ARTICLE II.

PLATONIS Scripta græca omnia, ad codices manuscriptos recensuit variasque inde lectiones enotavit Imman. BEKKER; annotationibus integris Stephani, Boeckhiique, etc., adjuciuntur modo non integræ Serrani, Astii, Butmanni, etc. LONDINI. 1826. 11 vol.

HAVING given some views of the life and mental characteristics of Plato, we now, according to our plan, adventure to exhibit his philosophy. This is to be gathered up from his writings, for he never systematically and designedly set himself to its exposition. It is also scattered through numerous dialogues, where it is not always certain whom he means to make his own representative, except that we may, usually, consider Socrates in that relation, and also "Timæus, and the Stranger from Athens, and the Eleatic Stranger." There are no copies now extant, with marks such as Diogenes Laertius tells of, discriminating the fixed and favorite opinions of Plato from such as were otherwise. Of the Dialogues of Plato, amounting in all to about sixty, some are tentative, some eversive, some detective, some maieutic.* Again, some are political, some moral, and some more strictly metaphysical. From this mass of writing, expressed in the dialogistic form, sometimes earnest, sometimes playful, sometimes commonplace, and sometimes tremendously profound and recondite, we are to extract and present his philosophy. We have, indeed, the aid of the labors of others who have devoted themselves to this task, from Alcinous of old down to Schleiermacher, but often we are more confused than assisted by their one-sided, eulogistic or antagonistic positions.

The simple plan we shall adopt is to give the impressions which have resulted from study and meditation, contrasts and comparisons, the occasional occupation and agreeable diversions of past years. This will have at least the merit of brevity, and

* μaieutixós, the name given by Socrates to his plan of eliciting from others what was in their minds, without their knowing it.-Thaet. 161, E., &c. Lidd. and Scott.-EDITORS.

will avoid the pedantic and sometimes nauseous parade of citations, of which almost any modern critic of the Teutonic school would furnish abundance, without patient previous travel of ours through the author.

Philosophy is the outgrowth of that instinct of man's nature, by which we first seek to know, and then to arrange our knowledge into system, give it coherence, fill up as we may its gaps, and impart some order, or nexus, to our particular acquisitions. This is true of any particular branch of knowledge, but as now used, it refers to the whole range-the universe of things. Philosophy, in this general sense, is the effort of man's reason to solve the whole mystery of being -the real nature and true origin of all that is-to solve all problems, and place, if possible, each in its true relations and connections. Philosophy is a necessity to certain orders of mind. They will and must have it of some kind. They will find or form some mode of giving order and arrangement to knowledge; and the history of philosophy is but a narration of what has been attempted, in successive ages, in giving completeness and perfection to these inevitable efforts. Men of adequate powers, say what we will, must philosophize and do philosophize; and where the spirit or capacity exists, in individuals or nations, it will be exercised while any problem belonging to the universe remains to be studied or solved. In the infancy of time and our race, men were content, indeed, to take impressions and acquire knowledge, as it were, passively, without reflection, and some minds, we grant, are guiltless of philosophy, the capacity or desire, all their lives. But, in the maturity of the general or individual mind, philosophy invariably begins, and once begun, never ceases. To quarrel with the tendency and attempt to philosophize, is to quarrel with the constitution of the Creator.

Philosophy, or the exercise of the reflective faculties, differs, on the one hand, from common sense, which takes facts and uses them for practical purposes, without inquiring or desiring to know their ground-principles, and, on the other, from piety, which takes testimonies on the authority of their Divine Author. Theology, we may remark, is only philosophy applied to the great truths or realities conveyed authoritatively in Revelation,

systematizing, as far as possible, the elements of knowledge of divine things received implicitly on divine testimony. Theology, like every other branch of philosophy, is a necessity, but all right minds will discriminate between the scientific and systematic exhibition of our knowledge in the form of theology, even in its highest perfection, and the authoritative communication of truth, in its unsystematized form, in Revelation.

Philosophy, again, and obviously, has reference to things. known, on the one hand, and the powers of cognition on the other, the world without and the world within, object and subject, the material and immaterial, and the points and processes of transition, and then, highest of all, to the author and origin, God himself, and the nexus of the originating cause, and all actually existing realities.

When we speak of the Platonic Philosophy, no competent person will understand us as affirming that it originated with him; for philosophy, philosophers, yea schools of them, as every one knows, existed previously. Thales of Ionia, and Diogenes of Apollonia, Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, Pythagoras and Xenophanes of Elea, Parmenides and Zeno, and Socrates "facile princeps," had caught and represented the philosophic spirit and attempted to solve the problems which yet exercise the profoundest minds, some of them in the genuine Platonic vein. All we mean is, that in Plato it received its most perfect embodiment and finds its best representative.

As we have intimated in a previous Article, there can be but two methods of philosophy. As a matter of fact, there have always been two schools and but two, called, indeed, by different names, in different periods. There is the a priori, and the a posteriori method; the ideal and the sensational; the rational and the empirical; the spiritual and the material. These are all varying expressions for two tendencies of the human mind. In attempting a solution of the problems of existence, and in giving system to its acquisitions, we need not say that the first of these, the a priori, the ideal, the rational and spiritual, is Platonism. True, the reaction against extreme idealism, at one time, and extreme sensationalism at another, has produced, interimistically, the phases of skepticism or Pyrrhonism and mysticism; but these were, and are, only points of

transition in the oscillatory movement, not permanent positions.

True again is it, that at different periods, individual minds and schools have endeavored eclectically to combine the two tendencies, and to apply the a priori and a posteriori method to different objects. Still, these two great leading directions of the philosophic spirit have distinguished different minds, and characterized different schools, from the beginning hitherto, and by their interactions and alternate predominance make up its varied history.

If we would express the peculiarity of Platonism by a single word, it would be, ideal, or as some prefer to say, idealistic. For, to recur a moment to the division already stated in the objects of philosophy, viz., things to be known and the faculty of cognition, and the transition-point from one to the other, Plato conveyed all embraced in the first category, the knowable, (Ta vontá) by the term IDEA, the correct apprehension of which is the key of the whole system; and then, as to the cognitive faculty, so far as employed in true philosophy, it was that part of man's constitution correlative to ideas, the faculty for the absolute, the eternal, or the ideal, as distinguished from the phenomenal, the passing, the sensuous, what in modern times has been called the Reason, or faculty for the infinite, (vous.)

As it regards God and the point of transition from the infinite and eternal to the actual and phenomenal, ideas, with Plato, are every thing; first, as existing in the Divine mind as patterns, archetypes, and then as exerting a plastic power, moulding the existing but shapeless material into form corresponding with the eternal pattern.

These observations alone, show the propriety of the term idealistic, as applied to this philosophy; and the other terms, a priori, rational, spiritual, it will be seen, we trust, as we proceed, all resolve themselves easily into this.

What, then, is the Platonic idea? for, failing to comprehend this, Platonism can never be understood; and without conveying some intelligible view of what Plato meant by the term, we can never expect to make his philosophy appear other than puerile.

Ideas, according to Plato, the true objects of the cognitive faculty and with which philosophy in its highest sense is concerned, are not images or shadows of existing things, which they throw off, and which, reaching the mind, constitute thoughts or knowledge, for an image or shadow is only possible posterior to the existence of the thing reflected or shadowed. But ideas are the patterns or archetypes of all things actual, existing eternally in the Supreme mind, taking form and appearance, becoming phænomena, in time, by virtue of a plastic power which they possess, as the conception of an artist, his ideal, takes form and becomes apparent and actual, by his pencil or chisel. If, by a word or effort of will, the artist's idea could be actualized perfectly, the analogy would be more complete and the illustration more intelligible. The existence of ideas previously to actualization is, of course, only a mental existence-the immanent operations, if we so express it, of the Divine mind, and the same kind of existence which belonged to them before actualization belongs to them afterwards and always. The idea is never perfectly actualized, from the imperfection of the material wrought upon, and is suggested rather than fully conveyed by the thing formed, which is true, also, in the analogy of the artist.

The ideas of Plato very closely resemble our orthodox notion of decrees; "The eternal purpose, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." If for "purpose," we substitute the infinite ideal, and consider "foreordained" to be equivalent to a pattern or programme, according to which Creation, Providence and Redemption are actualized in successive cycles or ages, we have the Platonic idea rendered into orthodox and intelligible forms of language, without interfering with its true meaning and use in his philosophy. These ideas, according to Plato, existing perfectly and previously to their actualization in the passing, the phenomenal, the temporary, constituted the true objects of knowledge and the high sphere of genuine philosophy. The actual and phenomenal exercised the senses, or at best, the understanding. But these divine ideas or archetypes, were addressed to and exercised man's reason, the faculty divine. The infinite ideas which were in the divine mind, of beauty, order, holiness, perfection,