Light which is not one of the things seen, but the condition of seeing. To suppose that the Whole, or Good, is an object, among objects, of knowledge, is the fault which Plato, as I read him, finds with the logical understanding; and a Platonist might, I think, be allowed to develop the Master's criticism as follows:-The conception of "Whole " or " Universe Universe" which the logical understanding professes to have, and manipulates in its proof of the non-existence of a Personal God, is not a "conception" at all. The understanding cannot conceive the Universe as finished Whole. Its "whole" is always also a "part" of something indefinitely greater. The argument that "the Ruler of the Universe is not a Personal God, because the Part cannot rule the Whole," juggling, as it does, with this sham conception-that of "Whole which is not also Part"is inconclusive. 7. PLATO'S TREATMENT OF THE IDEA OF SOUL Let us now turn to the "Idea of Soul." The Soul is represented in the three strictly Eschatological Myths of the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic, and in other Myths not strictly Eschatological, as a Person created by God, and responsible to him for acts in which it is a free agent within limits set by áváуen-responsible to God throughout an existence which began before its incarnation in this body, and will continue for ever after the death of this body-an existence in which it is subject to periodical re-incarnations, alternating with terms of disembodiment, during which it receives recompense for the deeds done in the flesh; till at last if it is not incorrigible-it is thoroughly purified by penance, and enters into the peace of a never-ending disembodied state, like that which it enjoyed in its own peculiar star, before it began the cycle of incarnations. Zeller, while admitting that many details in Plato's doctrine of the pre-existence and future destiny of the immortal Soul are mythic, maintains that the doctrine itself, in its broad outlines, is held by him dogmatically, and propounded as scientific truth. Pre-existence, recollection, 1 Zeller, Plato, Eng. Transl. pp. 397-413. Thiemann (Die Platonische Eschatologie in ihrer genetischen Entwickelung, 1892, p. 27) agrees with Zeller. retribution, re-incarnation, final purification, and never-ending disembodied existence of the purified soul-these, Zeller thinks, are set forth by Plato as facts which are literally true. Hegel,' on the other hand, holds that the Platonic doctrine of the Soul is wholly mythic. I take it from a passage in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason 2 that Kant would think with Zeller against Hegel. Where such authorities differ one might well remain neutral; but I cannot help saying that I incline to the view that the bare doctrine of immortality (not to mention the details of its setting) is conceived by Plato in Myth, and not dogmatically—or perhaps I ought to say, conceived eminently in Myth; for the dogmatic way of conceiving immortality is not formally excluded on Platonic, as it is on Kantian, principles; although the mere circumstance that Plato has an alternative way of conceiving it-the mythological way, not to mention the great attraction which the mythological way plainly has for him—shows that he was dissatisfied with the scientific proof of immortality— entertained a doubt, to say the least, whether "the Soul is immortal" ought to be regarded as a scientific truth. Nor need Plato's doubt surprise us, when we consider the state of opinion in the Athens of his day. Belief in personal immortality had become very feeble among a large number of educated and even half-educated people in Athens. For the belief of the ordinary half-educated man, the Attic Orators, in their frequent references to the cult of the dead, are our best 3 1 Hegel, Werke, vol. xiv. pp. 207 ff. Couturat (de Platonis Mythis, Paris, 1896, pp. 84-88) agrees with Hegel. Grote (Plato, ii. 190, n. q.) expresses qualified agreement: "There is ingenuity," he says, "in this view of Hegel, and many separate expressions of Plato receive light from it; but it appears to me to refine away too much. Plato had in his own mind and belief both the Soul as a particular thing, and the Soul as an universal. His language implies sometimes the one, sometimes the other." That Coleridge would have endorsed Hegel's view is clear from the following passage in Biogr. Lit. ch. 22. Speaking of Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, he says: "The Ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the platonic pre-existence in the ordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe that Plato himself ever meant or taught it." 2 See infra, p. 72, where the passage is quoted. 3 See Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. i. 419 (Introduction to the Phaedo, § 12). authorities. They seem to take for granted a belief very much like that which Aristotle makes the basis of his remarks in Eth. Nic. i. 10 and 11; and, like him, are concerned chiefly to avoid rò av äpiλov, statements likely to wound tender feeling. The continued existence of the Soul after death,” says Rohde,1" is not questioned by the orators; but its consciousness of what happens in this world is only affirmed with deliberate uncertainty. Such qualifications as εἴ τινες τῶν τετελευτηκότων λάβοιεν τρόπῳ τινὶ τοῦ νῦν γιγνομένου πράγματος αἴσθησιν are frequent. Apart from the offerings of his relatives there is little more to bind the deceased to this world than his fame among survivors. Even in the exalted language of solemn funeral orations we miss, among the consolations offered to the mourners, any reference to a higher condition-to an eternal life of conscious blessedness attained to by the famous dead." Here the Orators are in agreement with that great master of the art of epitaph-writing, as Rohde2 well describes Simonides, "who has never a word assigning the departed to a land of eternal blessedness," but places their immortality entirely in the memory of their deeds, which lasts, and will last, in this world : οὐδὲ τεθνᾶσι θανόντες, επεί σφ ̓ ἀρετὴ καθύπερθεν Similarly Tyrtaeus had identified ȧ@avacía expressly with κλέος : : οὐδέ ποτε κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἀπόλλυται οὐδ ̓ ὄνομ ̓ αὐτοῦ, His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth for evermore. The Dramatists, too, did much to induce their public to look at the dead in the same way; for the dramatic interest required that prominence should be given to the posthumous influence of the dead here rather than to their personal 1 Psyche, vol. ii. pp. 202, 203; and see his important footnotes to these pages, in which he gives references to H. Meuss (über die Vorstellungen von Dasein nach dem Tode bei den attischen Rednern, Jahrb. f. Philol., 1889, pp. 801 ff.), Westermann (on Demosth. Lept. 87), and Lehrs (Popul. Aufs. 329 ff.), for the views expressed by the Attic Orators concerning the state of the departed. 2 Psyche, ii. 204. 3 Simon. Epigr. 99, 3, 4, quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 204, n. 1. 4 Tyrtaeus, 12, 31 f., quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 201, n. 3. ence. condition in another world. When the Dramatists put the old national legends on the stage, attention was turned, as Rohde1 points out, from the mere events of the story to the characters and motives of the hitherto shadowy legendary personages now presented, for the first time, clearly to sense. The plots were well known, and not so curiously attended to by the audience as the characters of the personages now moving before their eyes. Motives became more important than events. The Dramatist had to combine the traditional story of the legend with the motives of agents who must have the hearts of modern men, or else not be understood by the audiHence the tragic conflict between events and motives. It is fated that a good man shall do an evil deed. How can he be responsible for such a deed, and merit the retribution which the moral sense of the audience would resent if he did not merit it? This is the tragic ȧropía which the Dramatists solved, I would suggest, by taking the Family, rather than the Individual, as the moral unit. The descendant is free because he is conscious of doing the ancestral, the fated, thing-a doctrine which Rohde, in ascribing especially to Aeschylus, compares with the Stoic doctrine of συγκατάθεσις. The human interest of tragedy requires that the penalty for sin shall be paid here on earth rather than in Hades. This is why there is so little in the Greek Dramatists about the punishment of the wicked in the other world for their own sins. is in this world that sin must be punished if the drama is to have any human interest. Since the Family, not the Individual, is the moral unit, it matters not that the sin punished here is ancestral. Nay, the tragic effect is heightened when the children suffer for the sins of their fathers. The dead fathers live in their children: that is, for aught we can ever know, the only life they have :- 2 τοὺς γὰρ θανόντας εἰ θέλεις εὐεργετεῖν εἴτ ̓ οὖν κακουργεῖν, ἀμφιδεξίως ἔχει τῷ μήτε χαίρειν μήτε λυπεῖσθαι νεκρούς.5 1 Psyche, ii. 225. It 2 See Plutarch, de sera numinis vindicta, 16, on the continuity of the Family, and the justice of punishing children for the sins of fathers. 3 Psyche, ii. 229. Cic. de fato, 18, where σvykатábeσis is rendered by adsensio. 5 Aeschylus, frag. 266, quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 232. "Under all circumstances," says Dr. Westcott (Religious Thought in the West, edit. 1891, pp. 91, 92), If the dead, then, are unconscious or barely conscious, the living must be punished for the sins of the dead, that the justice of the Gods may be satisfied.1 Aristotle did little more than formulate the widely-prevalent opinion supported by Orators and Dramatists, when he defined the Soul as "the function of the body"-and Plato himself bears witness to the prevalence of the opinion when he makes Glaucon express surprise on hearing it suggested by Socrates that the Soul is immortal.2 It had never occurred to Glaucon that the doctrine of the Soul's immortality could be taken seriously. Socrates then offers a "scientific" proof of its immortality—a proof which he offers, I would suggest, only or chiefly that he may supersede it by the Myth of Er.3 So much for considerations which make it reasonable to suppose that Plato, like many others in the Athens of his day, felt at least serious doubt as to whether anything could be known scientifically about the conscious life of the Soul after death, if he did not actually go the length of holding, as his disciple Aristotle did, that, as conscious individual, it perishes with the body whose function it is. That, while entertaining this serious doubt, Plato did not go so far as Aristotle, seems to me to be shown by the manner in which he allows himself to be affected by another class of opinions "the view of the condition of the Dead, which Aeschylus brings out into the clearest light in describing the condition of the Guilty, is consistent. The fulness of human life is on earth. The part of man, in all his energy and capacity for passion and action, is played out here; and when the curtain falls there remains unbroken rest, or a faint reflection of the past, or suffering wrought by the ministers of inexorable justice. The beauty and the power of life, the manifold ministers of sense, are gone. They can be regretted, but they cannot be replaced. Sorrow is possible, but not joy. "However different this teaching may be from that of the Myths of Plato, and the vague popular belief which they witnessed to and fostered; however different, again, even from that of Pindar, with which Aeschylus cannot have been unacquainted, it is pre-eminently Greek. Plato clothed in a Greek dress the common instincts of humanity; Aeschylus works out a characteristically Greek view of life. Thus it is that his doctrine is most clearly Homeric. As a Greek he feels, like Homer, the nobility of our present powers, the grandeur of strength and wealth, the manifold delights of our complex being; and what was the close-packed urn of ashes which survived the funeral pyre' compared with the heroes whom it represented? That tear-stained dust' was the witness that man-the whole man-could not live again. The poet, then, was constrained to work out a scheme of divine justice upon earth, and this Aeschylus did, though its record is a strain of sorrow." 1 On the necessity of satisfying the justice of the Gods, see Rohde, Psyche, ii. 232. 2 Rep. 608 D, on which see Rohde, Psyche, ii. 264, 265, and Adam, ad loc. 3 See infra, p. 73. |