, Schol. Brand.).

148 Anax. Frag. 6, Schaub. p. 97; Aristotel. Physic. i. 4, p. 187, a, with the commentary of Simplikius ap. Scholia, p. 335; Brandis also, iii. 203, a. 25; and De Cœlo, iii. 301, a. 12, ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται (Anaxagoras) κοσμοποιεῖν.

143 Anaxag. Fr. 5, ed. Schaub, p. 94.

158 Cicero, Academ. iv. 37; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, ix. 6, τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι κατ’ αὐτὸν θεὸς, &c.

154 Aristotle, in two places (De Cœlo, iii. 3, p. 302, a. 28, and Gen. et Corr. i. 1, p. 314, a. 18) appears to state that Anaxagoras regarded flesh and bone as simple and elementary: air, fire, and earth, as compounds from these and other Homœomeries. So Zeller (Philos. d. Griech., v. i. p. 670, ed. 2), with Ritter, and others, understand him. Schaubach (Anax. Fr. p. 81, 82) dissents from this opinion, but does not give a clear explanation. Another passage of Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 3, p. 984, a. 11) appears to contradict the above two passages, and to put fire and water, in the Anaxagorean theory, in the same general category as flesh and bone: the explanatory note of Bonitz, who tries to show that the passage in the Metaphysica is in harmony with the other two above named passages, seems to me not satisfactory.